Salome 2024 Programme

BEING LIZ ROCHE...
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU WENT TO?
I’d say I was probably working on the first
opera that I went to. My strongest memories
of going to see an opera, wouldn’t have been
till I was in my 20s. I was dancing in a dance
company in Vienna, and you used to be able
to get really cheap standing tickets at the
Volksoper. It was one of those really lovely
summers, like boiling summers, and it was
my first summer in Vienna. I was feeling very
cultured and very with it. I watched the first
half of Puccini’s La bohème. It was the end
of a rehearsal day, so I was kind of tired. I
remember being amazed, because it was
completely packed and it was the height
of summer. It just felt like such a shared
experience, you know, everyone there was
overheating, standing beside each other. It was
a little strange because the production is so
about being cold and winter. I just remember
being kind of transported with the music and
feeling...I don’t know, feeling a bit like I’d
arrived in life or in adulthood. Because I could
go to the opera and I could do that on my own.
I think it’s the times where I’ve gone to see an
opera on my own that I’ve always felt are very
special. I don’t know why. I feel like having the
huge spectacle, and it’s all mine for myself,
is always very special. I remember going to
see a production of Salome in the Gaiety, in
Opera Ireland’s production [in 1999]. Again,
I was sitting there on my own and just got
transported. Yeah. I always find that the
ability to be transported into another place,
and to just surf on the music and get lost in it,
is always very special for me. It’s very intense.
WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER FROM THE
FIRST OPERA YOU WORKED IN?
The first opera I danced in was when I was
16. It was Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, and
it was in the Gaiety. God, it’s a long time ago
[1992]. I was dressed in this kind of Harlequin
outfit and had to come out and do a little
dance on point. I must have been the party
entertainment or something. I had to enter
the stage and I had to be seated on one of the
other dancer’s shoulders. The prop corner
in the Gaiety wasn’t that high. So we were all
completely hunched over and being squashed
up into the ceiling and, you know, then sort
of pushing out on stage, and then the big
presentation. I suppose that was my first real
time immersed in opera. I was super young
and I probably didn’t realise fully what I was in.
WHAT WAS THE BEST OPERA-RELATED
ADVICE YOU EVER GOT?
You mean something somebody might have
said to me? It’s quite a shift in scale, as a
choreographer, to work in opera. I remember
being very intimidated by it. You’re used to
being in a rehearsal room with maybe six
or seven dancers. And then all of a sudden
you’ve got like 40 chorus staring at you and
you have to keep everybody busy, work out
everybody’s role. It’s very intense. You really
have to know everything that’s going on.
That can be quite overwhelming. I remember
doing a production of Verdi’s Aida in Seoul,
for the National Opera of Korea. It was the
biggest thing I’d ever been part of, in this
enormous opera house, in an enormous
production. They did the full ballet in Aida,
and they brought in a circus troop from from
China. So there was a translation thing going
on as well. I thought my head was going to
explode. I just remember people around me
saying, just roll with it. Because I thought
I could control it, I thought I could make it
work, and then I felt it was absolutely beyond
me. But if you just roll with the energy and
what’s happening, it’s sort of the better road
to take, I think.
WHAT’S THE MOST ANNOYING
MISCONCEPTION ABOUT OPERA?
I suppose that it’s not for everyone or, you
know, that it’s not relevant in a more modern
situation. Coming from a dance point of view,
I’m sure people feel like that about dance.
I can see sometimes when I walk into the
opera that it’s like a whole other ecosystem at
work here. There are different rules in terms
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Photo: Liz Roche.
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