Salisbury Cathedral.

                      This is Charlie Hopkinson's portrait of my rose.

                It was taken at Chelsea Flower Show for Country Life 2004.

Preparing repertoire for a Cathedral is never simple.

Understanding the acoustic and perhaps more importantly how to use it, is everything, and this one has a fairly long reverberation of perhaps half a second.....500 milliseconds. This is the way in which we dissect sound when editing recording.

I've sung in Salisbury a couple of times and while the sound I make has to reach the back easily, and needs to be big enough to arrive well, it can take so long to do so that I'm already well ahead with the follow-on. This makes for aural confusion for everyone and needs very specific delivery and content so :-

 

No very fast coloratura or runs. These don't come over cleanly.

 However impeccably they are sung these just sound muddy from the back of the aisle, and no big, soupy lines with lush accompaniment either. These get lost in a mush as do most words, at least in the Latin languages no matter how clearly they are pronounced..."Sempre la Pronuncia!" my Italian coaches chant at me. So German or English with it's more broken line  and percussive text is easier for the listener in an acoustic like this, but is less beautiful musically.

I work away at the magnificent Ave Maria by Mascagni, written as the Intermezzo for Cavalleria Rusticana....the Easter Hymn has a ravishing rising, diminishing arpeggio to a pianissimo top note at the end which has to float perfectly atop the spire. This is where I can really use the tremendous height. The sound I make has to emerge from the top of my head and hover, as well as project forward and all around to at least 500 yards.

Then there is the Rusalka aria to the moon. This is in Czech, and while the line and melody are glorious, the language just breaks it up enough, and musically the end should be thrilling.

 Most of my anguished ladies don't have a chance here, but Desdemona's "Salce, Salce" with her Ave Maria works well. It is a long scena but so skillfully crafted by Verdi that the drama really holds the audience in such a big space, leaving us all with a deep sense of completion. Unlike the theatre, a Cathedral is long but without the embracing arms of an opera house, or the eliptical "ear" of a theatre auditorium.

In Wells Cathedral I once began the second half with the melancholy introduction to the last act of Traviata, and we glided gently into a long jazz medley of Gershwin, Cole Porter and Irving Berlin while everyone fell about in the aisles.........That was FUN!