Birth of an Opera

Today is a special and rare day. I'm sitting in the auditorium at the Royal Academy of Music listening to the Sitzprobe of the new opera 'Kommilitonen'  by Peter Maxwell Davies and David Pountney on which I have been working for the last month.

A Sitzprobe (literally 'sitting rehearsal') is the first time the orchestra and the singers get together to put together the piece musically. It's always an exciting rehearsal because everyone sings their best and you begin to get a real sense of the what the performance will be like after the hard work of stage rehearsals.

In this case it is doubly exciting as no-one has ever heard this piece put together with orchestra. Max's score is complex, layered and very theatrical so the 'birth' we are witnessing this morning is a wonderful event. I can't wait to put singers, orchestra and production together tomorrow.

I've been lucky enough as a performer and director to work on a number of world premieres and it is a great experience. You feel like you are carving stone - creating something which will live on. Of course as a director your physical production will not live on - it will at some point end up in the bin and live only in people's memories. But the music will still be there to be taken on by a new team of artists and performers.

I quite like the fact that our physical production, out theatrical experience, is only for the here and now. We are creating something which has a fleeting life in the ear and on the eye and gone in an instant, but which can influence the brains and hearts of our audience forever. I mentioned a couple of blogs ago that the Director for this piece, David Pountney, ran English National Opera when I worked there as an usher and was responsible for most of my early operatic experiences. My brain and heart were definitely changed by those experiences. It's great to be present as he and Max create a piece which I am sure will have a strong influence on the audience and an indelible impact upon the young performers involved.

For more info about this production read David's article in the Guardian here.