Can you tell us about your role at OHP?
I am a 2025 Young Artist with Opera Holland Park. I have the fantastic opportunity to rehearse and perform the role of Nicholas Lofte this season. Along with this I will be working in community outreach projects which I am very much looking forward to.
What are you most looking forward to about this role?
In the final scene of Itch, Nicholas Lofte goes through an emotional journey that, in another opera, could be stretched out over an hour. This intensity of emotion coupled with some demanding singing is a challenge which I am looking forward to tackling both in the practice room and later on in the rehearsal room.
What do you hope to learn or gain from the Opera Holland Park Young Artists scheme?
I want to further develop my stagecraft, rehearsal techniques and character development skills. But perhaps most importantly I hope to learn something I don’t know that I don’t know.
In the past I have found that when I walk away after finishing a project knowing something new that I didn’t know I needed to know I am left with an impactful lesson for the future.
What are your first steps when preparing for a new role?
I would like to say I first:
- Read the libretto in detail
- Research the historical context of the work
- Research the character, opera, librettist and composer
- Etc.
In reality, I flick through the score as fast as possible, only reading my line and bookmarking each entry I have. Then, I jump to the piano, start playing my line and wonder why I can’t sing them straight away! Then I realise I need to take it easy and do the real first steps of learning a role. But the excitement of flicking through a score for the first time, especially a contemporary work such as Itch is thrilling!
Itch is a character who regularly finds himself in trouble, including burning off his own eyebrows. Can you share a time when something has gone wrong onstage while you’ve been performing?
Things always go wrong on stage and trying to fix them in front of a live audience is always terrifying but exciting. However, what was not very exciting and very much terrifying was my first experience of something going truly wrong. I was 14, singing Javert’s Suicide, Les Misérables in a school concert in front of 500 or so students, parents and teachers. The opening couple minutes went great. I was really ‘in it’. Then I was very much ‘out of it’. I held a note too long, the pianist kept going and when I started listening again I was in no man’s land. I knew we were a few bars on, but I had no idea how we got there. I froze, the pianist stopped, we looked at each other, then in what felt like an eternity I said to myself just sing the next thing I remember. I jumped to the end of the song, acapela, hoping for the best. The pianist flicked to the end and joined in. We were in completely different keys, I jumped around vocally and landed just about on the right note by the very end. People still clapped. I learnt a huge amount from those three minutes or so, mainly always listen to what’s happening around you!
Do you have a dream role that you’d like to perform one day?
I used to and maybe I will again. But for now, the more roles I get the opportunity to study and perform, the more hidden gems I find within them and that’s enough for me.
What’s one piece of advice, musical or otherwise, that has stayed with you?
Don’t try to be anyone else, there’s only one of you.
Interview by Holly Bancroft.
