L'Isola Disabitata - Linbury Studio Theatre

Haydn's L'Isola Disabitata, premiered in December 1779 is a short piece, clocking in at around 90 minutes (including an interval). This run of three performances (the first at the Royal Opera House) is part of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme week and proved a wonderful chance to hear four new singers and see a rare opera by a well-known composer - plus, at £5 for my standing ticket, it was a bargain to boot.

The first obvious point of interest is that the opera makes use of accompanied recit throughout (so no harpsichord in the pit). Each of the four singers gets an aria or two and the piece is tied up by a final quartet. The whole thing turned out to be an absolute treat - simple yet engaging and entertaining. Anna Devin as Sylvia was the standout performance of the night although, to be fair to the other three, she did have rather more to work with in terms of character. Nevertheless her characterisation was superb, never slipping into the cloying 'little girl' acting so many actresses go for out of laziness or lack or ability (all hair twirling and cocked head). If this is anything to go by her Papagena in next year's Zauberflote will be a treat.

I find Steven Ebel (Gernando) intriguing, he's got a very distinctive voice that drags you in. I'd love to hear him in a lieder recital as I have a suspicion he could be superb.

I really hope that the ROH decides to revive this production in the near future as it was a success on pretty much every level and it would be a shame if three nights is all it's going to get.

Disc of the Day #22 Kate Rusby - Underneath the Stars

Underneath The Stars

I first heard Kate Rusby when Sleepless was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. Since then I've seen her in concert several times and bought most of her albums. She's an artist I tend to have long breaks from then come back to and remember why I love so much - here's why.

Kate Rusby has one of those properly lovely voices that means you could listen to her sing pretty much anything. That can create a few problems in that everything is so beautifully sung there's no real distinction between anything - no big shifts in vocal colour or dynamic. The great thing about Kate's music is that she's assembled a series of bands that create such a wealth of colour and dynamic it (almost) makes up for it. Revolving around the multi-instrumentalist John McCusker and, more recently Ian Carr (who has to be one of the greatest guitarists on the planet for his general disregard of the boundaries of rhythm, melody and accompaniment as mutually exclusive facets of the instrument), Kate's bands continually drag your ear around with a wilful love of syncopation, gentle harmonic playfulness and endlessly shifting textures. It's incredible stuff.

I do occasionally find myself wishing Kate had a bit more variety to her voice (especially when she's singing those wonderful storytelling lyrics folksong is riddled with) but the way she sings is beautiful and loved my thousands of people so who am I to have any complaints (I'm one of the people who love it after all).

Great writing - Song of the Lark 3

"...what was any art but an effort to make a sheath, a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose?"

Stepping out of the city in zone 3

I love living in London. There's so much to do - for a start I have 2 opera houses (not to mention the Wigmore Hall, Barbican, South Bank and even a new pub opera house). There are also countless cool shops, bars, cafes and restaurants. It's an amazing place to be - I sometimes wish I didn't live here so I could see it for the first time again (although the view of St Paul's or the Houses of Parliament lit up at night from one of the bridges over the Thames always manages to give me a tiny bit of that feeling).

Sometimes though I want to feel like I'm not in a city at all. That's fine at weekends as I can always go away or just drive out on a Sunday and go for a walk somewhere. What if I want to go for a walk in the woods in the morning before I go to work though? Living in zone 3 in south east London you wouldn't expect too many options would you? I certainly didn't when I moved here.

Then I found this...



Literally a 5 minute walk from my house is a stretch of woodland big enough to walk through for at least 40 minutes without seeing a road! When I first moved here I worked from home so used to walk in the woods quite a bit at lunchtime. When I started my first novel I used to spend hours in there listening to podcast interviews with writers, desperately looking for any clues as to how on earth you're supposed to write a novel. Now I'm on book 2 I've found that getting up and walking before work in the mornings and doing the same really helps get my head back into the ideas stage of the process.

The wood is apparently tiny compared to the area it covered in the 19th century, but it's still a little pocket of the English countryside by my door and that is a blessing.

6 writing questions

After reading a post on The Awl where writers answer six basic questions about their writing habits, I thought it might be a useful exercise for me to answer the questions myself.

If you're a writer why not do the same and tweet a link to your answers to @matthwrites

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1) How long have you been working on your novel and roughly how much longer do you expect to go?

I've just finished my first novel - it took roughly 18 months in all and I've now started number two.

2) How do you “pay the bills”?

I work for flatshare site SpareRoom.co.uk - being asked to write a book for work was the main thing that got me into writing in the first place. The book I wrote for work is The Essential Guide to Flatsharing

3) How do you balance work/friends/family with your writing?

I've discovered that the easiest way of doing this is just to make my day longer! When I'm in the writing or editing stage of the process I get up at 6.15 and write before I go to work. I can usually manage at least 1,000 words if I'm writing. The reading and researching phase is a bit easier as I can do that pretty much anywhere and for short bursts if needs be. I can read on trains or listen to relevant podcasts on the move. As half the research stage seems to involve generally mulling things over that part tends to go on all day anyway in the background.

4) Do you have a routine and if so do you reward yourself for sticking to it (and does it involve cupcakes)?

The morning routine is the only one I've got and I tend to punish for failure rather than reward for success!

5) Do you write longhand, on the typewriter, or on a computer (and is said computer online)?

The first draft of the book was written longhand as I find it hard not to edit as I go when I write on a computer. I think it's important for writing and editing to be different stages of the process. That said, by the time you get a few drafts in you end up doing a bit of both for most of the time it seems. When I write I tend to keep email and browser apps closed to avoid temptation (although I will use the internet to check the odd fact as I go).

6) Is there anything else about writing a novel that you've found to be particularly difficult/enlightening from a time-management perspective?

I think it's been good for me to just keep chipping away at something continuously like this. I tend to have a bit of a binary approach to stuff and be harsh on myself (I either can or can't do things and there's no middle ground). Writing a novel has helped me see the long game and realise that it's not even about what I'm writing now so much as simply getting better every day for as long as I want to write.

Disc of the Day #21 - James Levine's 25th anniversary gala

James Levine's 25th Anniversary Metropolitan Opera Gala
A few years ago I submitted a question for the Met's live Saturday night broadcast interval quiz - the question had to do with opera characters who are first heard off-stage (Tosca, Mimi, Siegfried etc). It was used during a broadcast and I got an email letting me know that I should expect a package of goodies through the post - it never came. I let them know and another was posted - again, nothing. I think they were about to give up on me but, luckily, decided to try a third time.

A week or two later I received a box containing complete recordings on CD of Met productions of Carmen and Figaro, DVDs of Carmen and Don Giovanni, the Complete Kobbe's Opera Book and several other CDs! This disc was one of them.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to attend the gala - as a collection of singing this disc is unbelievably good (and so it should be, given the list of talent).

We have:

Pearl Fishers duet - Alagna/Terfel
Depuis le Jour (Louise) - Renee Fleming
Act 1 duet from Faust - Domingo/Ramey
Meine Lippen... (Giuditta) - Cotrubas
O Don Fatale (Don Carlos) - Dolora Zajick
Act 2 sextet (Don Giovanni) - Fleming/Te Kanawa/Hei-Kyung Hong/Hadley/Terfel/Julien Robbins
Juliet's Waltz - Ruth Ann Swenson
Watch Duet (Fledermaus) - Mattila/Hagegard
Pourquoi me Reveiller (Werther) - Kraus
Mon Coeur... (Samson et Dalila) - Bumbry
Dich Teure Halle (Tannhauser) - Voigt
Ah quel Diner (La Perichole) - von Stade
Rosenkavalier act 3 trio - Fleming/von Otter/Heidi Grant Murphy

(oh, and a tribute to Jimmy Levine from Birgit Nilsson)

Wonderful stuff!

Great Writing: Willa Cather - Song of the Lark #2

"Scarcely anything was attractive to her in its natural state - indeed, scarcely anything was decent until it was clothed by the opinion of some authority. Her ideas about habit, character, duty, love, marriage, were grouped under heads, like a book of popular quotations, and were totally unrelated to the emergencies of human living."

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"The wall-paper was brownish yellow, with blue flowers. When it was put on, the carpet, certainly, had not been consulted."

Rigoletto - Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 11/10/2010

This was the first time I've seen Rigoletto in the theatre, despite having been a fan of the opera for several years (it was, in fact, the opera that changed my mind about the genre - see Disc of the Day #11). I did have a ticket to one of the early performances of this production a few years ago but was ill and couldn't attend. As you might imagine I was pretty excited by 7.25 last night.

The first thing to say is that I love the staging. The fact that the Duke's palace spins round to become Rigoletto's house is wonderfully simple yet illuminating. Like many Verdi operas (Aida is a prime example of this) much of the tension comes from a character placed in a situation that demands two different things of him. Whether this is public figure/private figure (Aida) or father/court member (Rigoletto), the opposing pulls created make the drama. So here we have the palace, all hard, flat lines offset against the broken lines of Rigoletto's home. Simple, wonderful, enlightening.

Then we have the cast. Dimitri Hvorostovsky has the same wonderful quality I hear when I listen to Jessye Norman - that is I always get the sense there's another gear there if it's needed. Singing Rigoletto this in no small miracle.

I must admit that I wasn't bowled over by Wookyung Kim's Duke - I couldn't help feeling there was a bit of...well...welly missing. Howwever, I absolutely loved Patrizia Ciofi as Gilda - on a night where the performance was dedicated to the memory of Joan Sutherland it must have been difficult to sing this role but sing it she did and brilliantly.

Special mention should also go to Raymond Aceto and Daniela Innamorati as Sparafucile and Maddalena, both of whom were excellent.

The cast has a couple of variations over the run:

Conductor

Dan Ettinger
Christopher Willis

Duke of Mantua

Wookyung Kim

Rigoletto

Dmitri Hvorostovsky
Paolo Gavanelli

Gilda

Patrizia Ciofi
Ekaterina Sadovnikova

Sparafucile

Raymond Aceto

Maddalena

Daniela Innamorati

Having waited a while to see Rigoletto I didn't want to wait long to see it again so I'm going again, with a friend who knows nothing about opera, next week. I'm seeing the same cast which is, in part, a shame as I'd like to see the other lot. However, if last night again is what I'm getting then bring it on.

Disc of the Day #20 - Le Nozze di Figaro ROH

Mozart - Le Nozze Di Figaro [DVD] [2006]
Disc of the Day #20 is odd for two reasons: it's two discs not one and, more importantly, it's a DVD.

This particular Figaro is the Royal Opera House's current David McVicar production and is quite possibly the most complete realisation of an opera I've ever seen (I saw it at Covent Garden three times but it works just as well on DVD). The drama is full of comedy, wit and - vitally - humanity.

Our cast, which is uniformly excellent both vocally and dramatically, is:

Figaro - Erwin Schrott
Susanna - Miah Persson
Count Almaviva - Gerald Finley
Countess - Dorothea Roschmann
Cherubino - Rinat Shaham

the ROH forces are conducted by Antonio Pappano.

Schrott is a vigorous, passionate Figaro who gets the balance just right between being nobody's fool yet not quite the brains of the operation. That role goes to Susanna, who is delightfully played by Miah Persson. She combines a delicate sweetness with a clear love for both Figaro and the Countess without falling into the trap of over-sweetness (she is, after all, the central figure in this opera, no matter what the title tells us).

Gerald Finley's count is an intelligent, dark character who knows exactly what he's doing. The age-old question of whether he truly repents at the end is answered (as it always is) by the orchestra - Mozart's sublime, human melody leaves no room for anything other than true humility and repentance on the part of the Count. Whether he feels the same way in the morning is another matter...that's life though, just because you feel something to the exclusion of anything else one day doesn't mean that's how things will be in perpetuity. My guess is that he's off chasing the ladies again by the end of the run.

Opera directors dealing with 18th (and 19th century) repertoire face a similar dilemma to their theatrical counterparts when faced with Shakespeare; with so many years of performance history out there should they do something new and thought-provoking or rely on the traditional? Happily McVicar manages the perfect balance here, highlighting the inner workings of the drama within a traditional production and adding a whole host of deft touches that help the text sparkle anew. This DVD is a wonderful document of a brilliant production and the perfect argument to counter all those who would have us believe that opera is no longer relevant or necessary. It is both and so much more.

Great writing: Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark

"The frail, brightly painted desert town was shaded by the light-reflecting, wind-loving trees of the desert, whose roots are always seeking water and whose leaves are always talking about it, making the sound of rain"

Books: The Elements of Style

The Elements of Style

Buy this book - it's brilliant.

Slightly longer version...

I started writing as part of my day job. At first it was bits of copy for web pages and the odd page or two of text. Gradually it became a bigger part of the job and I edited a magazine for a few months, edit and write a regular newsletter and also wrote a book (The Essential Guide to Flatsharing).

The more I needed to write the more I needed to know how to write. Writing for the web requires a definite sense of brevity and knowing how and what to edit. The Elements of Style is a great guide when it comes to this. The main focus is getting people to write well and cleanly which is a real skill. Don't get me wrong, I love reading novels that use language with flair and style and some people pull that off brilliantly - some people. Otherwise I'm more impressed by writers (and Mark Haddon is a great example of this) who are good at stripping away anything unnecessary and just getting on with telling you a story.

This little book (for little it certainly is) practices what it preaches. Read it on one go, carry it round in a pocket for unexpected train delays, keep it by the loo...wherever you dip into a book have this book to dip into.

I've just finished my first novel and the amount of editing I've done as a dirct result of this book is huge. I'm not claiming I'm an a amazing writer (I have a long way to go to even get close to competent!) but I'm learning more as I write (and read) more.

Buy this book, read it then re-read your writing and see what happens. Every writer should own a copy of this book - whatever they write.

Books: Songs of Triumphant Love - Jessica Duchen

Songs of Triumphant Love

I'd already read Jessica Duchen's Hungarian Dances and very much enjoyed it. When I started the research for my 2nd novel I had stumbled upon Jessica on Twitter and thought, as an author and music writer, she may be able to point me in the direction of some good novels that featured opera singers, so fired off a quick Tweet. I soon got several replies mentioning books she thought I should read, plus "my latest, Songs of Triumphant Love, is about an opera singer." So I ordered a copy.

Having read the blurb I instantly worried that Jessica had already beaten me to it and written the book I had in mind ("feel the fear and do it anyway!" she was kind enough to encourage). Only one way to find out - I started reading.

Now, first up, there are two things wrong with this book - neither is the fault of the author. The first is the jacket design which, while beautiful, is entirely intended to make the book look as close to The Time Traveller's Wife as possible. The second is the blurb. I know its hard to sum up a novel in a few words but the summary on the back cover really doesn't do justice to the breadth and depth of this book. If I'd picked it up in a bookshop, never having heard of Jessica, I'd probably have put it back, thinking it was likely to be a bit...well...floppy!

No so. This is a wonderful book that somehow manages to do what a good book should; it takes a personal story, complicates it with inter-personal relationships then offsets the whole thing against the extra-personal to connect with the wider world. Songs of Triumphant Love pokes a hole in the fabric of the universe (like the crack in Terri's front wall or the rip in her silk dress) and lets us peer in, allowing the reader one of those rare moments that can only be achieved by art in which we see that (as Walt Whitman would have us believe in Song of Myself) we are all part of a bigger picture and nothing is in or of itself alone.

Cracks (in walls, dresses, sanity, voices) are a powerful image. As Leonard Cohen puts it "Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in."

I loved this book. I've realised that, while mine will probably have some overlap in terms of theme and setting, it's going to be a totally different novel and is worth writing for its own sake. It will, undoubtedly, be a better book than it would had I not read Songs of Triumphant Love.

Disc of the Day #19 - Dvorak - Russalka

Dvorák - Rusalka
I've had a copy of this knocking about for ages now and never got round to listening to it so, as a result, all I really knew of the opera was the famous 'Song to the Moon'. I've got a soft spot for folksy and/or myth-related opera anyway (e.g. Der Freischutz, Smetana's Bartered Bride, Hansel und Gretel, Tristan..., Orff's Der Mond and so on) so it should be up my street.

I have to say I'm loving it so far (on first couple of listens). There's something about the old state-run labels (Melodiya, Hungaroton and, in this case, Supraphon) that often means you get a great recording complete with good singing and an overall air of authenticity that results in a fantastic first experience of an opera written in the language native to the country in question. There's also a really strong tie-in to the themes of the second novel I'm writing but I'll say no more about that at this point as I have no idea where it's going to end up yet (my first started as a story about a group of five kids who make up their own mythology and ended up as nothing of the sort).

Anyway, I'll keep listening. I suspect I'll only have a better idea of just how much I like the opera once I get a chance to see it in the theatre so here's hoping that chance comes sooner rather than later.