All in a day's work

Days like this - I'm glad I can spend them with all of you!

I've been having intermittent insomnia so the day start inauspiciously enough. After about a good five hours or so I woke up before the alarm, and decided there was no use staying put, so I went to work.

Today I met the Banquo in our Macbeth, Paul Whelan, who happens to be a kiwi. His advice was indispensable. We had a fantastic discussion about the opportunities in the UK as opposed to the US - I am learning so much from talking to people and watching them here. Paul won the Cardiff Singer of the World Song Prize back in the day, and has had too many voice type changes to keep up with. He only found the right teacher for him in recent times and says he only really learned to sing when he went to America. Paul studies with Bill Schuman, a renowned vocal coach based at the AVA in Philadelphia or occasionally in New York. The AVA offers full scholarships to each singer (hand picked from around the world.) As mentioned in an earlier post, a friend of mine from National Opera School in Australia was accepted this year. It's a huge deal to get in - most of the singers currently on the roster at the Met trained under Schuman - and the only way to get a lesson with him is by way of introduction. From the introduction and private lessons comes the possibility of training at the AVA and of course world stardom on an American Idol scale if American Idol was about opera. Guess who found an in? That's right, Paul was kind enough to say he would facilitate an introduction.

I've had so many opinions this week about who to train with - and US singing teachers are some of the most polarising out there. People talk about them in hushed, reverent tones, but they are also vilified. However, it was always my ambition to train in the States and I know in my heart that the best training is coming out of there right now. I have it on certain authority that Dennis O'Neill is the only person who knows how to train voices here in the UK. Private tuition is risky and costly, but so is doing an MA. There are people pushing me to take up the RNCM place, and it appeals as the safer option. Yet others are telling me they had a disastrous time there (admittedly many years ago.) Some people are saying Trish McCaffrey and some Bill Schuman. Some are saying to audition for the New York schools while others say it is a waste of my time if I'm not ready to go straight into mainstage roles at the colleges. A consensus would be so great right about now, but that's too much to ask.

Paul is 6' 7'' with a big bass voice but he tells me he is only a lyric. Paul really appears as a bass without question to my ears but for many, many years (15, he says) he was cast into the wilderness as a baritone. I know all too well that's a lot of time to be lost out there, and Paul certainly has some regrets, stating that his career could have been even bigger if he'd had the right input earlier on.

It was amazing watch this huge man fill every inch of his 6' 7'' frame with air while he was singing! Great to see several scenes unfolding in Macbeth today which I haven't seen before - I got to watch three balaclava-ed men circle Paul and then stab him - brilliant. It's a bit weird meeting all these people personally for the first time, it's strange because it's like meeting my heroes, only you discover they are really more friendly and open - and human - than you ever thought! I've made amazing connections with opera singers here: One of our lead tenors has already offered to give me singing lessons, and Paul to help me out in the US. There are certain routes in in this market which everyone has to take to succeed, and maybe I can find an entry point.

Going to train privately in the US would require a huge investment of money on my part. I have some very serious decisions to make - and whatever I decide, I need to stick at it and start saving up towards it. The consideration is where I can live and work afterwards. I will accept the place at Royal Northern and apply for funding in the meantime, while I decide, and try and get a singing lesson with my prospective teacher there to see how we gel. If I get the funding - well then, I'll know it's meant to be. If not, I'll have to keep saving like everyone else and look at the scene in America. Then there's the other matter of finding a teacher while I'm still in the UK!

All of these seem like huge, existential questions that cannot be answered, certainly not tonight. I'll try and tell you a bit more about my exciting day though.

I had a very interactive day today, with everyone from the chorus to the principals approaching me and wanting to spend time! I must have been looking especially approachable. I've been feeling a bit isolated lately, so this was such fun. I think everyone was also coming out of holiday mode still and back into work, but there was a great atmosphere in the rehearsal room. Even the director smiled!

It was good to see our lead, Bela, back again - he's a gentle soul. Paul and I had our good talk, it was great to catch another kiwi accent around. We discussed the singers that were making it now and what they had done. Paul has spent quite a bit of time in the States, has a greencard and married an American, so he's come across most of the singers personally that I've heard and read about all the time. Then I had marvelous conversations with several choristers who shared with me about their lives outside the rehearsal room - families and children, and Christmas and kids going back to school. I've been very privileged to meet several partners and babies of these choristers in recent times. The only problem is it reminds me I'd better hurry up and get on with that job of settling down (that age window between pipe dream and real life is rapidly closing.)

I talked to a chorister, a Christian lady, who said she'd put me in touch with the BBC about a singing gig (weekly worship) in a choir that broadcasts 3-4 times a week from just outside Manchester. She's been doing that gig for many years alongside her Opera North work. It's all sorts of unsolicited kindness that pours out of these Northerners, and I'm really enjoying that little aspect of this part of the world.

Great anecdotes abounded today - the sort I absolutely must capture in the blogosphere or risk them drifting untethered into the ether forever. I nattered on with a middle aged chaperone who was looking after the young cast of Macbeth. Four kids all turned up today, some were leads and some understudies for the small but essential children's roles in Macbeth. I couldn't get over how nicely mannered all these little men were.

One in particular caught my attention, a striking and happy young lad called Finty. I thought I'd seen his face before, and it turned out I was bang on - Finty had been a fixture in Coronation Street for at least two years of his life playing the adopted son of Lloyd, the taxi driver. I guessed and was so thrilled I got it right! I asked him how Lloyd was doing now and he informed me he'd "moved on." Which I was pleased about. This young man had quite a CV, he'd been involved in Opera North productions before and was a talented singer and dancer as well as actor. He seemed most unspoiled for a young child star I thought. I asked him if he'd auditioned for any West End shows - I think he would make a great Gavroche in Les Mis. He told me that his audition for the West End Les Mis had clashed with his audition for Coronation Street, and he had to choose - and so he did. Hopefully he'll get the chance again.

More great stories from the chaperone herself who had a long career in television transporting people everywhere. She told me all about the shows she'd been in, including Heartbeat and Emmerdale. Her whole family was in showbiz - her son-in-law was a stuntman in movies and TV and her daughter was the youngest costume designer ever accepted for a job at the BBC. She talked about how the business of making TV shows has changed over time - things that used to be relaxed and open are now closed off and formal. She told me a great little anecdote about the renowned impresario of our times, Cameron Mackintosh. I still love the man because I wrote to him once when I was all of age 12, young and impressionable and desperate to play Eponine, and he (or his secretary, probably) took the time to reply, and in my book that makes him OK. I still have that letter on my bedroom door at home. Anyway, the anecdote. Apparently, Mackintosh personally phoned one young man out of the blue and told him he'd come across an audition tape someone submitted on his behalf, and had personally chosen him to play The Artful Dodger in his new production of Oliver - what did he think of that? Of course, it meant he would have to move to London. Well,  the young man thought about this - he decided it was too far from home, so he politely told Mr Mackintosh, who never rings people personally, no thank you. His mother, the ultimate anti-stage mum, to this day has no idea her son came this close to being a West End star without even trying - and she still doesn't know who Cameron Mackintosh is.

There's so many different kinds of people around me all the time and I find the variety very stimulating. Any fear I may feel being so far from home is ultimately overwhelmed by this fact. And I like Leeds very much.

This is such an interesting, vibrant place to work. If I could bottle today up and sell it off I'd be a rich woman indeed.