A week has passed since my last contribution to this blog. It was a week of high drama and deluge, heat and great rewards for the company: Pelleas has mesmerised and Carmen has delivered the goods in two utterly different productions that have perfectly encapsulated the versatility of OHP. The challenge that Pelleas presents was made all the more daunting by first night monsoon rain one couldn't help feeling was trying to tell us something. It began to fall at 6pm and didn't cease until we locked the gates five hours later. But the show triumphed over adversity and in particular the CLS played for its lives. We may have a roof but the damp and chill permeate everything and the company fought hard. By the second night of Pelleas, the climate presented us with sun and warmth, like an apologetic, defeated bully. Looking at the forecast, it seems the rain will try again tonight, but it won't win.
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A week has passed since my last contribution to this blog. It was a week of high drama and deluge, heat and great rewards for the company: Pelleas has mesmerised and Carmen has delivered the goods in two utterly different productions that have perfectly encapsulated the versatility of OHP. The challenge that Pelleas presents was made all the more daunting by first night monsoon rain one couldn't help feeling was trying to tell us something. It began to fall at 6pm and didn't cease until we locked the gates five hours later. But the show triumphed over adversity and in particular the CLS played for its lives. We may have a roof but the damp and chill permeate everything and the company fought hard. By the second night of Pelleas, the climate presented us with sun and warmth, like an apologetic, defeated bully. Looking at the forecast, it seems the rain will try again tonight, but it won't win.
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Voila

And so before you know it the season is here and the first audiences (for the dress rehearsal of Pelleas) come through the doors. That dress was accompanied by the familiar rain and summer chill but the weather couldn't divert the impression that Debussy's opera - and this production of it - is unlike anything we have done before. It is easy to see why people are so divided on the piece but it rewards attention and Olivia Fuchs takes us into a deeply unsettling world of endless sadness and impending doom which, despite the flowing mellifluousness and shimmering beauty of the music and the startling images Olivia has created, grips and disorientates like few others do. What audiences and critics make of it we wait to discover with fascination but it is work of a definitive seriousness. Brad Cohen conducts with all the passion he has gathered in the years of his self confessed 'obsession' with the opera

Tiredness is creeping up on the company but perhaps the adrenaline of two first nights will revive everybody? Mournful grey skies are forecast for the opening of Pelleas whereas Wednesday promises blazing sun for Carmen's arrival. Good omens maybe...
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Blimey

A nice interview with James and I appeared on the Arbuturian website. You can find it here www.arbuturian.com and follow the links from the front page. An interesting website, The Arbuturian.

Less than a week to opening night and I still keep finding things to finish - I think I'm being a bit obsessive though so its nothing to worry about. Great to see the works going through their paces on stage - and the huge contrasts between them; in short, Pelleas will mesmerize and Carmen will pulverize. The new backstage is a hit too.



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We are in the middle of a spell of weather we can genuinely call 'summer' (25C + and not freezing in the shade). It may well be THE summer and autumn could arrive at any moment, but we'll make the most of it.

As is the usual way of things the critics have begun to submit their last minute review seat requests - one told me that between the 1st and 5th of June there are 9 shows opening in and around London. It doesn't exactly paint a picture of opera as a marginal art-form does it? Of course, those of us without huge subsidies have to fight for every sale and we always do well but even the smallest drop (in our case from 98 to 95 per cent, say, gives us the heebeegeebees; we've been spoiled. Having said that it is good to see Pelleas doing so well and it looks to have all the scintillating promise an Olivia Fuchs production always carries with it.

Today is Saturday and I am on babysitting duty. Fiora will have to make do with pigs and peacocks in the park.
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