Stage-Write

Paul Hopwood is a tenor in the Glyndebourne Chorus. He started his professional life as an English and drama teacher, then left a job at Eton College to spend a year on a postgraduate scholarship at the Guildhall. He joined Glyndebourne the following summer, and has been working here on and off for the last five years, combining it with his freelance work.

Read his insider's story about life on (and off) stage on Tour with Glyndebourne...  

November 29th - Plymouth

Plymouth. The last week of the tour. The venue that’s furthest away (from pretty much anywhere else). And the last time many of us will see each other for months; in some cases even longer.

And Plymouth lives up to expectations. Paul (Sheehan – chorus baritone and senior commuter) drives four of the London posse up from Clapham, and decides that a suitable prelude to our Devon experience is a lunchtime visit to a Little Chef-wannabe somewhere near Dartmoor. Paul and I appreciate our full greasy-spoon breakfasts under the strip lighting and tobacco-brown ceiling. I’m not sure that our more sophisticated colleagues enjoy it quite as much. However, it is luxury from here on. The flats that we have rented are stunning. Sea-views, large flat-screen televisions, Jacuzzi baths… It’s a tough business sometimes; touring. Apparently, we are followed into these flats by the pantomime stars. They’re behind us. Again.

It turns out to be quite a busy week. We start on Tuesday with the penultimate Carmen. Yonghoon Lee is back as Don Jose, giving it beans. Korea to Plymouth. The life of an international artist. And though Wednesday is Flute night, which usually means a fairly short day at the office, it is the day that some of us have our end of term debrief with Steven Naylor – the boss. A collection of us waits in the corridor for our turn, rather as if we are seeing the dentist. It’s astonishing how easy it is standing in front of hundreds of people to perform, yet how difficult it is stepping into an office with your employer to evaluate your efforts. But it’s the heart of the Glyndebourne chorus experience. The paradox is that working in the chorus can be enormous fun, but many of us are keen to try and make whatever next steps we can, even if it means the fear of never knowing where the next job is coming from; and those chats with Steven are all part of the process.

Perhaps it is with an established understanding of such artistic vicissitudes that Charles Kerry – senior colleague and chorus institution – has arranged a song concert for eight of us on a wet and chilly Thursday evening. Not enough that it is our one night off and most of our colleagues are enjoying the sort of evening entertainment that only a port town can lay on for its visitors; but the venue is a church in a village only discoverable using the Domesday Book as a tour-guide. It is beautiful, but very remote, and very, very cold. Imagine then, what a fantastic evening it turns out to be when the church fills, everybody sings their thermal socks off, Charles handles the electric piano like a Steinway, and about a thousand pounds is raised for the RNLI. It is also the only time I have ever been in a church with a working fireplace. Which we make the most of. There is rather less Devonshire woodland to navigate through on our way home than there was on the way there. The rest has gone up in smoke. I have become rather partial to an open fire in the last few weeks. It’s notable how a tour brings out those primal instincts.

The last two performances seem to go astonishingly quickly. Time flies when you’re having fun, and we certainly test that adage. In fact, the last Flute proves to be such an enjoyable experience that everybody wants to be involved, and so some of the priests’ costumes seemed to be rather oddly ill-fitting in the march at the top of Act two. Plymouth is also the theatre where the views from the wings are clearest, which means that while we are waiting to go on we are able, perhaps for the first time, to enjoy a decent view of some fantastic performances from the principals. It also means that those onstage can see some spectacular last-night performances that have extended to the wings. The true chorus professional will never stop thinking of his artistic impact, even when he's offstage.

The week closes, and Plymouth has been a fantastic place to end the tour. The green room has extended to the Fish and Chip shop and the Plymouth gin factory cocktail bar. Our accommodation has been palatial. We have sung our last Carmen. For a while. And the impending onslaught of Christmas carol concerts and Messiahs that await most of us have been held in check until the second week of December. It's all good news. But it’s three months until the Glyndebourne chorus meet again, and for that, the world will be a slightly duller place.

November 29th - Norwich

It’s the beginning of the last two weeks of the tour, and it’s the fortnight to which everybody has been looking forward.

‘Spixworth cottages’ provide half of us with accommodation outside Norwich, and, accommodatingly, Sean (Kerr – fellow chorus tenor) has picked up two barrels of Harvey’s Sussex bitter to help us feel at home. My memories of the only other time I toured to Norwich are hazy. It was a colleague’s thirtieth birthday, and I’m fairly sure that we all enjoyed ourselves. This week is Steph Bodsworth’s birthday, and it is entirely possible that there could be a repeat performance.

The theatre has undergone a recent multi million-pound make-over that has left the front of house immaculate, and the backstage areas largely untouched. The boys’ dressing room has a rather unappealing decor and the gaps between the corrugated roof and the wall mean that you can hear everything from the principals’ dressing room next-door. Everybody is going to have to be very careful about what they say. Space in the wings is very tight too. For weeks, stage-management have been heard quietly fretting about how things will work in Norwich. It is time to find out.

Certainly, the first Flute is a masterpiece of backstage logistics. The boy’s quick change in the wings is very tight, but we are all used to breathing in anyway. It’s astonishing how, even in the 90 seconds allotted to us for a full costume change, there has always been time for a collective of sucking in of tummies when we take our shirts off if front of the dressers and passing chorus girls. That’s the sort of professionals that we are. However, we do let ourselves down slightly on stage. The discreet variations we have been applying to the March of the Priests are finally spotted by Simon Kirkbride – the Sprecher. Perhaps the disco moves were a little lacking in subtlety. Even so, after the curtain call Douglas Boyd declares that it is our best show so far. Keeping it fresh is apparently a balancing act worth mastering.

In the interests of keeping it fresh, we are introduced to our fourth Don Jose of the year – the third of the tour. Paul Charles Clarke slots impressively into the production despite the fact that he is the only one on stage who hasn’t been doing it for nine months. Only a small moment in act three gives the game away as he manages to convincingly portray his inner turmoil whilst asking us under his breath which direction he needs to walk. It’s a fair question. The stage is entirely empty apart from chorus members, and he’s never seen us before. With only two weeks to go before the end of the Carmen marathon, our neat positioning is starting to make way for some gentle, but nonetheless freestyle improvisation. We are feeling comfortable with our roles.

Friday brings Steph’s thirtieth birthday party. Sadly, I am in Birmingham visiting my son at his new digs. But by the magic of Facebook, I am able to get a flavour of the sort of evening it was. Norwich has evidently come up trumps again. Plymouth next. The last week of the tour. Endless Fish and Chips. And the Plymouth gin factory.

November 22nd - Milton Keynes

Milton Keynes week, and the London crowd meet at Euston to see if we can collectively figure out the bizarrely complicated ticket arrangements for catching the train with the right operating company.

Gratifyingly, even the ticket inspector at the barrier asks me if I’m sure my ticket is valid, as he isn’t sure himself. Perhaps on realising that we were all going to Milton Keynes, he decides it isn’t worth trying to further spoil our day, and takes my word for it. And, if it was pity that motivated him, our arrival at Milton Keynes reminds us that he may have had a point. The concreted boulevard that stretches between the station and the theatre is the sort of thoroughfare that you expect to see tanks trundling along. Twice on the walk I am stopped by lost and confused looking types asking for directions – a little disappointing in a town laid out on a grid system. Clearly my own lost and confused expression isn’t reading strongly enough.

The theatre, though, is a joy. After the cramped conditions of Woking, and the thigh-firming ascent to the dressing room that is a feature of Stoke, Milton Keynes presents acres of open space, and a dressing room 10 yards away from the stage. The concrete chic is still there – it feels a little bit like working inside an enormous hollowed-out breezeblock – but backstage is never a place to stop and admire the architecture anyway. More exciting still, is the fact that we are sharing the theatre with the rehearsing cast of the panto that is inevitably following us onto stage. And Henry Winkler is in the cast. The Fonz. In Milton Keynes. Happy days.

Wednesday, and William decides that it’s time to move from his Chelsea pad – aka. The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital – and go to Birmingham (the Children’s Hospital). I am not entirely convinced that this is the fashionable thing to do, but as Birmingham is the only place that can perform the transplant operation he requires, I understand his motivation. We are halfway through our Carmen performance when I get the call that a donor organ is available. I have to leave for Birmingham straightaway, as he will be operated on as soon as the ambulance can race him up the M6, and this is not the sort of operation his father should miss. It is a slightly surreal evening as I rip off my smuggler’s costume and hurry through the concrete boulevards of Milton Keynes to get on the train. At times like this, the Glyndebourne family has a habit of being fantastically supportive, and I take phone messages at virtually every milepost between Coventry and Birmingham. William does well, though it’s the beginning of a long road to recovery. Fortunately, Mike Parle – chorus baritone and fellow armed man cover – is driving between Milton Keynes and Birmingham, so it is an easy commute between work and William’s bedside. However, when I arrive for the next performance of Flute, in 72 hours I have had a total of three hours sleep on a chair in the waiting room of intensive care. Everybody is keen to know that all is well, and it is s little overwhelming, so I find myself seeking a bit of piece by watching ‘Dies Bildnis’ from the wings. Watching Lothar (Odinius – Tamino) is a little bit like watching a singing lesson. Beautiful. Suffering from sleep deprivation, however, the Flute plot seems even more impenetrable than usual, and the full implausibility of doing a job where you are sharing a cramped dark space with oversized penguins, turtles and a six-foot seven Polish Bass on stilts can hit home.

Saturday brings the last performance of Carmen for tour Don Jose no. 2 – John Daszak. His farewell to the role is marked by the performance of an oddly over-zealous confetti machine that smothers the end of Act 4 in a driving blizzard of red ticker tape. Presumably it was John Daszak who was singing in this act. It was rather difficult to see anything at all. It is time to leave Milton Keynes in the capable hands of the Fonz.

November 23rd - Stoke. A fairly confusing place to visit, as there are lots of little Stokes, all with different names. 

The theatre is, in fact, in Hanley. The bit of Stoke with the coffee shops, the Marks and Spencers and the all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant. Everything required for the touring company.

The week starts again with Flute. There is more room this time, though the boys’ chorus dressing room, as in Woking, is still three flights of stairs away from the stage. This is very good for firming the thighs, but presents a few practical difficulties when we are dressed in three separate layers of floor-length ceremonial robes. All goes well, however, and the audience seem to enjoy it. More importantly, this is the night when we are entertained by the Manchester Friends of Glyndebourne. There is a huge spread laid on, neatly and politely picked at until the company arrive from backstage and descend on it as if our collective lives depend on it. A free lunch is a rare thing. A free supper and free wine is a very rare thing indeed. Speeches are made but barely heard over the guzzling. The Manchester Friends have once again lived up to their name. 

A large proportion of the chorus have decided that the best way to enjoy Stoke week is to be based out in the Pennines. So it is that several of us find ourselves living in beautiful cottages nestled in a small hamlet with nothing but a pub and a café within immediate reach. Again, everything required by a touring company. I have left my son William and his mother in William’s Chelsea pad – aka. The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital – and am feeling a little bit guilty about abandoning my paternal role. My excuse of having to earn a crust looks increasingly thin as I wake up surrounded by stunning scenery contemplating a day by the fireside, perhaps punctuated by a slap-up Staffordshire lunch. I decide not to make too much of this in my calls home, and trust that Sarah is not a reader of these pages. So, back to the fire, and it is amazing how quickly a city-boy will return to his cave-dwelling instincts. By the end of the week, the three boys in our cottage have managed to get through a bag of logs each. It’s good to do one’s bit for global warming.

The second Flute is distinguished by being a school’s matinee, and by being the occasion of a bizarre accident involving a favourite star of the show. Geraldine the giraffe – serial upstager of Tamino’s second aria – suffers a catastrophic structural failure, and lands face-down next to the penguin. According to one audience member, the only thing missing from the scene was a safari-suited man with a smoking gun strolling on to the stage and declaring that he had “got the brute”. The show is stopped, and Stephen Cowin – the world’s greatest stage manager - explains to the audience of schoolchildren that these things occasionally happen. I’m not sure quite how often twelve-foot-high fake giraffes collapse onto stages full of dancers dressed as penguins and orang-utans, but I suppose it may have happened before. Once the prompt-side wing has been filled with stage crew who will spend the rest of the show grimly holding onto the unstable ungulate, the show continues.

As it is a school’s matinee, we are able to enjoy the Friday night having a slap-up feast in one of the cottages, courtesy of the domestic prowess of Kitty (Whately – soprano and my polonaising partner from Onegin). Everybody seems to have supplied the wine. Good food, good wine, fine company and a night off. Everything, and more, required by a touring company.

November 16th - The tour proper. We are on the road. And the road begins in Woking. 

Not entirely inappropriate for me, as it is only three miles away from where I was brought up. It therefore doesn't really feel as if the glamour of the touring life has quite kicked in yet. Having a pub lunch with my mother in Chobham was not part of the jet-setting lifestyle I had envisaged when I chose a life of international opera singing; though it is two hours well spent.

The New Victoria Theatre billboard features Glyndebourne on Tour alongside the week's film releases. It's possible to feel quite proud about having the company up in lights, and it is the first and only time any of us are likely to feature on the same billing as James Bond. It is not, however, the first time that we are going to be shortly followed by pantomime. Widow Twankey, it seems, is hot on our tails. She's behind us. Etc. etc.

The week begins with Flute, and the Tuesday balance call. Each show needs any potential pitfalls addressing in a short slot during the first afternoon of a new venue. We wait in the wings, which is difficult, as they are only about three feet wide. Fortunately, any backstage collisions are averted by the fact that we are all wearing the chorus 2008 tour t-shirt, which is in a useful, if rather revolutionary, bright red colour. Perhaps it is not entirely surprising that Douglas (Boyd), our conductor, feels it best to have us onstage for as short a time as possible. The overall effect of forty of us in scarlet t-shirts is impressively uniform, though gloriously unsubtle. Mine will now languish in the washing basket until I have have plucked up enough courage to wash it without worrying about it turning everything else a shade of pink.

The wings may be cosy, but the first Carmen night provides the boys with an opportunity to play sardines in the dressing room. It is a salutary lesson in how spoilt we are at Glyndebourne now that we find ourselves fitting fifteen bodies into a space designed for eight. 

Happily, we all get on. Which is fortunate, as there is a particularly curious intimacy about squeezing into a pair of Spanish bullfighter's tights inches away from a colleague trying to eat his Marks and Spencers' salad. Anyway, we are acclimatised to such conditions, as this is the week when the London crowd share their journey to work with every other commuter. It goes against the grain to be joining a rush-hour train. This is not why I sought a career in the arts. The whole point is to be going against the flow. Even so, as the week draws to a close, Bohemian aspirations are further sidelined as I go shopping for essential touring supplies. Socks. Pants. Pyjamas. The road beckons. And no matter how hard I try to deny that suburban upbringing, my last afternoon in Woking is spent in the Marks and Spencers' menswear department. Glamorous business, touring.

November 1st - The last week at Glyndebourne for 2008 

Time to try and find the security pass that was mislaid in March, and to clear out the dressing-room desk. Mine provides a neat time capsule for the year. Programmes from festival and tour. A contract for a possible Onegin CD that still needs signing. A pair of spare rehearsal trousers for the water-soaked bath scene in Poppea. Smart shoes for picnic days. Assorted half- finished crosswords and sudokus. And, inexplicably, a turn of the century encyclopeadia that I borrowed from the library scene in Poppea because it fell open on a particulalrly hilarious article on the subject of 'castrates'. We had to make our own fun in that opera.

The final week begins with the cover shows for the three touring operas. Flute is first. The contents of our show have to fit into a 45 minute slot, and we are further hampered by the fact that Eliana (Pamina cover) is nursing the tail-end of a cold. The resulting selection renders an already fairly incomprehensible opera entirely non-sensical, though no more, I suppose, than a highlights CD. The Carmen cover show is even more extraordinary in this regard. It appears as if Carmen meets Escamillo before Don Jose, and given the later and somewhat bizarre Act two appearance of Don Jose shadow boxing in the bar (there are bodies missing in the fight scene), it is difficult to imagine why even Carmen should give him the time of day.

At least, in Flute, Mike Parle and I finally get to explore the full horrors of the roles of the armed men. Under dimmed lighting, we totter onto the raked stage on our stilts and wearing full face helmets. Through the grille, I am just about able to discern Peter Gijsbertsen beautifully singing the lyric lines of Tamino whilst I am trying to ignore the fact that my nose is running because of the altitude. We get to sing the quartet, though not the full armed men section as it is rather long and not sufficiently interesting to make it into the highlights. As the Herring cover show was in the Jerwood studio, this marks my first ever appearance on the Glyndebourne stage in front of an audience (albeit an audience of about 30). I would be lying if I said that I had imagined this debut to be made on stilts and with a bucket on my head. However, it is important to start somewhere, and after a sit-down and a cup of sweet tea, I am prepared to admit that it was an enjoyable afternoon's work.

The rest of the week goes quickly. After seven months of coming to Glyndebourne almost every day, it is difficult to imagine that this Saturday is the last time in 2008 that we will be getting the company bus from Lewes station. Appropriately, the last show is Carmen. I catch the 1.47 from Victoria, and am standing on the platform doing battle with a large and unweildy hamburger when Sarah Playfair (ex- glyndebourne and now independent casting consultant) walks past and says hello. The commute has been a genuinely refreshing part of the year's work, but I really do have to work on those meet-and-greet skills. Thankfully for Sarah, she will have been long gone by the time that the commuting party hits that last train back on Saturday night.

October 27th - A week before the tour proper starts, and everything is now underway.

There were a few last minute details to clear up in Flute - another quick rehearsal scheduled two hours before the public saw it for the first time - but it only seems to have required a couple of performances to reach a state where it's so settled that we feel we can start adding refinements of our own.

Perhaps, after all, at the top of act two it was a always a little ambitious to require that the gentleman of the chorus act as 'wise scholars'. And, of course, Carmen continues, with the scratched tally on the dressing room wall now stretching into seven months of rehearsals and performances. She will just keep on coming back for more. Nonetheless, the Carmen children's chorus remain un-jaded, and the first night of tour performances unleashes so much energy that advanced improvisation is required simply to put the set back together in Act 4. Repetiteur and fellow crossword aficionado Andrew Smith is responsible for warming them up.

We wonder if his tactics include feeding them caffeine.

If the children's chorus weren't enough; this has been the week of the schools' matinees. Arriving bleary-eyed at work for a performance of Magic Flute at 10.30 on a Tuesday morning, there can be few more terrifying sights than coach-loads of primary children waving at you through their breath-misted bus windows in a clear state of near- hysterical excitement. After a fortifying coffee, we sit in the dressing room as if waiting to go over the top, whilst Dom from education does his best to whip up the frenzy still further. Two-and-a-half hours later, and, if the screaming reception for the curtain-call is anything to go by, it certainly seems as if they enjoyed the show.

A special mention has to go to Daniel Schmutzhard (Papageno) for coping admirably with the audience participation in his suicide scene, despite the fact that it is difficult to tell if he is being dissuaded or encouraged. Later in the week the Carmen schools' matinee is after lunch and for a slightly older crowd, but is met with similar excitement. There is an audibly embarrassed shuffling on seats during the saucier bits of Act two, but by the curtain call the decibels are such that our Don Jose and Carmen must be enjoying a pretty good insight into life as a member of a boy-band.

Cover rehearsals are now all but finished. Our cover Flute run for senior management is on a morning after a two-show day, and it is fair to say that it lacks a certain energy. Paul Higgins, our endlessly patient director, does his best to warm us up by playing catching games. However, by the notes session in the afternoon, he arrives to find Elodie Kimmel - cover Papagena - fielding the same ball delivered as a fairly impressive volley from her Papageno (Mike Wallace), 10 mins into a cast game of football. Sometimes, it seems, a company spirit can be trusted to develop organically. And it is a happy cast.

Sunday afternoon brings a more subdued matinee performance - no schoolchildren this time - and a sense that the tour has already settled into routine. The television in the boys' dressing room has the football scores on Ceefax, we are into our second game of 'Perudo', and all is well with the world. It is, admittedly, on days like this when it is possible to be lulled into a false sense of security. It is on days like this that choristers accidentally trot onto stage in their slippers and unwittingly render half of their colleagues insensible. Always check your costume. Chorus lesson number four. All the same, and whilst here may still be lessons to be learnt, there is a palpable feeling that it is time to get on the road. Time to dust off the suitcase. One week until Woking.

October 17th - Glyndebourne on Tour Rehearsals march on..

The end of the penultimate week of tour rehearsals, and blonde chorus morale boosters Sarah Lilley and Steph Bodsworth decide that what everybody needs is a party.

Following on from the successfully themed evening train commutes of the festival, a cocktail evening is mooted. Quite what sort of cocktail it is that is swimming around in the punch bowl towards the end of the evening is anybody's guess. It could probably fuel the Glyndebourne minibus fleet for a week. Everybody was clearly in the mood for a party, and morale is duly raised. Though it takes a couple of days for some of us to recover enough to enjoy it.

The beginning of the last week of Flute rehearsals finds Douglas Boyd fine-tuning delicate musical details in the pit, whilst some of us onstage are still struggling to work out how we are going to fit a costume change into 90 seconds. And deliver an off-stage chorus at the same time. From slave to priest in a minute and a half. Barely enough time to find our motivation. Though it seems easier to find this as slave than priest. To keep us on our toes, as every day passes, more poppers seem to appear on the priests' costumes, and ever-diligent Christina from tailoring seems to be spending every spare moment on her hands and knees sorting out our hemlines. Goodness only knows what problems are besetting the dancers who have to don animal costumes. Those of us who have been on this Flute set before still remember fondly the moment when a penguin fell over, and, unable to stand back up again, lay frantically wriggling its flippers until it was rescued. Stage management is on 'penguin watch' this time around, apparently.

Flute cover rehearsals continue, with the two cover armed men as yet not required to use the stilts. Thankfully. Learning German dialogue, singing loud high notes and not falling over on three-foot-high stilts is the sort of multi-tasking that needs serious practice. And Mike Parle (Armed Man two) and I have our hands full in cover rehearsals anyway, as we are spending a significant proportion of the time performing the tasks of the chorus. The slaves' dance must look particularly spectacular with just two of us careering around the stage like lunatics. To say nothing of the entrance we make pretending to be in loving embrace with the (non-existent) female chorus member beside us. Tom Blunt, our chorus master, is assisting on Flute, and so taking cover rehearsals. He must be getting a quite bizarre insight into what we do in the chorus scenes. And when there's just two of us singing the chorus part, there is nowhere to hide any questionable German pronunciation. Thankfully, at least half of the Slave's dance is sung to 'La'.

Carmen is nearly finished. Again. Despite her grisly end at the hands of her demented ex, she seems to just keep on coming back for more. It is fair to say that we are feeling pretty comprehensively rehearsed for this show. The trick is to keep enthused. So a close look at Act four will now reveal an extraordinary number of sub-plots developing amongst the Bull-fight crowd. Our collective enthusiasm is also being raised by some fantastic principals. Kat Rohrer is a chorus favourite, and is throwing her all into the role, whilst Don Jose's final top b-flat is now so glorious that there is time to have cup of tea and a biscuit between the beginning and end of the note. So long as it gives us time to catch the last train back to London, we will remain impressed. Final dresses and the first performances of the tour are this week. The evening commute begins again. It's only a matter of time before somebody suggests cocktails.

October 11th - Glyndebourne on Tour Rehearsal Season

The tour. And we are now half-way through the great 2008 Carmen marathon. It has still, apparently, required considerable polishing since the end of the festival.

Which explains why the beginning of the tour rehearsal period finds the chorus back in the Ebert Room having music calls. It is sink or swim time for the few newbies. For the rest of us, it is a question of ironing out bad habits. And re-learning the French 'r'. It is rolled this time. 'R's remain a pain. And, in the middle of the cough and cold season, it is a real shame to lose the excuse of using the guttural French 'r' to clear the throat.

The cold season has hit hard. A distinct whiff of Vicks permeates every corridor. There are few more self-pitying man-flu sufferers than professional opera singers, and few more expert in current quackery. It is, at least, handy that the month long tour rehearsal period corresponds roughly with the incubation and infection period of a common cold. We should all be better by first night.

With men down, many hitting the Carmen marathon 'wall' and the nights drawing in, it is fair to say that energy levels are down. Tactics to deal with this have varied from the 'good cop, bad cop' routines adopted by some in the creative teams, to the more subtle requirement of an authentic atmosphere of frustration at the top of Carmen Act 1. Working with it. Cunning. It is a delicate eco-system, the chorus. Managing this, Douglas Boyd - our conductor on Flute - has chosen to access our inner children in his interpretation of the Monstatos slaves' chorus. He appears to have hit a rich vein.

Given the subject matter, Flute rehearsals must always be slightly surreal affairs. However, when the backstage call went out this week to have 'gentlemen of the staff to release the snake', there must have been some concerned people in the building. Almost as concerned as I am about covering an Armed Man who performs his entire scene on 3ft high stilts. I have been enjoying remedial lunchtime stilt sessions just to wipe the terrified expression off my face. Though singing through gritted teeth is another one of the useful chorus skills we all need to learn.

August 29th - Festival Concludes

Almost there, and the end of the festival seems virtually to have come by surprise. The nights are drawing in, and the long interval is ending in near complete darkness.

Peering through the gateway to the courtyard cafe into the gardens beyond, it is just possible to discern a few hardy picnickers in the gloaming. The tour is looming.

The Jerwood Project - Night Pieces - is over, and already feels like a distant memory. It was fun, and a privilege to step out of chorus mode and enjoy just a few moments in some sort of limelight. Albeit a dim limelight. It was 'Night Pieces', after all. On the fourth and last night/afternoon, I share a pride in the fact that I've managed to regularly sing a loud and unfeasibly high note with a satisfaction that I have shown some 'range' in my acting. Young gypsy lover to monk- on-the-run in a forty minute slot. It's amazing what can be done with a couple of wigs. The next day, though, it's back to Carmen. The ante- penultimate performance. Before the tour. And another sixteen performances. And whilst it was great to be able to indulge in a bit of step out performing, it is worth remembering that there is a completely different set of skills involved in being a chorus performer. So, in the interests of consolidating my skills before the onset of the tour, what has been learned this festival?

1. Avoid standing in a straight line. The key skill of any chorus member. The moody ‘over-the-shoulder’ look can be a useful standby here, but ‘shape’ is everything. If it can be an ‘interesting shape’, so much the better. This was a skill in particular evidence on the last night of Poppea.
2. Stay in character. If, on performance fifteen, you find yourself in discussion about the courtyard menu whilst apparently standing in a bar in Seville, it’s alright so long as you look like a smuggler, and are preferably chatting animatedly in French. This is a trickier thing to do in Russian opera.
3. Sing well, but try not to be heard. Difficult, this. You are trying to establish a career as a potential soloist, but do not want to stick out of the texture. A difficult circle to square, but that is the nature of a Glyndebourne contract. Generally, being heard at the end of a chord is not ideal. The ‘Held-on’ tenor is not yet a recognised voice type.
4. Think twice before volunteering. If it needs to be volunteered for, the chances are that the job required will include taking your clothes off, or worse.
5. Attempt to establish a curtain-call position that is as near as possible to an exit, preferably on prompt-side. The last bus to Lewes will usually be due to leave just as you are working out how best to extricate yourself from an elaborate pair of knee-breeches. That extra thirty seconds can make all the difference.

We have learned. Bring on the tour.

August 16th - End of Week 13

Night Pieces is now underway. It was the open rehearsal on Tuesday morning, and the first 'night' is this afternoon. All very confusing. 

Attempts to achieve a full black-out in the Jerwood studio have been key to achieving the right night-time atmosphere, and have been assisted by the reluctance of the August sun to make any sort of appearance in the East Sussex sky. Other important preparations have included some highly ambitious attempts by wardrobe and wigs to make me look like a young gypsy in one scene, and a monk-on-the-run in another. Their efforts have been doubly impressive given that the audience for these scenes are often only feet away from the action. Perhaps sensibly, nobody has seen fit to try and fully replicate the description of my character in the Boris Gudunov excerpt. He is described as having reddish hair, a wart on his nose and forehead and one arm longer than the other. There is only so far that one should be prepared to go for one's art.

It is an enormous joy to be singing with 13 players from the LPO. Not only does it raise everybody's game, but it is great to hear them close up, and to see their faces in any other context than the supper queue. As a one-time trumpeter myself, I admit to having been particularly excited to sing with such a couple of great brass players. I know they must be true professionals when Paul Beniston (LPO trumpeter) suggests that playing one section down an octave might make a better effect. This is the sort of musicality that would have put my old trumpet playing credo of 'louder and higher' into its proper place. All I need to do now is constantly remember that I can apply the same sort of mature ideas to singing tenor. Rehearsals are also given an added frisson by the fact that Vladimir Jurowski has come into a couple of rehearsals to give us some extra words of advice. A treat, and a man worth listening to, as word has it that he knows a thing or two about Russian repertoire.

Elsewhere in the building, Demons has begun. Those of us not involved take the opportunity to go to the dress and enjoy a picnic on a rare sunny afternoon. Rumours about mud-wrestling nuns prove only partly true, though there are some extraordinary things going on on-stage. 
Our female colleagues certainly do a convincing job of demonic possession. You'd never have thought they had it in them.

It is the last night this week for a one-time chorus colleague - Kate Royal - to sing Micaëla in Carmen. It is glorious to see her doing so well after having been at college with her and joining the chorus in the same year. She is doubtless leaving to do some glamorous globe- trotting. We travel back to Clapham Junction on the 22.40. It is wine and cheese night for the commuting crowd. A great time is had by all. 
Except, possibly, any other passengers on our carriage.

July 27th - End of Week 10

Sunday night. Carmen. Martine the make-up girl is doing the rounds of the Boys' dressing room, applying her paint-on stubble to anybody who looks too wholesome.

It is doubtless this challenge to our collective masculinity that is behind the genuinely rather unshaven appearance now sported by most of the male chorus. And perhaps the reason behind some of the more exotic looking sideburns that some of our number have chosen to nurture. I am particularly disappointed that I still warrant Martine's close attention, as I have not shaved for four days. Not enough, apparently, for the full Mediterranean swarthiness required. So, it's either spending even more days suffering an itchy chin, or surrendering, and being painted in make-up every Carmen night. It's a close-run thing, but my virility is clearly in question. The razor remains unused.

My soprano colleague Pam (Wilcock) is clearly not impressed with my choice. In the Jerwood chorus project - now entitled 'Night Pieces' - she has the dubious pleasure of playing my illicit lover in the scene from Rachmaninov's Aleko. We have to get fairly cosy, and my face is prickly, apparently. She probably has a point. I am supposed to look like a 'young gypsy' in this scene, and am I looking more like a middle-aged refugee from a week-long binge. The camel-coloured rehearsal jacket doesn't help. It is at least 10inches larger than I am in chest size, and, as I am wearing shorts, my legs poke pale and naked from underneath. If I was seen on any public street corner looking like this, I wouldn't imagine it would be long before the authorities were called. As it is, I am playing a romantic lead. In a dirty raincoat. Opera. It's all about the suspension of disbelief.

At least I have the Russian text learned now. Mainly. And there is great fun to be had in working out which English words or phrases we have all used in trying to learn the Russian phonetically. For example, the phrase 'Nye khachu' is easy to remember, as it sounds like a sneeze. Other aides memoir are a little more obscure, and some are probably best left unexplained. 'Smu schat'sve tuyu', for example, proved to be an interesting challenge. Back in his Chelsea pad again (the Chelsea and Westminster paediatric ward), and so a captive audience, my son William has proved an unreceptive foil for my experiments in Slavic. "Lyublu t'ebya", I declare solemnly to my only child. Who finds it hilarious, and demands that I go back to doing my Thomas the Tank Engine impressions.

Back at work, the chorus internal auditions have begun. It's the best opportunity most of us have for really showing the management what we can do, but at the end of a hectic few months, always seems to creep up and ambush us. Mine is not for another week. But there is a perceptible tension in the courtyard cafe, and practice rooms are going to be hard to come by. There seems to be quite a lot of snappy dressing going on too. Perhaps some colleagues will even see it fit to shave.

July 20th - End of Week 9

For most of us, the summer is now in full swing, and Carmen performances are the only interruptions to an otherwise leisurely season. And the sun has finally come out.

Left with an unfamiliar vacuum to fill, the commuting crowd has resorted to some unusual behaviour. So it is that on the 2.47 from Victoria, the chorus table in coach four is draped with a checked tablecloth and laden with fondant fancies and cream teas. Post-show, the evening sees cocktail nights getting into full swing. Thankfully, Boris's alcohol ban has not yet spread to Southern trains. Fortunate, given the full impact of a Cosmopolitan in a plastic martini glass.

Sadly, cocktail nights aside, not all of us are able to take full advantage of the reduced schedule. Demons is approaching the final straight, and is into full stage rehearsals. Those of us who are not involved are enormously intrigued, but we'll have to wait for the final dress like everybody else. Even the backstage relay from the stage has failed to give any clues yet - it has yet to be turned on. In the meantime, there seem to be a lot of open scores on tables in the courtyard cafe. And earnest looking huddles. Tricky stuff, creating a new opera! 

For those of us doing the Jerwood Chorus Project (on a Pushkin theme this year), learning the Russian text is providing its own set of difficulties. There's not an enormous amount for me to sing in the scenes, but Russian always seems to take longer to learn than anything else. Perhaps this is the best explanation for the fact that every morning I am now looking into the shaving mirror talking to myself about fleeing to the Lithuanian border. Other potential explanations for this behaviour are probably best left unexplored. Fortunately, I am the only commuter to be involved in these rehearsals, so I'm able to learn most of the words on the train. With no scones and cream to distract.

There are plenty of culinary distractions in Hansel and Gretel though. Apart from the few unlucky souls who have a few bars of offstage chorus to sing, we are all able to watch the dress for this show. It is a great night out - enormous fun, and the children's chorus do a fantastic job, not least in staying upright in their enormous fat suits. It would be a tricky job, having to get up again. The children receive an enormous, and deserved, ovation. We hope none of them are getting any ideas about their career prospects. It would only be a matter of time before they were talking to themselves in front of mirrors and disgracing themselves on public transport.

July 13th - End of Week 8

Poppea has finished. Onegin has finished. Herring cover work has come to an end. Carmen rehearsals are over, and we are into shows.

June 29th - End of Week 6

Another busy week, but the first night of Carmen is approaching, and after that things get a good deal easier. But there is a lot to be achieved before we get that far..

The first dress rehearsal for Carmen is this week, and we are reminded just how important it is to rehearse dressing. Even a humble soldier/citizen/ smuggler/photographer such as myself needs four separate costumes for this opera, and the final costume change needs to happen in an enormous hurry. And only in such a bastion of perfectionism as Glyndebourne would a quick change also require the application of three separate pieces of period-appropriate facial hair. I manage to talk the wiggies into letting me get away with two. At least I have a hat, so am able to escape wearing a wig. It is astonishing how many periods and locations require the purging of any signs of male-pattern baldness from the chorus. Baldness amongst the Nineteenth century Russian bourgeoisie? Unheard of. Baldness in 1950's Czechoslovakia? Don't be ridiculous. 20's Vienna? Hirsuteness was de riguer. But we like the wig department - they are some of the most friendly faces in the dressing room - so all is forgiven. Even by the guys wearing sweltering monks' beards in Onegin.

Onegin has now been taken over by a new conductor, Kirill Karabits. Kirill’s musical direction really captures the sense of breathless excitement for which our director had asked us to strive. As the peasant dancers whirl past in Act 1, the look of exhilarated terror on our colleagues' faces is worth the admission price alone. The Act 2 waltz is a flurry of skirts, coat-tails and sheer adrenaline. Quite a show. Party scenes do seem to be a strength of the chorus. There are only four Onegins left, and I will miss it.

The congestion in the schedule also means that the Herring cover cast are only going to get one opportunity to rehearse on the set and in the theatre. So this week is my first ever opportunity to sing a role on the Glyndebourne stage. Only three people are listening, and I am affecting a comedy East Suffolk accent, so debuting as Cavaradossi it is not. But it is great fun, and hugely encouraging to find how generous the house acoustic is. We all lift our game. The set is extraordinary, and a tour de force of false perspective. At some point, somebody must have worked out the exact measurements of the rabbits hanging from the butcher's shop to make sure that the right proportions were achieved. Now that is dedication.

Next week will be a big one. It is the final dress of Carmen, the last night of Poppea, and our cover run of Albert Herring in front of the management. The Carmen covers are into rehearsal, and the nuns' chorus from Love and Other Demons are into production. It's time for a team-building chorus picnic. The Ringmer chippy has been forewarned.

June 19th - End of Week 5

The end of week five approaches, and all the season’s operas are now in some stage of rehearsal or performance.

The courtyard café is running out of jacket potatoes five minutes into the lunch-hour stampede. There seems to be a collective need for carbohydrates.

Carbohydrate shortages aside, great fun can be had by trying to identify which lunch table belongs to which opera. Carmen is easy to spot. Healthy and exotic looking dancers pick at salads whilst lounging ostentatiously in the sunshine. Meanwhile, Hansel and Gretel seems to have spawned pigtails and another group of children. They seem to be in virtually every opera this season. The children, not the pigtails. Love and Other Demons is more difficult to spot. There is a interesting mix of established professionals and fresh-faced trendy types. There are eight chorus girls involved too, and eight more covering each of these individual chorus parts. Word is that it it will be an impressive piece of music.

I manage to enjoy another picnic with the Gairdner family - who provide another generous spread for the interval, this time it is on an Onegin night. They were equally accommodating when they came to see Poppea, but I feel slightly less fraudulent accepting the hospitality this time. By the interval, the chorus have already earned the right to enjoy a good supper. The down side is that I have to stick to sparkling water. I struggle not to fall over in Act 3 at the best of times. That authentic 19th century aristocratic gait is getting no easier to perfect, and I suspect that a glass of white is unlikely to help. I have to rush my desert too. It will take a good half hour to apply the costume, wig, make-up and beauty spot. And the boys aren’t trusted to apply their own more complicated blusher and lipgloss. Our make-up instructions (in stark contrast to the lyrical two paragraphs of instructions given to the girls) read ‘White base and powder’. The rest is left to the make-up team.

Credibility is still being a little stretched in the marching scene of Carmen. We will have time to polish this though, as the tavern scene already has more of a ring of truth about it, and we are looking fairly convincing in the aimlessly milling crowd scene at the top of Act four. Some acting skills are always there in the repertoire of every accomplished chorus singer. I am enjoying a particularly straightforward time of it in Act four, as I spend my time on stage carefully tending a large camera and tripod. I am already looking forward to the extraordinary levels of improvsational drama that the uncredited role of photographer will have reached by show twelve. 

June 13th - End of Week 4

That other great traditional feature of the summer artistic season - Big Brother - has started on Channel Four. And it is roughly day 25 in the Glyndebourne house.

Sixteen days since my last day off, and I am getting back to South London at midnight virtually every day of the week. My 3 year-old son, William, is back at home after his recent stay at the Chelsea and Westminster, and is not impressed with the current state of affairs. To make up for his Daddy's absence during the day, he has decided to shout for me at six o'clock every morning. It is a charming display of his devotion. Fathers' day is this weekend. I wonder if it would be rude to ask for a gift of earplugs.

It has been a busy week. The understudy casts of Poppea and Onegin have both produced their 'cover shows' - edited highlights for friends and colleagues. The Jerwood chorus development scheme has thrown up four mini concerts. Cover rehearsals for Herring are underway, production rehearsals for Carmen continue and there are Poppea and Onegin shows most evenings. There are lots of bleary looking eyes in the Courtyard Cafe. The coffee machines have needed to be replaced. Presumably through overuse.

Compensation for all this hard work is that the weather has been beautiful, and there can be few more attractive places to be when the sun is out. Until the witching hour of three o'clock, chorus members can be seen spread-eagled throughout the gardens shovelling down ice-creams and topping up their tans. Then at three, we take our bermuda shirts, frisbees and flip-flops inside, and make way for the black ties and floral dresses of the audience. Even so, although our time in the sunshine is limited, it is possible to discern a healthy glow developing on some colleagues' faces. One friend of mine was particularly miffed to be told he had to wear make-up on the first Poppea DVD night to try and tone down the evidence of his enthusiastic sun-worshipping. A technical issue. The opera is filmed over two nights, and spliced together into one whole. Even not accounting for sun-burn, the continuity in-jokes available to an imaginative chorus actor are seemingly endless. Apparently.

Herring starts on Saturday, and the final dress is enormously impressive. Even the set gets a round of applause. Later in the week the covers will attempt to re-create every nuance in the Ebert Room with some trestle tables, a couple of cardboard boxes of assorted hats, and some empty coffee cups. All great art has to build from somewhere, I suppose. Witness the Carmen rehearsals. I suspect that the tell-tale sound of flip-flops in the smugglers' scene of Act three is unlikely to survive past the rehearsal process...

June 2nd - End of Week 2

Week two, Carmen production rehearsals are now well underway, and the streets of Seville have been re-created in the Peter Hall room.

The Act one set is looking fantastic. It has the rusted, tatty look that can only be achieved by countless man hours 'distressing' everything.

Doubtless the same will be done to the costumes. It must break hearts as lovingly created pieces are systematically covered in as much muck as possible. Most impressively, we notice that even those surfaces that the audience will never see are pasted in faded billposters advertising bullfights. Perhaps this is an encouragement to those of us in the wings to stop doing the crossword and follow the 'method'. He's a thorough chap, David McVicar.

Act one requires many of the boys to be soldiers. This is always a tricky area for opera choruses. Acting is one thing. Marching is quite another. Thankfully, we are supposed to be bored and rather lacklustre soldiers, so our marching needn't be too slick. This is a good thing.

When we are called upon to ogle the girls, however, there seems to be more natural talent on display. And, oddly, the girls seem to be quite talented at the cat fight too. These are clearly areas of our art that have been honed by working in such close proximity to each other for the last few months. Maybe there is some 'method' going on after all.

Next week we start on the tavern scene.

Poppea and Onegin are now pretty settled, and we're starting to enjoy ourselves. Relaxing into a show can be both a good and bad thing, and we come up with any number of ideas to flesh out the chorus's role in Poppea. Most, it should be said, are best kept under that curtain that smothers us in the final act. In fact, there does seem to be a good deal going on under there.

The real professionalism seems to be going on in Albert Herring. Part of the preparation for a cover involves watching the stage rehearsals of the principals. This can be a nerve-wracking thing. Today is the first time we saw the cast do their stuff. Steph (Bodsworth) is holding the flag for the chorus by moonlighting as Emmie. And Thomasin (Trezize), covering Mum, has to sing in from the pit. Both do a fantastic job. Meanwhile, I watch John Graham-Hall (Mayor Upfold- the role I'm covering) provide a masterclass in how to dominate a stage and raise a laugh without breaking sweat. I turn to my colleague who is watching Alan Opie doing exactly the same. It's our first ensemble call this evening. It's going to be a long couple of weeks.

26th May 2008 - End of Opening week.

Bank holiday Monday, and another day off. The last day off, I imagine, for some time.

Production rehearsals for Carmen start this week, Cover rehearsals for Herring will start to really kick in, and Onegin and Poppea performances continue. True to form for a day off; it is pouring down with rain. I take my son William from his Chelsea pad (he's still in Mercury ward) to the South Kensington museums, where he is suitably unimpressed with the queues to see the dinosaurs. He tells me that he isn't keen for me to go back to work, but when he grows up he will be 'doing singing too'. Not opera, though. He will sing 'It's great to be an Engine' instead. I weigh up his career prospects in roughly the same fashion as I suspect my parents still weigh mine.

The first week of the festival has been characteristically hard-working but enjoyable for the chorus. The second performances of both operas were both considerably more settled. Onegin, particularly, really felt as if it flew. That was despite the first real mention of the chorus in early reviews merely commenting that we needed to change our collective diet to one of borscht and vodka. Further evidence, if it were ever needed, that no singer should ever take reviews to heart. Hardening of the arteries would surely follow. On the second night of Poppea I have a picnic with old friends at the interval. It is great to see them; the picnic is enormous, delicious, and they have enjoyed the first half and are amusingly complimentary about my personal contribution to the performance. I have been on stage for roughly five minutes, not uttered a sound, and apart from my advancing hair-loss being visible from the higher seats, am indistinguishable from anybody else on stage or, for that matter, in the audience (this is apparently the point). I am not entirely sure I need congratulating, but very much enjoy the picnic, the company, and the rare opportunity to be on the 'outside' during a show night. After the interval, I return to my colleagues, many of whom have been enjoying a take-away curry. There is understandably mounting concern about us all being trapped together underneath a velvet curtain at the end of the show.

21st May 2008 - Wednesday

After the calm, the storm. Following our day off, it's the first night of Eugene Onegin, the first coaching for the covers of Albert Herring, and the company party.

It should be a great day for the punters too. Now that the test match has finished, the weather is beautiful. The coaching goes encouragingly well. It can only get harder. I spend a decent amount of the session figuring out how best to notate an East Suffolk accent in my score. I knew the phonetic alphabet once, but even so, it will make little sense to me at the rate these notes go past. I begin to sound like a hybrid cross between a country bumpkin and an East End barrow boy. There will doubtless be some polishing later in the rehearsal process. For now, I am just grateful to start working on the score with somebody who can play the piano. There is only so much you can do banging out the notes in a practice room on your own.

Despite the fact that the show doesn't start for a few hours, plenty of the chorus are in for various coachings, cover rehearsals etc., so the courtyard cafe is full. There is a real sense of anticipation about Onegin. We love the show - it has a couple of great chorus showpieces, and we've been encouraged to enjoy ourselves. Hardened chorus cynics are even admitting to being a little nervous. And after playing such a muted role in Poppea, there is a collective desire to show what we can do.

The show starts well, but a couple of slightly rocky musical corners and a slow-burning audience reaction mean that we come away from the peasants' scene a little down-hearted. The next scene is better, though is perhaps a little careful, but the last Act goes as well as it ever has. The Act two party scene should improve though. It takes practice, getting it right while seeming to have a riotous time.

Fortunately, the first night party will enable us to have a good time and not worry about getting it right. It is a ceilidh, but with the kinky Russian touch of vodka jelly. David Pickard gives a generous speech thanking everybody, and suggesting that there were many in the audience who wouldn't have believed that we weren't professional dancers. Those of us who are already trying to figure out how best to quickly liberate a vodka jelly from a shot glass are determined to make up for this brief outbreak of public limb co-ordination. We may be able to Polonaise, but when it comes to stripping the willow, things look very messy indeed...

20th May 2008 - Tuesday

Tuesday, and it's the Chorus day off. I had grand plans for this day.

A singing lesson. Sorting out my tax return. All very necessary. So I settle for a bit of practice and opening my post instead. By the time I've achieved this and had a couple of cups of coffee, it's lunchtime.

I spend the afternoon with my son, and we take him to Battersea Park zoo. He's currently based in his Chelsea pad, a.k.a The Chelsea and Westminster Hospital children's ward. His disability means that he has spent about half his life there, so he is virtually a local, despite the rather more earthy South London postcode on his postal address. At least it's near to Victoria Station, so commutable. But he is going through a phase of laying on the moral pressure every time I leave for work.

"But I need to go to work, William"
"You need to stay here, Daddy"

It doesn't help that my partner has been colouring his opinions.

"What is my work, William?"
"Singing"
"What do I sing?"
"Boring opera"

Thank you Sarah. Nothing like children to bring you down to Earth. Clearly Glyndebourne's work to win young audiences has yet to reach the particular demographic of the under-fives.

19th May 2008 - Monday

Day two of the festival, and the only evidence that it's all begun are the few forlorn picnic tables still left on the lawn.

And it's back to the grindstone of Carmen music calls. I look around the room and realise that the collective first-night hangover is more than metaphorical. Happily, Tom seems keen to go relatively easy on us. This is good news. There are a lot of loud high notes in the Carmen score, and my bacon sandwich has not yet begun to do its job.

Ron Howell (revival director of Onegin) comes to give us production notes after lunch. Rarely can a production have been driven so impressively by one man's energy, and there is a genuine feeling amongst the chorus that we should do our best by him. Onegin first night is on Wednesday, and it promises to be a great show. Rumour has it that there will be vodka jelly at the subsequent party. For some reason, this isn't appealing to many of us today.

18th May 2008 - Sunday: Opening night Festival 2008

Opening night, and it's a strange evening for the chorus, as we are not required to sing a note.

My most significant early triumph of the day is, in fact, to ensure that I get on the right train. There is only one an hour on Sundays, and it's alarmingly easy to find yourself half-way to Eastbourne before you realise you've gone wrong. Predictably, not everyone in the commuting party gets it right.

The show goes well, and it is gratifying to see four recent graduates of the chorus doing so well in principal roles. Perhaps shamed by this, I use some of an empty two hour slot in the middle of the evening to get some practice done. The skill is to find one of the very few practice rooms where you can get notes wrong without half the company being able to hear you do it. I am congratulating myself on making some filthy noises far away from any prying ears when George Christie walks past the window with his supper party.

The show ends, and all seems to have gone well. By a happy accident of the staging, we are on-stage to listen to the final duet, which is possibly the most beautiful music of the opera. but it also means that we are around to be heavily involved in the curtain call; a little fraudulent as we haven't actually sung anything. And indeed, as Robert Carsen turns to encourage the chorus forward for another bow, we are already in the process of making our collective exit. It makes no difference. It's still too late to catch the last train from Lewes, and the minibus has to go to Brighton. It's a late night, with a a ten o'clock start tomorrow. I sensibly decide to stay in Lewes, not least because there is a chorus party in the off-ing. Oddly, the next morning it doesn't feel like such a sensible decision...

17th May 2008 - Saturday

Saturday, and it's the day of the Eugene Onegin Dress rehearsal.

Final dresses usually feel like perfomances anyway, but this one has a particular buzz about it, as the show is absolutely raring to go, and we all have friends and family in. Onegin is a busy show for us. There's barely time to properly take in the FA cup final that is playing on the television above our bay in the dressing room. It's probably better that way, as there's a significant Welsh contigent in our ranks, and things don't seem to be going Cardiff's way.

The dressing room is crammed with costume rails, dressers, wiggies and make-up girls. There are three costume changes, two different sets of make up, and at least two wigs each in this show. That's before you factor in the facial hair sported by a few lucky individuals. We can't help feeling that this is what the Glyndebourne chorus does best, and after Act two, when we have waltzed, mazurka-ed and wrestled our way around the stage, there is a palpable sense of excitement. I have been particularly looking forward to this scene, as a nasty accident two years ago nearly lost me a leg, and yet here I am, dancing as enthusiastiacally as ever, if perhaps a little rustically. Ironically, I am temporarily cut from the larger dance move as my partner is injured. I just hope that it wasn't my treading on her toes in rehearsals that did the job.

Act three is a more formal affair, requiring some extraordinary costume and make-up. Following the Polonaise, there is the most tricky part of the show for us. We peer desperately through the fringes of our wigs into the wings to find monitors to see Vladimir's beat. Unfortunately, it takes couple of bars for us all to reach a compromise as to the tempo. There will be a note before the first night. And all that is now left is to walk around the set before leaving upstage right. This is the most difficult move of the show. The stage is raked. We are walking in slow motion, and trying to emulate the early nineteenth century aristocratic style. There is a good deal of tottering. Gentility doesn't seem to come as easily as the partying earlier in the opera. The first night parties are on their way. The season starts tomorrow.

16th May 2008 - Friday

8.40, and my body clock plays the amusing trick of deciding to wake me 23 minutes before I need to be on the train.

I am able to run through the shower on the way to the front door, and as the nice lady at the coffee shop on platform 3 has my coffee ready as soon as she sees my harassed face appearing through the crowd, can fit breakfast in too. No chocolate cake this morning, sadly. And by Friday morning, the weekly budget is looking a little too meagre to stretch to a bacon sandwich in the Courtyard cafe at work. It's still tempting though...

It's a whole day of Carmen music calls today. Half of the chorus can now sing Carmen in their sleep. Half have never done it before, and there is a lot of French to learn, so it is a day that will require a little patience. Every production of a piece also brings a conductor's own personal touches that need to be incorporated. This Carmen shall be the Carmen of the guttural French 'r'. By morning break, the front wall of the rehearsal room is showered in phlegm, and Tom (Blunt - our chorus master) is having to repeatedly wipe his glasses. Decisions are re-iterated about which Spanish terms have been incorporated into the French lexicon, and which should still be pronounced with the Spanish rolled 'r'.

Friday brings with it the twin highlights of Fish and Chips, and the publication of the next week's schedule. I see with some trepidation that I have my first coaching on the cover of the Mayor in Albert Herring. I had somehow imagined that I had a little more time to learn this, but I am enormously looking forward to getting my teeth into it. The required accent for this role is East Sussex. Another sort of 'r'. I never knew that 'r's could be such a pain.

The prospect of a potential early finish sharpens everybody's focus, and the afternoon rehearsal goes well. I manage to get back into London in time to see my son before his bedtime, which is not something I'll manage again until Monday. At least we have a late start tomorrow, so I'll be trying hard to miss breakfast.

15th May 2008 - Thursday

Three days to go before the Festival season starts, and it's going to be a long day.

A two hour commute to Lewes is made more bearable by celebrating a colleague's birthday on the train. It is only fortunate that the candles on his cake didn't set off any smoke detectors. Perhaps if he had been honest about his age, we may have been in more trouble. Chocolate cake and coffee is a good healthy start though, and we're going to need the endorphine rush for the three hour music call on Carmen. It's a great chorus opera, but as performances are going to stretch throughout August and into the Tour, it's important not to get too excited about it too early. And it's a little difficult to recreate the sultry atmosphere of Seville in the Ebert Room. It's raining. Naturally. It's the first day of the Lord's Test Match.

Carmen over, and the afternoon begins with some last minute alterations to a scene in Poppea. The audience are already setting up their picnics outside for the open final dress rehearsal. There's nothing like keeping things fresh. We're rehearsing a small change, but it's worth getting right. It's always astonishing how easily a confused face reads on a stage. I tell my colleagues that I've been asked to keep a blog. The possibilities for indiscretion are, apparently, endless. Dressing room banter is an enormous part of what makes this job such fun. As we change for Act one of the dress, I look around and agree that some things are definitely best kept in the dressing room.

Four hours later, we're approaching the end of a ten and a half hour day, and as the final dress of Poppea finishes, the bodies of the chorus are dragged from beneath the velvet cloth which smothers us in the last act. Some of us are still twitching, apparently. Doubtless that will be ironed out by the notes before the first performance. Sometimes, knowing when to do absolutely nothing is a key skill of any accomplished chorus member.