How to sing while crying?

You don't. You can't. When you get that catch in your throat, it's hard enough to speak - but as we have all experienced, once the waterworks are set in motion, so the rest of the body surrenders itself to the emotion and renders any ordinary muscular movement impossible. Singing being a highly physical activity, it is one of the first things to go not only when the tears are in full flow, but well before.

A seminal event in my introduction to opera was being taken to a production of La Bohème. It was not the first opera I had seen. But I was taken regularly by a family friend to the London Coliseum, the home of English National Opera, and which has the largest auditorium of all the theatres in London. The friend's budget only stretched to the balcony seats, high up above the glitter of the stalls. The seats were far too narrow and most of the evening was spent moving one's legs from one angle to another in an attempt to keep the blood flow going and violent cramps at bay. It was also the melting pot for all the smells and heat that spiralled up from the 1500 bodies seated below us, so it was invariably stifling hot. Any attempt to follow the disembodied sounds emanating from the stage first had to be filtered from the horrendously noisy exhalation of air emitted from the flabby nostrils of all the overweight men who appeared to be tactically positioned around the balcony. At my first encounter with La Bohème however all these distractions paled into insignificance and as the curtain came down on the last act I had the very urgent desire to sob my heart out. To exit from the balcony of the Coliseum entails descending a very long staircase amid a throng of people and I and the friend tended to save any remarks about what we had just seen until this had been safely negotiated and we were safe outside in the fresh air. Boy, was I relieved on that evening. Nobody else seemed to be sniffing nor staring doggedley into middle distance to forestall the dropping of any tell-tale tears. What WAS up with me? I mean people are dying all the time in opera, aren't they? I was a boy, 14 years old, and totally smitten with the death of this soprano on stage and her abandoned boyfriend. Gee, how embarrassing!

And yet some years later I remember playing for the rehearsal of the exact same scene at Music College. The dying soprano started blubbing uncontrollably and immediately affected everybody else around her. Rehearsal abandoned due to emotional attack!

Today we had a first runthrough from beginning to end of Brødrene Løvehjerte and much the same thing happened. There is little worse than the contemplation of the death of other children, let alone one's own. In my case, the death of children used to affect me little more than lots of other traumatic, highly charged events might have done. Now having two of my own, whether it is watching a film, a news item or reading a book, I involuntarily make the association between the dilemma of the unknown children I am learning about and my own. The opening scene of Løvehjerte, which we heard and saw for the first time today, draws the audience in to the bedroom of two young brothers trying to come to terms with the fact that the younger is mortally ill and will probably die before his 10th birthday. It is not for the faint hearted. By the time you have lived with them through their adventures in Rosendal, having to let go of them is all the more hard. So when we got to the end of the piece, I have never seen so many people visibly moved in a rehearsal situation in my life.

And before any cynics out there are writing this off as the result of a bunch of "luvvies" having a communal "sob in", go buy a ticket and try it yourself. Referring back to the last blog, you try the Test of Chapter One. Opera Chief Kasper Holten has often referred to the opera house's role in society as a fitness centre for emotional wellbeing. Today's rehearsal certainly lived up to that ideal.

Philip White