"Getting out much these days?"
It is always good to get out. My father underwent a quadruple heart bypass operation before mid-December, and, having manfully got Christmas out of the way as if nothing had happened, was required to take things very easy in terms of what he could do in the house - to ensure his chest stayed closed and Harry the Heart did not pop out on to the floor - , but, more significantly, how far he could go away from the house - starting with roundabout jaunts of 200 metres. Instantly, his world became very small: all he was interested in was dweling on his own state of affairs - how he felt at any moment in time, how many years he had left and how nobody understood his position or really cared that much even if they did. He couldn't even get out in the garden and move pots around - this from a septugenarian who, five weeks previously, had had been cut up the middle, pulled about (probably quite violently), had had his heart stopped and restarted and who, obviously, had been under general anaesthetic for the best part of three hours. He slipped into a sort of mild depression.
A few weeks past and both my parents came to visit me and my family for a few days which we spent visiting Manchester, getting out in to the Lancashire countryside, messing around with my children - in short, living a normal life. At the end of the visit he was transformed. Although by then the doctors had finally got his medication sorted, I like to think part of his revival was due to getting out of his own home environment and beginning to interact with and acknowledge the world outside the confines of his own four walls. To be able to see he fitted into a larger world picture, to see how he fitted and to become somewhat more objective about his position in it.
One of the disadvantages of working full-time in a house, like in Denmark, is that there are few opportunities to compare one's own position to somebody else doing essentially the same job in a different environment. One of the advantages of my position is that I am only in Copenhagen for half the season and get to work not only in different houses but in different countries. And I often wish that it were possible to get some of the choristers in Copenhagen out to see what working life is elsewhere - both the ups and the downs.
In the theatre in Paris where I have been working for the last five weeks the rehearsal facilities are minimal. And it is not the only theatre like it. Staging rehearsals require us to journey without the confines of the Parisian boundary to whatever "space" is available: the last time it was an old railway mens' hut to the east of Paris, a time before it was a disused factory in one of the less attractive suburbs. When I was elsewhere the chorus', socalled rehearsal room was an elongated disused Dressing Room with a low ceiling, bad lighting and utterly unsuited to setting up a chorus as though it looked like a chorus. Here we are in a room known nominally as the Foyer de Danse and whilst one can dream of the Ballets Russes warming up there may be in the 1920s - it also has the public toilet in it. We rehearse on Sundays and we rehearse late in the evenings: when we have a day off, we have one day off - never two. On the other hand breaks between sessions are two hours - whilst it wasa often heard of the English that at 4 o'clock everything stops for tea (a concept that now belongs to the rose-coloured spectacle version of England) in France everything DOES stop for lunch.
Whilst I always feel spoiled and flattered to be invited to work outside the Danish Opera I always look forward to returning : whilst life when I am there is not without its ups and downs - and I am certainly not backward about complaining about things when I feel the need - getting away and getting out enables me to have a much more objective view of our work in Copenhagen. It puts a lot of what we do in to perspective. It makes it easier to see what we are doing right, where we can improve on things, what we can may be do differently. And so when I come back in a week's time and at some point may be come out of a rehearsal I feel has been particularly unproductive or out of a meeting I feel has been a waste of time I shall attempt to remember that on our island of Sjaelland we are not alone and although it often does not feel like it, there are many other houses (and chorus masters) battling with the same problems - and often worse ones!
Philip White
A few weeks past and both my parents came to visit me and my family for a few days which we spent visiting Manchester, getting out in to the Lancashire countryside, messing around with my children - in short, living a normal life. At the end of the visit he was transformed. Although by then the doctors had finally got his medication sorted, I like to think part of his revival was due to getting out of his own home environment and beginning to interact with and acknowledge the world outside the confines of his own four walls. To be able to see he fitted into a larger world picture, to see how he fitted and to become somewhat more objective about his position in it.
One of the disadvantages of working full-time in a house, like in Denmark, is that there are few opportunities to compare one's own position to somebody else doing essentially the same job in a different environment. One of the advantages of my position is that I am only in Copenhagen for half the season and get to work not only in different houses but in different countries. And I often wish that it were possible to get some of the choristers in Copenhagen out to see what working life is elsewhere - both the ups and the downs.
In the theatre in Paris where I have been working for the last five weeks the rehearsal facilities are minimal. And it is not the only theatre like it. Staging rehearsals require us to journey without the confines of the Parisian boundary to whatever "space" is available: the last time it was an old railway mens' hut to the east of Paris, a time before it was a disused factory in one of the less attractive suburbs. When I was elsewhere the chorus', socalled rehearsal room was an elongated disused Dressing Room with a low ceiling, bad lighting and utterly unsuited to setting up a chorus as though it looked like a chorus. Here we are in a room known nominally as the Foyer de Danse and whilst one can dream of the Ballets Russes warming up there may be in the 1920s - it also has the public toilet in it. We rehearse on Sundays and we rehearse late in the evenings: when we have a day off, we have one day off - never two. On the other hand breaks between sessions are two hours - whilst it wasa often heard of the English that at 4 o'clock everything stops for tea (a concept that now belongs to the rose-coloured spectacle version of England) in France everything DOES stop for lunch.
Whilst I always feel spoiled and flattered to be invited to work outside the Danish Opera I always look forward to returning : whilst life when I am there is not without its ups and downs - and I am certainly not backward about complaining about things when I feel the need - getting away and getting out enables me to have a much more objective view of our work in Copenhagen. It puts a lot of what we do in to perspective. It makes it easier to see what we are doing right, where we can improve on things, what we can may be do differently. And so when I come back in a week's time and at some point may be come out of a rehearsal I feel has been particularly unproductive or out of a meeting I feel has been a waste of time I shall attempt to remember that on our island of Sjaelland we are not alone and although it often does not feel like it, there are many other houses (and chorus masters) battling with the same problems - and often worse ones!
Philip White
posted by Det Kongelige Operakor at 12:42
1 Comments:
And we love the World Class Opera Choir in Copenhagen.
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