Monday
Our summer festival has started in earnest: Day 1 of London production rehearsals for the first of our three operas, Tosca, in the capable hands of director Christopher Luscombe, designer Simon Higlett and conductor Francesco Cilluffo.
They have triumphed twice before for us with Falstaff and The Yeomen of the Guard. The opening day of rehearsals feels a bit like the start of the summer term: cast, chorus, stage management, creative team and artistic management all gather in the same room for the first time. They get to experience the vision for the production first hand, with a model of the set and costume designs all on display. Nerves tingle a bit because this is traditionally the first moment when a diva principal might take a look at what he or she is going to be doing for the next few weeks, react badly and noisily exit the room with the parting words “I go airport”. I’ve known it happen abroad, but luckily, so far, never at The Grange Festival. Well, almost. Once.
Tuesday
Off to another London rehearsal room first thing to see how a completely separate team is handling initial music rehearsals for our second production, L’incoronazione di Poppea – like Tosca, set in Rome, but there the similarities end. There are entirely different musical and dramatic demands, baroque instruments, and an artistic idiom and mindset for the performers. Some of the cast are well versed in baroque rhetoric and declamation, while others are clearly less so, but they have time. Our remarkable Italian language coach, Matteo Dalle Fratte, is helping them. He presents me with a signed copy of his new book on singing in Italian, The Melofonetica Method. It’s all in there, scarily.
Then it’s off to meet with a script writer, introduced through a festival Trustee who runs a film production company, and spend a couple of hours sharing insights into what being an opera singer entails, with particularly regard to Maria Callas, the subject of the six-part TV series he has been commissioned to write.
Afterwards, I rush out of London to a fascinating roundtable discussion with our Learning Team and others, where I eavesdrop on their plans for our annual devising week. During this event, a hundred teenagers come to The Grange and create their own opera. This year the subject is AI. The talk is impressively well-informed and productive. I listen, for the most part.
Wednesday
After an early morning email catch-up, I check in with our office team in Hampshire. Our 146-page programme booklet is a couple of days away from its final deadline – still far too much to correct, proofread and even write. I commission
all the articles and have to write a “Welcome” and various other sections. We’re nearly there, but it’s tight, as always.
At least our cover design has gone to the printers, but there is still advertiser copy to chase, and thousands of supporters’ names to check. Thankfully, the team is on it. I marvel at how we can put on such a full, ambitious festival with such a tiny skeleton office team. Welcome to the arts in the UK – too dependent on goodwill, which isn’t inexhaustible.
Later, there’s a senior management meeting to discuss next season’s repertoire, which has undergone several changes already. The Board requires us to keep making further adjustments until they are happy. Painful. With a month to go before the start of the festival, our current box office numbers for this summer are wonderful for Tosca, the ballet and our two jazz evenings, and fairly good for Poppea. The Rake’s Progress is a little behind, but as that opens later in June, I am hopeful that tickets will sell. Ultimately, it’s a business and we live or die by sales.
In the evening, it’s another joyous seasonal rite of passage with our annual Volunteers’ Party, hosted by our Patrons (also our landlords) Mark and Sophie Ashburton. Around 60 heart-warmingly committed locals join us. Throughout the festival they provide invaluable support with car parking, programme selling, seat showing and generally being the helpful, smiling face of the festival for our audience. We couldn’t do it without them.
Thursday
I begin the day with a 9am Zoom meeting with the technical team of our visiting ballet company, the National Ballet of Brno, who are opening the festival with Oktetto, specially curated for us. Unfortunately, their lighting board doesn’t align with ours, which means they can’t use their lighting designs. One of us has to spend money to get another, and after some good-natured negotiation, we resolve the issue satisfactorily.
Then, I have another Zoom meeting with our finance committee, bringing them up to date on current sales and necessary changes to this year’s budget. We then delve into a tense discussion about next season’s repertoire and performance numbers. It’s crucial to get them right. Our Finance Director Annabel Ross and Chief Operations Officer Michael Moody take most of the flak. It’s not easy putting on shows in the current post-Covid, war-stricken climate.
Following that, I head to London (I live in the rural south of England) to see how our chorus is doing during musical rehearsal for The Rake’s Progress. I am impressed. We have given the conducting gig for this show to Tom Primrose, our former Chorus Master. He is really well-prepared and is crystal clear on both language and music with our 24 young and top-notch chorus members (chosen from 300 applicants). Wow! It’s rare for chorus masters to be offered the top job and I am proud to have managed it – on this afternoon’s showing, it will be a triumph.
In the evening, we host a musical reception for 40 or so of our regular audience and supporters, together with a similar number from Bob and Elizabeth Boas’s twice-weekly concert series, held in their large music room in central London. This event focuses on Poppea – we have the conductor David Bates with Poppea, Nero and Ottavia (the latter in the form of the magisterial Anna Bonitatibus) performing and talking with entertaining insight.
Friday
I start the day with the Poppea production launch with the full cast and teams, albeit without the chorus. Director Walter Sutcliffe, now Intendant of Hallé Opera, and massively in-demand designer Jon Bausor (currently juggling Spirited Away in the Coliseum, King Lear on Broadway and other high-profile projects in Japan and South America) talk us through the design and the set details, thankfully no one “goes airport”.
Then it’s straight into rehearsals. My primary concern is ensuring all the singers are in the musical mode, and it’s pretty clear they are. Next stop: a tube ride for a Board meeting in Mayfair, which my senior management team and I know won’t be much fun. And it sure isn’t. We are just a part of opera’s challenge, particularly in the UK, where fewer and fewer titles are likely to fill auditoriums. The Grange Festival is one of 10 summer opera festivals all within a 90-minute drive of each other. That’s rather a lot of mainstream operas to programme. Ninety-year-old Glyndebourne leads, 40-year-old Garsington now thrives, and we all depend on strong brand loyalty. We need to keep building ours and expanding our audience. We’ll get there, I’m sure.
Afterwards I hot-foot it to meet our PR team, led by the seasoned Valerie Barber and her energetic young team. It’s important to have face-to-face interactions.
Saturday
After an intense three-way meeting an hour’s drive away with Tyler Stoops, our soon-to-start new CEO, and the Artistic Administrator Scott Cooper, a UK opera veteran with a rich background that includes starting in the Scottish Opera chorus and serving as a singers’ agent in London. He has been in his current role for over 15 years. Our Board tasked me with combining the roles of CEO and Artistic Director shortly after our launch eight years ago. Now, I’m happy to relinquish the office job (my first ever) to make way for a proper professional, well-versed in advanced marketing techniques and with experience at several leading international opera companies. We meet in Lewes, as Tyler leaves his job at Glyndebourne for us in late July. We have high hopes of Tyler Stoops, re-enforced with each meeting.
Returning home, I dive into my texts and emails, including a detailed concern – and solution – from Chris Luscombe about how the 12 children and 30 community volunteers, who are all on stage for the Te Deum scene in Tosca, can take their bow without interrupting the action too much. These seemingly trifling details always take weeks of working out. God is in the detail!
Sunday
I’m writing this on the most beautiful, still, sunny English spring day (a song thrush in full voice nearby), having been to church and contemplating a sun-drenched walk. My wife Irene returns from Greece in a few days. Our family all managed to be together last weekend on her little Aegean peninsula for Greek Easter – the most important day in the Greek calendar. Heaven. Tomorrow morning we start The Rake’s Progress production in earnest. Early start.
