Viva Lewes issue #113 February 2016

in town this month: opera
Much ado about ‘Nothing’
Glyndebourne’s latest youth opera
Conductor Lee Reynolds
is Music Director of the
Glyndebourne Youth
Orchestra and the Kantanti
Ensemble and has conducted
many recording sessions
with the LSO. Paul Austin
Kelly hooks up with him to
hear about a new opera in
which a group of teenagers
try to come to grips with
the meaning of life.
Lee, I know you
are heavily involved
in Glyndebourne’s
education programme.
Tell us about that.
Alongside the education
projects that run all
year round, every three
years Glyndebourne
stages a newly commissioned opera as part of its
education programme. Imago, in 2013, was for
community performers of all ages, and it won
the following year’s RPS Award for learning and
participation.
What’s this year’s composition? The 2016
piece is Nothing, with music by David Bruce, and
is for a chorus of 14-19 year-olds, alongside five
young professional principals. The Southbank
Sinfonia will be in the pit, mentoring young instrumentalists
from Sussex. What makes this even
more special is that Glyndebourne invests all the
same forces and values in this production as it
would for any main stage show in the festival or
the tour. It’s a wonderful opportunity for young
people to be part of something run with professional
standards.
And where do you fit in? My roles are as Assistant
Conductor and Chorus Master, working
alongside conductor Sian Edwards.
How do you and the Glyndebourne staff go
about rehearsing these
young performers? Because
of the professional
expectations, the onstage
performers, whatever their
age, are expected to arrive
at the first production call
knowing their music from
memory, so we provide
ten preparation sessions
for the young chorus in
advance of the production
calls. From then onwards,
they’re not allowed a
book in their hand during
rehearsals.
Tell me about David
Bruce’s music. It can be
punchy and rhythmic, and
at other times shatteringly
beautiful, but always with
virtuosic orchestration and ‘a really good sing’
for the onstage performers. David’s music hits
that sweet spot of being really challenging, but
absolutely worth the effort needed to get it right.
So what stage are we currently at? Having
had our ten preparation sessions, we’ve had a
rare chance to put the orchestra and onstage cast
together very early in the process, so they had
a read-through with the chorus supplying the
music they’ve been learning. Next we go back to
piano rehearsals in the studios, and the orchestra
will rehearse separately until we put things back
together shortly before we open in late February.
Because it’s brand new, you can’t ask the performers
to go away and listen to the CD! So, finding
ways of helping them lodge the music in their
memories is a constantly evolving problem. Some
of the cast have lots of experience of new pieces,
and others are attempting the task for the first
time. Paul Austin Kelly
25th-27th Feb, glyndebourne.com
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