Talking with singers: Neil Craighead

Interview

If he could go back and give himself some advice, however, Craighead would add in some encouragement. "I would tell myself that I was on the right track," he says. "I had a lot of the right instincts and a lot of the right tools given to me, but I just needed to trust them."

Gareth Mattey's Belladonna is "unashamedly queer"

Interview

Opera as an art form has always been very accepting of me and other LGBTQ+ people but rarely depicts us on stage. I feel like my work is attempting to develop an intervention in this; to focus on how opera has always delighted in plays of gender and sexuality and, in developing narratives around queer individuals (whether entirely original or adaptations) to bring back an understanding of opera as a strange, queer art form.

Roundtable: an operatic triple threat

Interview

Lots of laughter punctuated our shop talk and often the most memorable moments occurred during the singers' natural repartee. Below is a lightly-edited collection of answers to some of my questions, which I asked over the course of an hour-long conversation. Read on for a bit of insight into these three singers' lives and work.

Talking with singers: Franco Vassallo

Interview

When I was young I refused some roles because I thought I was not ready to face them. I thought I would have been appreciated for this sense of responsibility and respect for the audience and opera houses - instead, I discovered I had been considered a snob!

Talking with agents: Kathy Domoney

Interview

"Singers think I can wave a magic wand and fill their calendar with engagements - if only that were the case! I make it very clear to potential clients that my job is to open doors through auditions, and the singer's job is to present themselves at auditions with confidence, wonderful singing and a strong emotional connection to their arias."

A futuristic love story: The Invention of Morel

Interview

"He is a super-genius who has created an invention that will change life as we know it. He is in obsessive love with Faustine. He has invited Faustine and the remaining characters (in the opera) to the island to woo Faustine. His gambit is to spend the rest of his days with her. ...which is kinda creepy on any level."

Kyra Millan: making Opera for All Ages

Interview

"The singing can sound silly to some at first, because it is a very intense, open sound, but with some of the best music ever written in the hands of a skilled artist, live music can bypass the intellect and resonate directly with the soul and heart."

Talking with singers: Stephanie Blythe

Interview

Blythe approaches her recital work with a refreshingly casual air, as though she doesn't confuse her passion with taking it all too seriously. She has even graced the recital stage with her ukulele in hand, a more recent passion-project of hers. "I just did a recital in New York; here we are in Merkin Hall, singing 'Don't Fence Me In' and I was accompanying on ukulele."

A "rare event" at Chicago Lyric: Piotr Beczała in recital

Interview

"I am pleased to say that, in my experience, audiences outside Poland respond to Polish music with great satisfaction and enthusiasm. I appeared one-and-a-half months ago in Zürich with this same program and the great majority of the audience seemed smitten with the Polish portion of the program."

"Great Operas Don't Just Happen."

Interview

"We emphasize a very detailed outlining process at ALT, wherein the librettist and the composer create beat-by-beat outlines - for both the libretto and the score - before a word of the text or a note of the music is written. For a short piece, like those in the upcoming Living Libretto event, this might take one month. For a longer, full-length work, the planning process could take six months or more, especially if extensive research is required."