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/
0 Comments
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 Photos: Annemie Augustijns 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 Photos: Annemie Augustijns Nurse Jenny was in the Belgian Newspaper “De Morgen” on Thursday as part of their article on our production of Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs des Perles! I love this photo - I think it shows off my depressed acting very well. Just look at the expressions on all of our faces. Anyone would think that this nurse really does hate her job!
My favourite performance with Opera Vlaanderen so far has to be this unique production of Bizet's Les Pêcheurs de Perles. Set in an old people's care home, this production looks back on the lives and loves of the past. Instead of physically and literally diving for pearls, the characters in our production are diving for pearls of memories within their own lives' journeys. I play a nurse who works in the morgue. So now all of my colleagues have nicknamed me "Nurse Jenny". And one of my friends who came to watch said that I was like "an Angel of Death". https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/les-pecheurs-de-perles Photos: Annemie Augustijns My second production with Opera Vlaanderen was the mind boggling, tongue twister of an opera: Satyagraha. It was a fun challenge to learn this opera (in Sanskrit) in a shorter time than the rest of my colleagues. When I first got the score, I remember thinking that this opera would be impossible to memorise. All the companies that I know have performed this in the past, have had a prompt screen or a person mouthing the words at them. But we performed the whole thing from memory without it. I was extremely proud of the work that we put into this performance. It was extremely difficult, but that is what made it so rewarding. https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/satyagraha Photo: Rahi Rezvani My first opera production with Opera Vlaanderen was Wagner's Epic Masterpiece Lohengrin. This opera lasted nearly 5 hours and was full of glorious music. With a chorus of 80 people, it was extremely loud to rehearse and be on the stage in the middle of it all. After this performance, I realised how loud opera can really be. I've had tints ringing in my ears ever since. This taught me an important lifelong lesson- wear earplugs to work; especially when your work is performing Wagner. I have put a couple of links to videos from our rehearsal process and my favourite photos from the production. With such a big cast, it's hard to spot me. It's like playing Where's Wally - but instead looking for me! https://operaballet.be/en/programme/2018-2019/lohengrin |
AuthorJennifer Coleman - is a classical / opera singer, and vocal coach, performing across the UK and internationally. Archives
January 2024
|