Making Things Happen

One of the reasons we dashed down to Glasgow last week was to attend a Masterclass at Scottish Opera.

It's not often we have the opportunity to go to these but they fascinate me. I love watching the process of an older, experienced singer not only coaching a younger singer in technique, but passing on ideas and hints gained from a  lifetime  of performing.

We started sponsoring artists through Scottish Opera's Emerging Artist program a couple of years ago. This year 'our' singer is a young Russian, a  baritone who is a great admirer of Sir Thomas Allen . As huge fans of Tom ourselves this was one of the major  reasons behind our decision to support this singer rather than any of the others. We knew Alexey was keen to have the opportunity to study with TA so it gave us a huge amount of pleasure to be able to fund a masterclass with the two of them. 

They looked at Largo al Factotum from The Barber of Seville, a big sing in anyone's terms, especially  for Alexey who came straight from a day's rehearsing a completely different role. It was fascinating to watch the two of them refine the performance and once again to realise all the  detailed work that goes into making the difference between competent, good and great singing  - or in Tom's terms, between singing in Llandudno and singing in Milan. 

The passing on of tradition, of expertise, of wisdom, has always played a massive part in opera , more than in any other art than perhaps ballet. Being able to facilitate this in a small way was absolutely a privilege for us. And as far as we could ell, the participants and the small invited audience all enjoyed themselves very much in the process. Seemed like a win/win to me.