After a lovely long summer vacation, I will soon be heading back to my beloved Belgium for the next season of singing high notes in the Chorus for Opera Vlaanderen. We have a great season planned and will be revising Macbeth in Gent and Luxembourg. We have a new intendant at the head of the company, and he has programmed some more pieces that fuse together the ballet and opera companies. I am excited to be a part of each of these productions. 

Verdi: Don Carlos
Verdi: Requiem
Verdi: Macbeth
Dvorak: Rusalka
Schreker: Der Schmied von Gent
Wagner/Verdi: C(h)oeurs 2020
Mozart: Cosi fan Tutte
​Schumann: Faust

Wish me luck! It's going to be another busy year.

Jennifer x


{note: We were almost ready to open our production of C(h)ours 2020 when covid hit and the rest of the season was cancelled}

I had such a fantastic day. What an honour it was to perform with the Yorkshire Festival Orchestra, under the direction of Ben Crick, for the York Proms.

York is the kind of city that leaves a lasting impression on all her visitors because of the wealth of history, architecture and culture that the locals are lucky enough to live right on top of.
York has a number of festivals each year, which incorporate music, arts, food, comedy and more. However, York didn't have its very own summer proms event, which is a central feature of the entertainment calendar for many other towns and cities. In 2017, a passionate local team launched the first York Proms to a sell out crowd in the York Museum Gardens, overlooked by the one thousand year old ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. Bathed in glorious summer sunshine, 2000 music lovers enjoyed their picnics, waved their flags and sang along to a selection of proms favourites and music from across the classical and musical theatre repertoire.

The songs I performed were:

Quando M'en Vo from 'La Boheme' by Puccini
O mio babbino caro from 'Gianni Schicchi' by Puccini
Medley from 'The Sound of Music' by Rogers and Hammerstein
Poor Wandring One from 'Pirates of Penzance' by Gilbert and Sullivan
Nella Fantasia by Morricone/Ferrau
Tonight from 'West Side Story' by Bernstein
Jerusalem by Blake/Parry
Rule Britannia by Thomson/Arne
Pomp and Circumstance (Land of Hope and Glory) by Elgar/Benson

For more information about the event, please visit the website:
https://www.yorkproms.com​

​https://www.yorkpress.co.uk/news/17758144.jennifer-patriotic-mood-york-proms/

Wow! - I can't believe it is the final opera this season - opera number 7 with Opera Vlaanderen. It has been a very intense year with some very challenging pieces of music, to learn and perform in very limited time. I am so glad that we are finishing the season with this opera. Verdi's Macbeth is a true masterpiece; and also super fun to perform in. This is a high energy production with lots of movements and physicality. I really feel like I am getting a work out during the witches scenes. During rehearsals, my Fitbit detected that I was doing some kind of "sporting activity". I found that quite amusing because I was just doing my job. In the photo above, I am the witch on the far left, with what looks like a rainbow over my head, the slow exposure really captures the movement of waving these paper streamers (or the Flemish word: Slingers) in the air. I think this shot really shows well the energy that we put into this scene in the 3rd act.

We are only performing Macbeth in Antwerp this time. It will return again later in the year, during next season, for performances in Gent and Luxembourg. Let's hope they don't run out of the fake blood before then! We use so much of it in this production.

https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/macbeth​

I am super proud of my company. Well done to everyone!

Opera Vlaanderen has received the International Opera Award for Best Opera Company.
Opera Vlaanderen was up against some tough competition; Opéra national de Paris, Theater an der Wien, Houston Grand Opera, Deutsche Oper am Rhein and GöteborgOperans were also nominated, but in the end it was Opera Vlaanderen who received the honors. 
Artistic director Aviel Cahn when accepting the award:
"An enormous honor and a recognition of ten years of hard work by everyone at our opera house. On stage, behind the scenes, in the offices and the ateliers. More than anything, this is an award for them. This emphasises yet again that Opera Vlaanderen is part of the international top because we bring opera in exciting and societally relevant ways. I hope this award inspires everyone who - just like us - believes in the future of opera as a genre."

https://operaballet.be/en/the-house/blog/opera-vlaanderen-wins-award-for-best-opera-company

​http://www.operaawards.org/archive/2019/

My first time in Luxembourg. What a very special country! I've been wanting to come and visit some friends here for a while. I'm so thrilled that I got to see them finally.
I loved revising this opera again (4 months after we last performed it). It felt like seeing and old friend. Exactly the same. Like nothing had changed. At first I was a little nervous that I might have forgotten all the words. But as soon as the piano started playing the overture in our first rehearsal it all came back into my mind. Isn't it amazing how the human memory works.

I'm sad to say goodbye to Nurse Jenny. I think this has been my favourite opera that I have had the privilege to be a part of this year.

This was a very unique experience to be a part of. Unlike any opera I have ever performed in before, Les Bienveillantes shines a torch on humanity at it's utter worst. The story is centred around a highly disturbing Nazi Officer during the second world war. The music was based mostly on Bach chorals, but Hector spent time in Auschwitz while composing the piece and I feel that his music was strongly influenced by the time he spent there.
This production brought many challenges to us as performers. One of the main obstacles was the mud that was used to literally flood the stage. It made the floor quite slippery and so you had to be conscious of every move. It also meant that the technical team and costume department would spend hours after every performance cleaning it up again!

They also managed to have a flying grand piano in this production. At first I was terrified to walk underneath the piano - incase it fell. But we soon learned that it was very safely floating above our heads the whole time. It's amazing what our talented technical team can achieve.

https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/les-bienveillantes

There is still time to watch our production of La Juive on OperaVision- Or just watch the first half an hour (Act 1) to get a jist of it and to hear our wonderful chorus:

https://operavision.eu/en/library/performances/operas/la-juive?fbclid=IwAR02EO27KbT4iFZ-xsjZUqZni1jLxdfTMjxsl54kYG3TXAcszIaUX-PFnfw​

I thoroughly enjoyed singing in this production. It won several awards a few years ago when Opera Vlaanderen first performed it. I am not surprised that they decided to bring it back, everyone that I worked with was very fond of this show. The story is compelling, the music is delightful and the staging was quite fun too. The cast were given different colour hands depending on whether they were portraying Christian (blue) or Jews (yellow). This was the only part of the production that I found frustrating - no they weren't gloves, but makeup painted onto our hands. The hand makeup was very inconvenient if you needed to go to the toilet during the interval for example. It also meant that everything I touched was always left with a blue fingerprint on it. The things we do for our profession...

https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/la-juive

Today is our final performance of Cardillac. This is quite a spooky murder story with music that is both highly romantic and lyrical, and at the same time dramatic and angular. The production has been set in the 1920s. The set and many of the costumes are all in Black and White. The designers have clearly been inspired by film noir. I love the coat that I get to wear, with it's fur collar and cuffs: it makes me feel like a diva! However, the makeup is a little on the scary side for my taste, but it works very well on stage in the context of the opera. It makes the chorus look unidentifiable as individuals, and more like duplicates of the same person. I find it very funny when I am in the wings of the theatre in the dark, and I can never quite tell which of my colleagues I am standing next to!

https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/cardillac