For You - The Second Visit

16 June 2009, 9:54 am

At long last it is time to re-visit my diary and bring you up to date with how For You is progressing as we reach the halfway point of its second tour. This is the tour we had to cancel last Summer but with two new venues added – the RNCM in Manchester on June 25th where we'll be appearing for the very first time, and the Lawrence Batley in Huddersfield, where we performed on 10th June having only previously appeared there as part of the Contemporary Music Festival.

I have always found that returning to a new piece a few months after first creating it can be incredibly rewarding. After the piece (and the production) has had a few performances there is nothing better than a bit of time-out working on other things to really let it sink in. During the gap the work really gets into everyone's bones so that when we come back to it everything is so much more mature and understood. We know how it works and so we can truly get on with the business of living within it and communicating it fully.

I knew there were aspects of the original production that hadn't quite hit the spot or found quite the right tone for the piece, and I also wanted to try to pace the drama slightly better, letting it build more steadily as the plot thickened. I am happy to say that I really do think we've got there now and I am thoroughly enjoying watching the performances grow and grow.

What is even more exciting, however, is the opportunity of re-working some of it during the revival rehearsals, with those members of the original cast who have been able to return and with the new singers – for the roles of Charles, Antonia and Maria! – bringing their own personalities, instincts and insights to it. Alan Opie, Allison Cook and Helen Williams were all so outstanding in the original production and we were desperately sorry not to have them back for the second run, but having new cast members has undoubtedly helped me re-consider what we did before and helped all of us find a greater subtlety and credibility for all the characters.

I think the doctor, for instance, now comes across as an intelligent man and believable consultant who is truly struggling to manage his pent-up emotions. Even the police officers – who are such boldly-drawn characters that they certainly wouldn't feature like this in an Ian McEwan novel – are now very strong in the opera because we accept them as part of the allegory and not merely as stock comic opera characters. The arrest of Charles, with him surrounded by a mob who want him strung up for a crime he didn't commit, is not entirely realistic or naturalistic – it was never intended to be – but finding the best staging for this moment has proved very difficult. Michael and Ian always talked about the influence of Don Giovanni on this finale but when we first sang the music it just didn't feel like that. Now we know it better and have tried it in several different ways, we have discovered that a more serious approach to the role and symbolism of the police officers works far better and the whole opera is a lot stronger as a result!

The new singer playing Charles is a true bass-baritone and so has all the lower notes and colours Michael Berkeley originally had in mind. This suits the role really well and brings a greater sense of brutality and darkness to the character and enables us to open up his more private vulnerable side. Nicholas Folwell covered the role in the autumn and watched Alan Opie develop and inhabit the role as strongly as he did, and so has been able to use all of this knowledge and bring his own layers of understanding to it. Altogether I think we have made Charles a rounder and fuller character. He's brutal, he does abuse his power, he behaves awfully but we also find reason to at least recognise how terrible the tragedy is for him, as well as for Antonia, and this is an entirely good thing.

Our new Maria, Arlene Rolph, also covered in the autumn (this was of course planned rather than an accident!) and she too has gained from that experience, but she is also a very different person and a completely different performer to the previous singer. In many ways I feel that I have directed this role much more effectively now that I know it and feel more confident with it. Also knowing Arlene from previous productions with MTW and Scottish Opera I knew she would bring new ideas herself and that together we would find new qualities in the role.

Maria now builds throughout the piece into the "bunny-boiler" at the end, but this is not at all what you expect at the beginning. We have been able to track more clearly the key moments of her misunderstanding and delusion and watch her coming to all the wrong conclusions, not by will but by mistake. She is besotted with Charles and can't control her rapidly spiralling reactions to everything he says to her.

Finally I think we have now conquered the two finales. Michael Berkeley said he had chosen to model these on the great Mozart operas and has also said how difficult they were to write. We all agree that they are also incredibly difficult to sing, memorise and then stage, but they are worth it! Slowly but surely the piece is revealing its secrets. Perhaps this is the sign of a really strong piece that will stand the test of time? I hope it will enter the repertoire of other companies and very much look forward to hearing about new productions around the world, although I must clearly state that my fervent aim is to take this opera and this production to the USA. I think it is perfect for the States, with it Englishness, its cutting libretto by the enormously popular novelist Ian McEwan, its lyrical music by Michael Berkeley… I could go on but if there's anyone out there who can help get this to America let us know. It surely must happen!

And a big PS: The audience reaction has been simply amazing, as has been that of the front of house staff at the venues we've visited so far.

David Thomas of Powys wrote: "I'd just like to say that the performance last night was one of the best marriages of lyrics and music I have witnessed in the theatre for a long time. A superb opera – full of drama and tension right to the last scene and sung in a most assured manner. And how refreshing to have a piece of modern theatre which addresses the concerns of us 50 somethings!"

In both Mold and Huddersfield, we also heard of people who had never been to opera before but were enticed by Ian McEwan's involvement and who were absolutely overwhelmed by the piece and the artform! This is just what we should be doing. New opera is for opera fans wanting to expand their horizons and for anyone else who likes strong drama, new work, inventiveness, powerful performance and a contemporary aesthetic. Music Theatre Wales does all this and more and to have non-opera goers simply bowled over by what we do is the best compliment of all!

It's been worth it!

12 December 2008, 3:59 pm

As we approach the end of the year and the time for reflection on the events of the past 12 months, the most significant journey for me has been that with For You. I have never experienced such extreme ups and downs, and whilst all of that adds to what I happily call “experience” and will indeed inform my work and that of Music Theatre Wales in the future, I am hugely relieved and absolutely delighted to report that all in all it really has been worth it and For You has been the opera and the success we dreamt of!

Several pertinent points emerge regarding the process:

Having the opportunity to re-work the design and production was hugely beneficial – a rare treat (albeit forced on us by circumstances you wouldn’t wish on anyone else!). It is of course far better to approach a production when you really know the work fully, and with opera that means the musical text as well as the libretto. It is possible to read the music and even to hear a dreadful rendition of it through the music-writing programme Sibelius, but nothing can replace hearing the full instrumentation – in the theatre – with performers in a physical space. Only then does it start to breathe. …

Time is also a magnificent contributor! I have always found that when we deliver split tours with a few performances in the summer followed by a break and then a second run in the autumn, that the performances are much more rounded after the break – and a little extra rehearsal. I like to say that the work has had time to sink into the bones of the performers, simply through time and the work of the subconscious. Returning to new work after a couple of months means that the work is no longer completely new, it is familiar and somehow, even if there is still learning to do, the performers and everyone else, has the opportunity to start really getting into the piece from the inside. This also worked for us following the cancellation in May and meant that despite a very short rehearsal period before the rescheduled premiere in October, (especially for Alan Opie, who had not been part of the original rehearsal period in May), the production was much better informed than it would have been at its original premiere.

In fact, I wish we could always employ this kind of process with new work: really exploring and creating a production followed by an opportunity for reflection and then further development. Perhaps we can apply some of this thinking to the design process for future productions by starting earlier and working through more options at different stages of development before making the critical decision to select the final design. This might sound like a luxury, but if we want to see the best possible development of new work in production then perhaps this should be the way forward. 

Defining the role of the composer and writer in the design and production of a new opera is incredibly important, but it isn’t easy to define those roles and it is different every time.  When the composer and writer hand over their work to the production team, they must be able to let it go and see it re-imagined – not always something people find easy! 

Conclusions: my own journey as one of the commissioning team and as director of the opera has been partially revealed through these blogs. What I want to finish with is a comment on the opera.

For You is Michael Berkeley’s finest opera yet. It is beautifully constructed and functions as real music drama. Every musical idea is motivated by the drama and the characters and his collaboration with Ian has been critical to this achievement. They created the drama together and it shows. I am honoured that we were trusted with this commission.

And now we go forward: with For You, which is touring again in Summer 2009, replacing the cancelled tour; and with our next commission – Crime Fiction by Huw Watkins and David Harsent (March 28 in Cardiff and April 3 in Caernarfon); and with our new opera from Eleanor Alberga and Donald Sturrock, based on a beautiful, magical story by Isabel Allende – Letters of a Love Betrayed – world premiere October 3rd 2009 at the Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio Theatre as a co-production with ROH and a co-commission with OperaGenesis, and then on tour in Wales and England.

Nearly there - at last!

25 October 2008, 1:25 pm

Six months later than anticipated we are finally reaching a point where I feel we can give birth to this new opera. Not only do we have a cast that can really let it take flight vocally – an important element in this truly lyric opera – but we also now have a production that is revealing the opera I always believed was there but which we had difficulty finding. Opera is such a complicated beast, with so many different elements coming together, that it is extremely difficult to truly envisage a brand new work you have never heard before and which has never been experienced on stage. Approaching the production this time, with a much deeper level of understanding of how the music functioned and how the overall drama functioned in relation to the music, I felt so much clearer about what I needed to achieve. Now we are there I am delighted to say that Ian and Michael also seem to be experiencing their work in a new way. It is, after all, our duty to take the written and composed work to the next stage and to not only reveal it but also add several other layers to it. I now think we are there and there is no better place to demonstrate this than the "Demonic Aubade".

The D.A. (as Alan Opie fondly refers to it) is the climax of the character Charles' personal artistic vision. It is the work he has been aspiring to create all his life and it has been pre-occupying him throughout the opera, despite all the difficulties with his wife! Finally he gets a chance to rehearse it with the orchestra and as it starts we once again go into his own vision of it. But it goes a lot further than merely a description of the musical argument. Charles begins to load onto it a personal vision of the role of the artist which naturally begins to develop into hyperbole. One of the difficulties I had last time was that Ian and Michael had rather different views of this critical section of the opera, with Ian writing pure artistic hubris and Michael quite rightly wishing to avoid writing untruthful (or simply bad) music at the climax of his opera! The solution is to reveal both aspects of the character's abilities – his vision and compositional /artistic skill AND his overblown opinion of what he is put on this planet to achieve! I think we have now found a way to do this and I believe that Michael and Ian are both blown away by the impact of what we have done, exceeding their own artistic vision and making the most of the operatic form where text and music combine to make something altogether more powerful.

Despite the incredible speed at which we have had to create this new production – it is only 2 weeks since we began with the cast – I believe we are now on the edge of delivering something very strong. In some ways, the intensity of this rehearsal process brings at last as many virtues as it does disadvantages. One of our previous Administrators, Abigail Pogson, on taking up a new post once referred to us as the pre-eminent midwives of new operas. I was proud of this statement and am indeed hopeful that we are there once again, with a new opera by no less than Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan. I hope you too can share this with us at a performance somewhere near you. After all, as a commissioning and producing company, we are doing this For You!

Michael McCarthy, writing after the final stage and orchestra rehearsal with only a single Dress Rehearsal left to go!

Focus on Emotion

17 October 2008, 4:50 pm

Only 4 days done and we are well and truly ahead of where we managed to get the production to in May. I am so pleased with the rapid rate of development of all the cast we've worked with this week – especially Alan Opie who has joined us this autumn to sing the role of Charles – and the way the production is really starting to focus. There are a number of stories in the libretto which need following and developing: the individual journeys of Charles and Maria and the awful way they coincide are of critical importance, but so, too, is the tragedy that surrounds Antonia and the way that all the other characters' lives are also affected by Charles and finally how they unite as a mob to execute revenge in the search for some kind of societal healing – even if they are wrong!

The new design is certainly helping all this. We have devised a self-contained world that flows with the drama and the music, and which provides me with different shapes and locations to help focus each scene. What has been unexpected is the way in which it also helps me clarify aspects within each scene, including the extensive use of "asides" and the extended "soliloquies." I use these theatrical terms in preference to operatic language because this is exactly how they are written and how they function: playing to the strengths and potential of opera without simply resorting to aria and recitative. (This is nevertheless a REAL opera! Mozart's influence is clearly present in the structure of the piece and so is Verdi, not least in the Otello-like jealousy-building scene between Maria and Charles, as well as in the lyrical vocal writing.) It is also fascinating to see how much of the original blocking still works and how it has provided the foundations for further development, even with the new set. It is, however, especially thrilling to discover new solutions to certain scenes and to see them start to take flight.

The level of "abstraction" has been a debate throughout the whole process of designing this show and I think we have all learned many lessons along the way. What remains true is the need to focus on the emotional behaviour of the characters and not their "activity." To my mind, the more sharply focussed minimalism of the new design allows a far greater degree of realistic character exploration than any "pretend" realism could. We are partly in the business of engaging with the imagination of the audience and indulging in the suspension of disbelief, but I think we are also finding a visual language which will facilitate belief without any need to suspend disbelief BECAUSE the people are instantly real without having to do too much pretending! Opera at its best can be simultaneously the most surreal (people singing to each other!) and the most real of the performing arts because it deals with the inner worlds of the characters so well, largely through the music, and I am trying to bring this to bear as we mine our way ever deeper into the rich seams of this new world.

And we're off!

13 October 2008, 8:45 pm

At the end of Day 1 of the second period of rehearsal for For You I am delighted to report that we are back on track. As is the case with all new operas, coming back to it a few months after the first rehearsal period (and usually therefore the first run of performances) we have all returned to it with a much deeper knowledge of and familiarity with the work which enables us to develop the drama that much further. All of the hard work we did before is now bearing fruit, the ground-work was evidently excellent and all the original singers who were involved before have now got the opera "in their bones" and can start to use the music and text in a new way. It is not as simple as knowing it better, although that does help, it is more a matter of being able to "feel" it better. The opera focuses on how the characters are feeling and thinking, consciously and instinctively, much more on what they are doing. You have to be quite brave to dig into this psychological exploration and not dress up the plot with extraneous activities or window-dressing by creating extravagant sets and so on, but I believe there is no choice in this kind of opera, especially in intimate spaces such as those in which we perform. As I said back in May, I very much want to focus on the people caught up in this opera and believe that it will reward this level of inspection.

The other huge injection of positivity is the participation of Alan Opie, who has come into the rehearsal incredibly well-prepared, musically and dramatically. He has thought about this role carefully and thoroughly, and he is largely "off the book" – which is no mean feat on day 1 in a new opera. With a clear mind, a fantastic and healthy voice, and a capacity to take direction and respond to the other performers, Alan is already making a significant contribution to the development of the production.

I will write later about the impact of the re-design and how it is helping the opera to "speak", but I am sure that the process of exploration of the first rehearsal period, the following period of digestion and reflection, and the decision to take a new approach will bring huge benefits.

Onwards and Upwards

25 September 2008, 6:58 pm

It is very nearly time to start rehearsals again. I can't wait to get going. After the trauma of the cancellation of the premiere and tour in May – the first performance ever cancelled by MTW in 20 years – it will be good to concentrate on the piece again without the struggle to pull something out of the bag against the odds. Our sympathy goes out to Eric Roberts who suffered at the centre of the whole episode – as I said to him just before I made an announcement to the whole company about the cancellation, it wasn't because of him we had to cancel, it was because of what had happened to him! The good news is that he is fit and well again and about to sing Bartolo for WNO's famous Barber of Seville. Good Luck Eric!

And so to For You. Having got over the emotional shock and worked through the not insignificant financial implications, I decided that I should also make the most of the opportunity the cancellation offered and re-consider the production. Fortunately, the designer Simon Banham also wanted to have a second look and we decided that we could improve on what was there before and use the previous rehearsal period as a kind of production workshop. The result is that we have a totally new set design incorporating the same costumes (with one or two developments), furniture and props.

I think the new design will function much better with the music and the dramatic flow. It will create shifts of location with ease and yet contain the whole drama. It will throw the characters forward just as we had originally set out to do and will also enable me to develop a much stronger finale to the opera. I want to reveal the increasing isolation of Charles in his own egotistical world, the rather menacing and distasteful emergence of the cruelty and self-righteousness of the mob as they find their own scapegoat, and the fact that Charles' world simply evaporates around him. I couldn't find these qualities before and talked to Ian McEwan about this as we both watched the original production, still trying to find out how to make it work. Now I think (or at least hope) I've got it!

The other wonderful development is the casting of Alan Opie. He will be a magnificent Charles, vocally and dramatically.

Onwards and upwards!

Climbing Everest

16 May 2008, 12:00 am

Having completed our second three session day (10.30am – 9.30pm, although I have been careful not to call any singers for 3 sessions in any one day) I am starting to feel a bit tired, along with Michael Rafferty, the repetiteur and the DSM. We are really making progress on the piece but it still feels like climbing Everest – slow pace occasionally held up by unforeseen problems which need careful working round before we can go forward.

Sometimes it feels like we are simply standing still or even going backwards, a standard feeling mid way through rehearsals but no less frustrating… We are of course still visiting many things for the first time and even when we do get the chance to go over some previously worked out territory it can feel like everything has been forgotten and we have to start again. Everyone must remember that this is a brand new opera and is bound to be like this!

This evening however we did go back into Act I to the first crucial misunderstanding between Maria and Charles. This felt much more solid than before and it was great to see the singers really begin to inhabit the roles and develop the performances within the basic direction. Now I'm getting something to work with as opposed to simply setting the basic geography, I can start directing properly! This also applied to work we did earlier in the day in Act II in the second hospital scene. I am discovering that not only is this libretto finely crafted as a drama, but it is also an incredible distillation of many of the central issues and characteristics in Ian's books, especially the varied layers of deception and delusion. Even the big 'love duet' between Antonia (wife of Charles Frieth the composer) and Simon her Doctor is full of potential delusion and much more interesting and deeper than simply a declaration of love.

I don't believe Ian does romanticism and so I approached the scene wanting to explore the level of delusion in Antonia, questioning whether she was still really under the influence of the anaesthetic, but what came out was even more exciting – the possibility that Simon also wilfully deceives himself by believing that she is really talking to him directly, despite his real concern that she is still half asleep. What reinforces her delusion is the fact that that she begins and ends this scene by recalling her earlier love for Charles (as she does in the first scene of Act II when Charles is listening to her). My conclusion to the scene is that really all Antonia wants is love (reminding me of last year's MTW opera – Julie – where I clearly had a girl who just wanted to be loved and didn't know how to love) and that the greatest moment of love in her life was with Charles, before he started his philandering. In her current state between dreaming and waking this is what her subconscious is bringing into the foreground. This is even more subtle than I had dared to think – and therefore all the more McEwan!

We also managed to put a theatrical shape on the final, long 'anti-aria' that is Charles's Demonic Aubade – his newest composition which he is about to rehearse at the end of the opera which is the summation of all his work and which typically reveals his true hubris and arrogance, all be it masked by his artistic talent. This was the trickiest passage yet, essentially because it has no action at all and yet required a visual frame work to help explain the thought process. I think we found it, but let's see what happens next time we look at it…

Another three session day awaits tomorrow but I'm sure it will be worth it so long as fatigue doesn't colour our work!

Sticking to the Schedule

09 May 2008, 8:53 pm

Today was the second visit of the writer and composer to rehearsal. I had optimistically hoped that we might be able to run through the first act in the afternoon but by the end of last week I knew that this was rather over ambitious! That said what we did achieve was pretty good given we have only rehearsed for 7 days or so. There are some significant gaps in the work we have done on Act I and plenty of bits that should be given more careful rehearsal time, but we did work through most of the act and I was delighted with Michael and Ian's responses. They liked the mixture of dramatic intensity, pathos and humour and were generous in their praise of the cast.

Michael Rafferty and I (along with the cast) know how much more we need to do to really bring it up to standard but we are also glad to have got to a point where we can at least indicate the direction in which we intend to travel and that this is already communicating to others.

Despite the obvious concern of the cast that we should put the brakes on and complete and revise/strengthen the work we have done on Act I, I told them that we must stick to the schedule and get into Act II. I know that this is a little premature but if we don't move forward there is a danger that we could run out of time to rehearse the second act – and that would be even worse! I promised them that I would try to find extra time to cover the gaps, and that means exploring the options for additional evening and weekend sessions. I could kick myself for not insisting that we start 3 or so days earlier as I had originally proposed a few months ago. Such is life!

After the rehearsal (and some time in the office) I wrote up some notes for myself on the work and then set about creating the schedule for the coming week. This can be a complex task, always seeking to provide enough time for each page of the work and time again to develop that work whilst needing to achieve the task within the real time available. I regard scheduling as an essential technique of directing but it also always feels a bit like a game of compromise and coercion. I think I've come up with a plan but will need to check it over in the morning before it is issued to the cast and is fixed in stone!

I also had the designer and lighting designer in for the afternoon. Neither of them had heard a note of the piece or seen any rehearsal so it was also very important for me to reveal what I've been up to with the production so that we could then start to have a proper conversation about the lighting approach and indeed about the design of furniture and props. We had a useful conversation after the rehearsal and I think there are some very strong ideas emerging.

As for the piece itself, it really is starting to reveal how well it works, once everything is in focus. The strength is in the thought and intentions of the characters and we are beginning to find this. The vocal lines are truly motivated by the characters and Michael has clearly got inside each one of them as he delved into their inner worlds. There are so many details we want to observe, but it's a lot to remember. There isn't a single moment when any of the performers can let the music carry them. Finally, it was fascinating to see how Ian was suprised by the way some moments were revealed through the music and the direction and to discuss this with him and both Michael Berkeley and Michael Rafferty. We also had a couple of word changes to embrace – all to good effect but an extra thing to learn and remember for the singers!

End of Week One

02 May 2008, 9:56 am

We are now approaching the end of the first week of rehearsals and so far so good. The vocal lines are really starting to come to life but it takes a lot of work, teasing out and discussing every nuance, reaching an understanding of the character and delivery of each line from the music outwards.

As with all opera we need to understand the musical interpretation of the text and not the words alone. I often say to people that when writing opera composers undertake a great deal of what the director and actors do together when rehearsing a play. They have to work out the pacing and delivery of every line, the atmosphere that surrounds each scene etc. We are given a lot of this by the composition (both Ian and Michael were very clear about this on the Today programme yesterday when they agreed that in the end opera is a composer's form – which is not to ignore the fact that it is drama!) and then we have to bring it to life on stage as we feel it. There is still plenty or room for interpretation.

In fact this is one of the great joys of having been involved in the delivery of two production of Birtwistle's seminal opera PUNCH AND JUDY in London last month. I was delighted to see ENO's production just a couple of weeks after my own with Music Theatre Wales and to see how different and valid each staging was and how strong and flexible the work itself is.

Anyway, back to FOR YOU. I have started working on the physical production now. I keep talking to the cast about how this opera will only work if we concentrate on the thoughts and motivations of the characters. I am certain that this is what Michael and Ian have written and they have talked a great deal about this piece as 'music theatre', by which they mean that it is theatrically conceived, with real people, real issues and with a level of psychological depth. This is what McEwan's stance about fairy-tales is all about (why he says he finds the form of opera difficult, because it doesn't deal with real people) and of course what his novels are about – getting us inside the minds of poeple who are under some kind of personal duress, frequently sexually driven or expressed. This is a 'thought opera' and not an 'action opera'. I want to find a way to allow the audience to see into each character, to apply the surgeon's knife to dissect and reveal their inner worlds, but I also have to keep the outer drama alive and deliver the framework of the narrative to ensure that the characters are worthy of this insight.

There are real ensembles in this opera – a strangely old-fashioned approach some might think – but Michael and Ian have deliberately chosen to use this operatic technique to bring Ian's novellistic side to theatrical life. They want to have the chance to see each character articulate their thoughts in a shared moment of time. Ian says you can only do this in opera but I think the novel does it all the time. McEwan can certainly hold a fraction of a moment over several pages as he explores the thought process and emotional condition of a character and here we are trying to do the same in opera. Perhaps Ian is a natural for opera after all but we're only starting to discover it now!

Today we start on the finale of Act I – where farcical action and a captured, multi-layered moment in time ensemble collide. Should be interesting!

First Rehearsal

30 April 2008, 2:28 pm

In all honesty, the first day of rehearsals is always a nerve-wracking experience (I vividly remember Graham Vick talking about his physical symptoms on first days of rehearsal for productions of the standard repertoire more than 20 years ago!) but I felt this more intensely on Monday morning than I have done for a very long time! This is not just a first ever production of a brand new opera, which itself carries a significant level of responsibility, but it is also a new work by two of the UK's finest artists, with whom we have built up a strong working relationship and friendship, and it will be of huge significance to Muic Theatre Wales due to the level of interest we anticipate – amongst audiences and the media. It could have a major impact on our future, but most of all I really want to make this opera a success for Michael Berkeley and Ian McEwan but I am worried about being able to achieve this and I have some concerns about how the piece will function. After all, no-one has actually heard it yet!

To add to the significance of the day we also had The Today Programme from Radio 4 recording my opening presentation to the company as well as Ian and Michael's introduction to the piece (a rare treat for the singers – to hear about an opera from the creators themselves!) and then recording some of the rehearsals, along with a reporter from The Times watching and listening as we started to find our way into the piece. As it turned out our visitors seemed enthralled by what they were witnessing and were truly grateful and honoured to be able to witness the very beginning of the birth of a new opera – which is still for us a very special moment.

Early rehearsals with Music Theatre Wales are always spent working 'round the piano'. This isn't simply about trying to learn the music, but essentially about discovering how the music and text function together, how the individual performers respond to this 'text' and what secrets the composition might contain about character, delivery, dramatic pacing, atmosphere etc etc. We have discovered over the years that it is simply pointless to try to start staging a new opera before this basic reading and exploration has happened.

We want the performers to inhabit their roles – musically and dramatically, and since all the work we perform is hugely demanding and needs careful and precise observation we must give it and the performers every chance to do every bit of it justice. Every word has been carefully crafted by the librettist (a rather wonderful one in this case!) and every rhythm and change of pitch has been slaved over by the composer – for around two years solid work. We want to respect this and reveal to you the audience what they have written – to be the true midwives of this new opera and do our best to do the work credit. We do not wish to impose our will on any new opera and this is part of the sense of release I feel when dealing with new work. There is no history to how it is done or was done last time, but to balance this is the responsibility of handling this precious new material and getting it to you without getting in the way. This is all part and parcel of the joy of making new work and I hope to share with you the ups and downs of the process as rehearsals proceed.

The final statement is this: We have a wonderful cast, the power of Ian and Michael's writing is becomming evident minute by minute and whilst it is extremly demanding writing, even before we start to move it 'on the floor' we know we have something special and deeply interesting to discover and share with you.

Wish us luck.

Michael McCarthy