Jessica Dean and Anthony Hunt

We’ve managed to upload a few more photos from recent productions.  Click “photos” above!

Well, it’s hard to believe that it’s June already, but here it is.  In fact, it’s nearly July!   In a weeks time, we will be heading to Italy for two weeks, on an Italian course in Liguria, before heading home, for a break, AND to work with State Opera of SA on The Marriage of Figaro.

The last term at the Academy has been very busy, as always.  Once the exciting and brilliant La Calisto was out of the way (in which Jess had the title role - pictured), there was a substantial batch of opera scenes (tableaux) that took up most of the rest of the term.

Next week, our last week of term, Jessica is performing in a concert of Purcell’s King Arthur, conducted by early-music specialist Laurence Cummings, and Anthony is performing a concert of Schumann songs (both Robert and Clara) on early 19th Century pianos in the Academy’s York Gate Museum.

We are both very excited about next year at the Academy, and the new challeneges and opportunities it will present.  First up will be everyones favourite fairytale opera, Hansel and Gretel.

The holidays will be here very soon, and the new academic year is creeping up not far behind.  Therefore we are in full swing in terms of fundraising and grant applications for our second year.

Anthony recently had some success in the Musicians Benevolent Fund round of grant competitions, winning a 3000 pound Repetiteur’s award, which will go towards living expenses.

We are always very keen for people to be able to support us as we study overseas, as the costs are almost unbelievably enormous - we are still needing to find quite a substantial amount to help with living, and particularly the remainder of Jessica’s course fees for next year.

If you are interested in supporting us in any way for our final year, or know of people who may wish to sponsor or become patrons of our development, then we can highly recommend that you investigate the Australia Cultural Fund, which we have used successfully since last year.

The Australia Cultural Fund now has a website, on which our project is listed, with details for making a tax-deductible donation online.  The Australia Cultural Fund, run by the Australia Business Arts Foundation, has been an extremely valuable tool in helping us in our time in London, with a combination of small and large donations making a vital difference, helping us directly.  Click on the link below.

The Australia Cultural Fund at ABAF

Without further ado, we are in February already!

Time has a habit of passing quickly in London, when one spends an hour on the bus getting to college and an hour getting back, in the dark of winter, it can seem quite depressing. People are always huddled up in their coats, focussed on getting home as quickly as possible, which of course never goes to plan, as the bus is diverted, or the tube is delayed. Even more disappointing is the distinct lack of snow in London this January! We were promised a little by the meteorologists one weekend, but in the event it didn’t materialise! Although it is still quite cold, I suspect the opportunity for snow has passed.

January is really the tale of the Opera Scenes. First day back, the Academy Opera had three weeks in which to rehearse and stage over an hour and a half of selected opera scenes. Anthony and Stephen Wood, the second year repetiteur, shared the work of conducting and playing for the scenes, which was a great pleasure; particularly as Anthony got to conduct the Flowermaidens scene from Parsifal - something particularly satisfying about 12 amazing women singing such brilliant music! Ingeneously staged by John Ramster, the drama teacher at the RAM, we had the girls being rudely interrupted by Parsifal, arriving in confusion on stage in bathrobes and towels on their heads, before they all whipped offstage for a magical transformation into slinky black dresses!

Jessica’s role during the scenes, aside from as one of the Flowermaiden’s (2nd group, 1st maiden for you Wagner-ites!) was as Le Feu (the Fire) in Ravel’s L’enfant et les Sortileges. This is in anyones book a very demanding sing, and even more demanding when dressed up as a Kylie Minogue showgirl, running about the stage! Unfortunately, Jessica was taken by a nasty chest infection, very unusual for Jess, and was unable to perform on the first night. Despite the continuing illness, she did have a little more voice for the second night, and so soldiered on to perform the L’enfant scene, disguising as much of her illness as her voice would allow!

We were very glad to be able to return to Adelaide for Christmas, not just for the festive season, but also to make sure we were present at Jessica’s Grandfather’s 90th birthday celebrations. This was a particularly special day for everyone, and we were so glad to have been able to come back for it, and have a sing-a-long around the piano with the relatives.

We were able to get as much sun as possible, and Anthony was able to make a few circumspect appearances around town, playing organ for the Adelaide Chamber Singers, and at St Peter’s Cathedral - he had an absolute ball playing for midnight mass, and very good to catch up with friends there.

Here we are at Brighton beach (the one in Adelaide, not England!! - obviously!)

The major event for the first term was, of course, The Marriage of Figaro, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and directed by John Copley. This was a mammoth undertaking for everyone involved, but Jessica was thrilled to be given the role of Barbarina, which, if you don’t know Figaro, is a lovely small role for a young soprano with a beautiful aria at the opening of Act Four.

Many of the principal roles had already been rehearsing since the end of the previous year, so it was pretty much straight into Figaro rehearsals from day one. Anthony was involved particularly with preparing the covers for a seperate mini-performance, and is also now, amongst other things, an experienced surtitle operator! Figaro was such a pleasure to work on, it is of course one of the greatest operas ever written, and John Copley’s insight into the libretto was extraordinary.

I think Figaro is one of those pieces that will come up time and time again for anyone involved with opera. It is well loved by audiences and performers alike for very good reasons; the apparent charm and simplicity of the music very carefully drives the action, and the witty humour throughout make all the characters loveable, and particularly believable. And, of course I’m sure it is universally acknowledged that the fast and furious Finale to Act 2 is one of the greatest scenes ever written for the stage.

Below: Jessica as Barbarina with, Lucie Spickova (Cherubino), Lisa Crosato (Countess) and Dong Jun Wang (Count.)

Now that we have this site back up and running, time to do a few updates to get through the backlog of news!
Firstly, it is great to report that we are both back in Australia for Christmas as we had planned. We have a month here in the sun, which, aside from a few little gigs around town, will be spent relaxing and preparing all the music for the next term at the Academy - of which there is a lot!

It has been three months in London now, and time has flown faster than seems possible. There are a couple of photos here around the Academy, and in our flat, which has proved an excellent little place.

Probably the first major event that we were involved in was the performance of the Flowermaidens Scene from Wagner’s Parsifal. This was organised with the London Wagner Society, and The Rehearsal Orchestra (conducted by Tony Legge, head of Royal Academy Opera (RAO)). It was a really entertaining afternoon, spent rehearsing with the orchestra in the afternoon, and then shown to members of the Wagner Society and other interested parties later in the day. The soloists playing Klingsor/Kundry/Parsifal were excellent, and the girls of RAO had a great time with the luscious music.

Also in the first months at the Academy, Anthony was fortunate enough to win the Scott Huxley Award for Piano Accompaniment, an internal Academy competition for the Accompanists at the RAM.

We also got along to see a performance of Das Rheingold (more Wagner!) at the Royal Opera House, who put on a special student-only performance. This was a good performance, although we have to say, the Adelaide Ring definitely has the edge! And we had a lovely weekend in London with our friend Pelham, who took a break in his studies at the Cardiff International Academy of Voice to come down and visit Hampton Court Palace with us.

More to come…

Well, we have had our first few whirlwind days in London! (And finally been able to sit down at a computer and make a post to this website!)

Whirlwind is probably an understatement for the past three days.  The packing and the flight was was the easy bit!  Of course, the most important piece of information on arrival was the Tube strike - perfectly timed for our arrival, of course!  This we successfully navigated to find our little flat in West Kensington, in time to have a quick breakfast at a nice local cafe before meeting the landlord.  Given that this is London, this cafe, I think, deserves the award for “most-freakishly-clean” cafe in the world - it is pristine inside, but the staff go the extra mile; not only do they do everthing with plastic gloves, but they use tongs to take the money off you, and tongs to pick up the notes and coins from the till, placing them carefully in a plastic tray which they then pick up with the tongs, tipping your change into your hands.  Kinda weird, it leaves you feeling dirty for no reason!

Our flat is excellent - small, but not tiny thankfully.  Probably it’s biggest drawback is the noise - it’s right on the corner of Hammersmith Road (a busy main road) and North End Road (another pretty busy road.)  The living room/kitchen looks out over Hammersmith Road, and with the windows shut, the traffic is a comfortable dull roar - but it is so hot here currently (it doesn’t need to be very hot temperature-wise for London to feel VERY hot and muggy) that windows open are a must (the British have no concept of air-conditioning), so the noise is pretty in your face much of the time.  That said, it’s amazing what you get used to.  We put on a recording of Pavarotti to have a listen to the late and great man, and didn’t really notice the traffic until a truck-horn rudely interrupted the glorious top-C in “Che gelida.”

If you don’t already know, we are sharing this flat with Eleanor Blythman, our good friend and soprano who is also studying here, but at the Royal College of Music (the OTHER great London institution!) and her husband Clint, who is just about to start a stint teaching, at London’s largest Sikh school.  It’s nice to have those friends as support while we’re here in the “big unknown” - although it doesn’t really feel that unknown thankfully, as we’ve been here a couple of times at least.

Probably our most thrilling (?) experience so far has been that of Argos.  When you need home-appliances, and you need them quickly and cheaply, we were told Argos was the way to go.  I knew it was a budget shopping experience, but I didn’t realise quite HOW budget!  Never again!  The shop front itself if very small - you walk in, pick up one of the telephone-directory sized catalogues, browse for the products you need (such as a kettle for £4!), and note down the catalogue numbers.  Then you take your “order” to desk, where you pay for it (having never seen or touched the product) and go to the “pick-up” desk (see photo), where your ordered items turn up on a conveyor-belt in a few minutes.  This sounds like an efficient, if unrewarding shopping experience, but in practice it seemed anything but efficient.  Surrounded by crying children, frustrated and overworked staff, and angry customers, it was a horrible shopping experience.

Oh, and we’ve been to the first couple of “freshers” introduction days at the RAM!  (Surely that’s important?!) These were great fun - lots of information to soak up, but it is such a friendly and welcoming place.  More on all THAT later!  Meanwhile, I eagerly await the arrival of my digital piano from Australia, so I can start practicing all the various things I need to.  It will be a pretty unpredictable sort of time I think.  The Royal Academy Opera is run a bit like a company, and you get your schedule for the following week on the Friday before.  It is a constantly changing sort of schedule, seems to be stuffed full of all sorts of coachings, with all the coaches at the RAM, not just your regular coach (of which Jess’s is Mary Hill,) plus a LOT of movement and acting classes in the weekly schedule.

Excitingly for me, I seem to be the only repetiteur on the course in my year, and there is one rep in second year - so just the two of us, I think I’m going to be BUSY!

Enough, as unfortunately I think I have a mild dose of aeroplane-flu, and must confine myself to bed for a little while.