Flora Willson
Flora is a Lecturer in Music at King’s College London, where she specialises in 19th-century opera. She is a regular guest on BBC R3 and also writes for The Guardian and Opera magazine.
Activity
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Flora Willson replied to David Murray
I’m delighted to hear you’ve enjoyed the course, David. Happy listening!
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Flora Willson replied to Claudia Conrad
Thanks, Claudia – I’m so glad you’ve enjoyed the course!
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Flora Willson replied to Nupur Tustin
Hi Nupur, I’m delighted to hear you’ve been enjoying the course – we had a brilliant time putting it together!
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Flora Willson replied to Esther Drewett
Hello both, sorry to hear you’ve found this irritating. I can assure you that we weren't reading from cue cards at any point (!) and were always looking into a camera when we were filming. But there’s almost always a second camera present, and switching between them is a filming technique that lots of production crews use at the moment. I imagine FL will see...
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Thanks for this, Efrossini. You’re right, it would’ve been lovely to be able to include some videos with the orchestral musicians as well. Sadly there was a limit to how much we could squeeze into a four-week MOOC! Another time, perhaps... But for now you might enjoy reading this: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/going-underground-a-day-in-the-life-of-the-orchestra-pit
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Good point, Michael! And I also saw Cave – do hope you enjoyed it. It was an amazing use of that space anyway, I thought.
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Hi Imelda, well spotted! The reason for the conductor’s absence in the list for 200 years ago is because conductors didn’t really exist then! The jobs we expect them to do today would’ve been split between the composer (as John suggests above), who would’ve taken charge of rehearsals and the lead violinist, who would’ve led performances (rather like chamber...
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Flora Willson replied to Sheila Moffatt
Hi Sheila, this is an interesting question! Also a slightly complicated one. Designs for a particular production will indeed be protected by law once they’ve been created, and so couldn’t be copied or altered by others after that without permission. But a director such as Katie Mitchell will generally always work on producing new productions, in collaboration...
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Hi Efrossini. Yes, the norm these days is for most companies to perform operas in the language in which they were written, so Rossini is usually performed in Italian, Wagner in German, Debussy in French, Tchaikovsky in Russian, etc. But that is a relatively new tendency (the Royal Opera House was still called the Royal Italian Opera and performed most works –...
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I can imagine you must need a lot of costumes even for amateur productions, Pamela! Actually the ROH costume department is also extremely large, though we couldn’t include enough images here to give you a full sense of its size. You might find this article interesting, though: http://www.roh.org.uk/news/backstage-with-the-roh-costume-department
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Flora Willson replied to Jenny Irvine
Very glad you’re enjoying it, Jenny!
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Hi Beth, a coloratura soprano specialises in singing lots of fast notes and ornamentation, often quite high up in the soprano range – so it’s usually a lighter, more agile voice than other types of soprano. If you haven’t already been using it, you might find the course glossary useful – inevitably it doesn’t have every possible term on it, but hopefully...
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Thanks, Mike – and welcome to the course! I hope you find it interesting, or can at least enjoy thinking about what it is you find difficult about opera. You may like to know, by the way, that audience-watching has been a major part of opera for much of its history...
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Flora Willson replied to Roger Bradwell
Glad you enjoyed the selection, Roger – we had fun putting it together.
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Flora Willson made a comment
Hello, everyone! Lovely to hear from so many of you and welcome to the course!
Do keep commenting and sharing your ideas – I‘ll be dropping in and out throughout, and every day one of our very friendly mentors will be around, reading your comments, answering any queries, perhaps even asking you the odd question... So please feel free to join in the...
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Welcome to the course, Graham – and here’s hoping that you find the course interesting even if you decide by the end of it that you still don’t much like opera!
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Hi Richard, I just checked this with someone in the stage crew at ROH who tells me that actually the glass isn’t there to protect us from hot glass. Instead, because the follow spot does indeed get very hot, it is fitted with a fan to keep it cool – but the fan itself is noisy, hence the glass screen to reduce noise from it!
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Hello Wenda and Barbara,
I just checked with the tech people at ROH about precisely where props are kept. They told me:
"The props for each performance are assembled in the side stage (the ‘wings’) on the props table, by one of the stage management team. They are responsible for making sure that all the props are in the right place, and that any items such... -
I wasn’t sure of the answer to this myself, Suzanne, but have now checked with the tech people at ROH, who told me:
"The lighting department have seconds for all bulbs. If a vital bulb pops during a performance, the lighting team make do as best they can until a suitable pause in performance or interval, during which they can change bulbs. The bulbs are...
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Flora Willson replied to Karen M
Hi Karen and Giulia,
I’ve been in touch with tech people at ROH to check about answers to your questions, since I’m not an expert on present-day backstage theatre terminology!
They tell me that the corona is technically called the oculus and that it has various functions: “Originally, it would have provided much needed ventilation for when the theatre...
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Hi Ann – from one Opera Machine addict to another, you might be glad to hear that you can actually access it separately (and thus long after your access to this course expires) here: https://www.roh.org.uk/interactives/opera-machine. It’s great, isn’t it?! Happy watching!
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Ooh how exciting! I’d join Jonathan in recommending Tosca – though if you're really keen on chorus action then I imagine that you'd also enjoy La bohème (they're both by Puccini and two of my all-time favourite operas personally!). Or L’elisir d'amore also has fun chorus numbers. That's an older opera and more of a romantic comedy (lots of good tunes); Tosca...
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Oops, and here is the link: http://www.stevereich.com/threetales_info.html
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I think you're right, Hetty! Wagner would almost certainly have been intrigued by the new multimedia art forms that have become possible in the age of film, video, and all things digital. You might both also be interested in this series of video-operas made by the minimalist composer Steve Reich in collaboration with the video artist Beryl Korot (who is also...
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Absolutely! Some of the first modern celebrities were opera singers, during the 19th century – and they ended up depicted on (or even endorsing) all kinds of merchandise!
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That’s a photograph of the Wiener Staatsoper (the Vienna State Opera) around 1900.
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Yes, much better to ask, Anna! Da Ponte was Mozart’s librettist, as Alex says – and those three operas are often collectively referred to as “the Da Ponte operas”. And now you know :)
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Flora Willson replied to Lyn Adams
Hello everyone!
As you’ve spotted, Lisa, the very earliest operas predated public theatres. They were performed in the court of whichever aristocrat had commissioned them, usually as part of a larger celebration or event – rather like you might hire a band for a wedding reception today! (Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo was staged as part of the annual Carnival...
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Good point, Michael! Both impresarios (until the mid-19th century) and conductors (from the late 19th century onwards) have certainly been extremely powerful figures in opera. The question, I suppose, is whether we're talking about the power balance when creating a new opera from scratch or staging an existing work – which also means whether we're talking...
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Wonderful – what a brilliant way to put it! And yes, like Figaro, Jo is an amazing multitasker...
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What an interesting discussion here!
Mitchell has actually directly a large number of operas, but I guess you’re referring to the split-stage effect that she used in both Lucia and Written on Skin, Bridget?
We’ll talk more about how relatively new the job of ‘opera director’ is later in this week's material, but Michael is right that people who direct...
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Hello everyone!
Caroline, I passed on your question to Amy and she's very kindly given me permission to share a bit more about her background with you all here.
Amy did lots of music as a child, studying piano, percussion, flute and, above all, singing. She started a Music degree but soon switched to English and instead did lots of musical performance...
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Thanks for this, Margaret. I'm mainly an academic and work with rather than for the Royal Opera House, so can’t answer all of these questions, but you might find this page of links and information interesting – all about ROH’s many outreach programmes and initiatives (which certainly does include working with schools): http://www.roh.org.uk/learning
As for...
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Thanks, Chris! Delighted that you're enjoying the course.
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Hi Margaret,
You're absolutely right – opera certainly doesn’t belong to ROH alone! But ROH _was_ the opera house we partnered with to make this course, and which gave us the kind of backstage access that will (I hope!) make next week's material quite special.Could you say anything more about your sense that the course is tending towards elitism? As you...
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Really interesting ideas here, Patdee. There are many more people out there taking the course than those commenting on it, so thank you for sharing _your_ thoughts, do keep doing so and please don’t be put off by any of the comments! There are many of us who feel really strongly that opera should be accessible and welcoming to anyone who wants to give it a go.
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Flora Willson replied to Caterina Baburina
You’re absolutely right, Caterina – thanks for spotting that. We prepared all of this text just as the new Jones La bohème was about to debut, so it must have been on someone's mind when they wrote the credit!
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Interesting idea, Lisa – and I think oddly enough it's actually quite close to what Britten himself was trying to do here! But there's certainly no need to like all opera – there’s far too much of it out there for that...
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What a lovely way of putting it, Laura! Glad you enjoyed this aria.
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Well, Mauro, you’ve drawn important distinctions there, between our interpretations today and what a composer might originally have intended.
We can never be entirely sure of the latter, sadly: sometimes composers did write letters explaining how particular moments were supposed to work, and we sometimes still have those today; but then composers also...
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A good point, Mariana! I’m afraid there's no simple answer to this one: changes in how voices are used (male voices in particular in this case) are obviously connected to some extent to broader expectations about gender roles in a given society at a given time. So one of the big contextual explanations here would have to do with gradually changing assumptions...
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Hi Giulia (and Thomas), you’re absolutely right that a company of singers would be hired for a whole season by an impresario, and that practice continued until the late 19th century in some places. There are plenty of examples in opera history of unsuitable singers not just performing roles but in some cases even “creating” them – ie. premiering them! In the...
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No need to apologise about the not-absolutely-operatic references, Alexa! What’s interesting from an operatic perspective is just how much musicals such as Les Mis have borrowed from opera. So what you say here is pretty much bang on, at least for the mid-/late-nineteenth-century operas from which Schönberg and Boublil learned so much.
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Hi Thomas, when singers talk about their "Fach" they mean the particular kind of voice they have, _within_ the broad categories of soprano, tenor, bass, etc. Those large-scale categories do tell us a certain amount about a singer’s range (which notes they can sing) and vocal colour (what the voice actually sounds like) but much less about how big a voice it is...
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Hi Patdee,
No need to be embarrassed! You're absolutely right that different kinds of plots and themes were common in opera at different times and in different places. The type of subjects that you have in mind – mythology or historical plots – were certainly common in operas written during the 19th century in France and Germany; Wagner, in particular was... -
Thanks, Mary Lou! Delighted that you're enjoying the course so far.
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I'm here, Rosalind! And very pleased to hear you're enjoying the course so far.
I'll be around from time to time and will certainly be interacting as much as I can – but I've also got a great team of postgrad students acting as mentors for the course: Claudia, Giles and Jonathan. So do look out for us, or pose questions if there's anything you'd like to...
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Goodness me, you're absolutely right, Fiona! Sorry that got past our proofreaders! Thanks for spotting the mistake: I’ll get it corrected as soon as possible.
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Yes, absolutely! Nicely put, Josephine.
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Hi everyone,
Lyn – you're absolutely right that this is complicated. These days, we think that we mustn’t change the score, whether it’s by Mozart, or Verdi or anyone else. We assume that would be to stray from the composer’s original intentions. In practice, however, conductors will often cut parts of operas or adjust details. We’ll come back to that later...
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Thanks, Melinda, we had fun putting it together!
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Flora Willson replied to Hefin Jones
Hi Hefin (and Sylvia),
I don’t think there are any rules as to whether or not you 'should' prepare before attending a performance. Hopefully any good performance will communicate something to you, whether or not you know anything about what you're about to see!
That said, it's much easier these days to find out a bit about a piece before you go to see...
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Flora Willson replied to Lisa Caffee
You're welcome, Lisa! There are lots of us out here who want to make opera as accessible as possible, and I hope this course will make a positive difference of some some :) Happy listening.
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Welcome to you all! Looking forward to seeing your thoughts and ideas over the coming weeks.
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Hi everyone, these are great suggestions, and I hope my post above might also help. Opera can certainly be expensive – but it isn’t always. And in my experience it's usually less expensive than people expect: that’s one of the problems with its reputation today!
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Do you mean attending opera in general, Frances? Well, the bad news is that it’s one of the most expensive art forms in the world to produce (no wonder opera is in many ways the origin of the Hollywood blockbuster film!), so there are simply large costs to cover.
But the good news is that it certainly isn‘t always expensive to go to opera: if you know...
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I’m sorry you found that patronising, Margaret: it was intended to be precisely the opposite. For many people who haven’t got much personal experience of opera, I think those are the kind of associations the art form often has – and sadly it can be very off-putting.
But it's certainly interesting to think about what other associations opera might have...
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You’re welcome, Susan!
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This is a really interesting comment, Sarah -- thanks. I think you're absolutely right, that DVDs and cinema broadcasts can allow us to sit in the best seat in the house (or even in multiple seats in a single performance!), which can be a really exciting experience. But it's certainly a different experience to what you get in a theatre, where you're physically...
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What a wonderful memory, Jane. Thanks for sharing it with us.
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Flora Willson made a comment
What a fantastic set of comments you've contributed here! These are all fantastic ideas about and recollections of opera turning up in everyday life! I've found them so interesting to read, thank you.
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Flora Willson replied to Anne Craig
Hello, Anne. I think what Roger means by "angular vocal declamation" is vocal lines (ie. the tunes that are being sung) that aren't necessarily straightforward or easily memorable: I don't know whether or not you read musical notation, but imagine drawing a line to represent a tune such as "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" – it would probably be quite a smooth...
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Flora Willson replied to Ben Bor
Hello everyone, this is a fascinating discussion! You might be interested to hear that translating opera for performance in the "local" language is a very old practice, whereas the idea that we should always perform it in the language it was originally written in is comparatively modern.
But just to complicate things, most opera performances in London...
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That's certainly one of the stories that are often repeated about Wagner and his anti-semitism, Fernan – and which Wagner himself worked to establish later in his life. We have to recognise, though, that for all that Wagner later came to resent Meyerbeer (and especially Meyerbeer's success in Paris), Meyerbeer had been extremely supportive of the younger...
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Flora Willson replied to Pam B
Thanks for sharing your story, Pam! You're absolutely right that digital media have allowed many more people than ever before to access opera, which I think is a wonderful thing.
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Flora Willson replied to ernesto arcos
A good point, Ernesto! I didn’t necessarily mean “unrealistic” as a criticism!
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Flora Willson replied to Wynne Lewis
I think that's a really important point, Wynne: ultimately we can‘t (or shouldn't) think about opera's relevance or significance in a vacuum; it is one of many art forms about which we might ask the same questions. I suppose the particular challenge that opera poses these days is the fact that it does cost so much to produce – much more than most other art...
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Thanks, Birgitte -- that's very kind of you!
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Flora Willson replied to Chris Kaday
You’re absolutely right, Liz, that the cost of cheaper opera tickets is (so far as I’m aware!) significantly less than either tickets for Premier League football or many major pop or rock concerts. One major difficulty is that there is _still_ a widespread public perception that the cost of going to see an opera is much more expensive than it actually is (or...
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Flora Willson replied to Dale Lauchlan
Great to hear this, Dale!
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Flora Willson replied to Anne Craig
Well, you’re absolutely spot on there, Anne. But actually, Joan, singers DO almost certainly have more projecting-power today than they did say 200 years ago, tenors in particular. The kind of power to carry over a large orchestra that Wagnerian tenors (or “heldentenors”) can muster would have been unthinkable before the mid-19th century; and there was also an...
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Hi Sheila, thanks for your comments. There are strict legal restrictions on images and videos that we can embed in course videos; I wish it were as simple as being able to include whatever I thought would be interesting or relevant for you all to see! It's great that you’re able to share YouTube videos as links in the comments sections, however, and I’m...
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Flora Willson replied to Ol Rappaport
Delighted to hear this, Ol! Many thanks.
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Hi Wendy, I think there's a bit of both (and your two suggestions certainly aren’t mutually exclusive). Yes, we're more interested today in how particular pieces of music or operas came into being (their genesis) than most audiences have been for most of audience's history AND we tend to believe that understanding more about a work’s genesis will help us to...
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Very glad you’re enjoying it, Martin!
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Fabulous: very glad to hear you’ve enjoyed it, Edel!
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So glad you're enjoying it, Margaret!
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Flora Willson replied to Anne Craig
Oooh now the question of instruments changing is a really interesting one! And yes, modern instruments do sound quite different to those used, say, 250 years ago. Brass instruments, for instance have become MUCH more powerful in that time, so that trombones today are much, much louder than they would have been in Mozart’s time; and tubas are a 19th-century...
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Flora Willson replied to Martin Smith
Absolutely, Anne: in some cases, it's extremely difficult (or simply impossible) to point at a particular version of an opera and say THAT is the original version. So right from the start of putting together a modern performance, decisions have to be made about which score to use, or how to use the sources available to performers.
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Hello Agnes. I think the distinction here is between the fact that a composer’s sketches often weren't kept (and certainly weren't kept as if they were precious objects!) because they weren't considered to be important for much of opera's history. But if we're thinking about opera today, and trying to understand more about how certain operas came into being,...
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Flora Willson replied to Maura Pell
Great to hear this, Maura!
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That’s a really good point, Deborah: older opera houses in particular are usually extremely grand – literally monumental, in fact – and there’s usually a huge amount of architectural detail up high as well as at eye level. It’s all supposed to add to the general sense of grandiosity but can also tell us a lot about what opera was at the time the opera house...
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That’s a brilliant way of putting it, Arlette!
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I agree, Roger. Sadly, though, not everything that goes on backstage ends up on camera (even today!), and the presence of a camera crew would almost certainly make it more difficult for amazing multitaskers such as Jo to get their jobs done under pressure!
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You're absolutely right, Colin. But that raises the interesting question (which I think is also what Katie was getting at) of what should happen onstage while that music is doing the interpretative work – should singers just stand still and the audience should concentrate on that, or can an audience take in the music while also watching something happening? We...
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Flora Willson replied to Joan Greenleaf
Thanks, Joan – very glad you’ve been enjoying those extra links.
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Flora Willson replied to Jill Jenkins
I think orchestral musicians will often look as though they’re looking only at the music, Rosemary (and for good reason!) – but they'll be keeping an eye on the conductor and on their head of section as well. That's certainly the idea, anyway! And you don’t often hear ensemble problems (with the orchestra playing out of time with itself) in the pit of a good...
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Hi everyone, sorry I’ve only just spotted this thread now. It’s a really good question Jeffrey – and Martin is absolutely right: sets, costumes, props and everything else are put into store. The vast majority of productions are either revived in-house or sent off to other theatres (especially if they’re co-productions to begin with) and so the materials will...
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What a lovely way to put it, Naomi! Big opera houses really are like small towns (or perhaps like a walled medieval city), almost entirely self-sufficient once the raw materials have been brought in!
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Flora Willson made a comment
Hello everyone! A few learners have been asking about how Amy got to being a Head Staff Director... She's very kindly given me permission to share a bit more about her background with you here.
Amy did lots of music as a child, studying piano, percussion, flute and, above all, singing. She started a Music degree but soon switched to English and instead did...
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Your first question is an interesting one, Janet!
I suppose the idea of producing an opera without one person ultimately in charge raises different questions: how might an opera performance turn out if none of the people responsible for its different elements (music/text/staging) had spoken to each other at all before curtain up? or, as an alternative way...
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Good questions, Michele!
Conductors didn’t really exist 200 years ago: that job was mostly done by the violinist leading the orchestra. Orchestras in opera houses and concert venues first started being regularly directed by a separate conductor in the 1830s, as orchestras were expanding and so were becoming too difficult to keep together from...
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Flora Willson replied to Frances Aspinall
It was pretty magical for me too, Frances, when I found out there was a door there!
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Flora Willson replied to Monica Yarry
Glad you enjoyed that, Monica. I had so much fun filming the video down there...
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Flora Willson replied to Gary Kines
It's a lovely idea, Gary (and I agree that there's a whole second show going on behind the scenes – what a nice way of putting it). My guess is that having film crews scampering around backstage throughout a performance would seriously increase the workload (and sheer complexity of the job) of anyone working back there, under high pressure and in...
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Flora Willson replied to Alison CD
Thanks, Alison, that's very kind of you. I'm looking forward to seeing what you all make of Week 3 as well. I think it might have been my favourite to put together, if I had to pick one...
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Flora Willson replied to Paul Foss
Thanks, Paul! And better late than never, I suppose, so far as the availability of such courses goes!
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Flora Willson replied to Annie Becc
Wonderful, Annie -- so glad you're enjoying the course.
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By the way, if you're on the look-out for catchy tunes, you could try Figaro's entrance in Rossini's Il barbieri di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), which is the kind of Italian opera by which Sullivan was strongly influenced! I’m afraid this clip isn't subtitled, but Figaro is announcing his own arrival onstage with what is essentially an elaborate sales...
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Hi Christopher, thanks so much for joining the course and for your honesty! And in return I'll immediately say that there's absolutely no need for you to like opera! Perhaps you'll reach the end of the course and think 'no, I still don't think this is for me'. But if that's the case, I hope you'll feel you at least know a bit more about what you don't like and...
