You've got sixty voices stood next to you
suddenly switched on
and all doing the same thing
it's fantastic.
When you're just in the middle of this glorious sound
and you're contributing to it
it's such a joy to be able to do that every night.
A lot of people ask you, is this your full-time job?
They ask you what you do with your days
and I say that's my day job as well.
It's a full-time job.
I've been in the Chorus now eight years. I still get a buzz walking up Floral Street.
It's just the most amazing building. Do I really work there?
It's just such a thrill. I never get over it, I don't think.
They do try to give us the morning off after shows
but when there's a lot of shows to do that's not always possible.
This morning I've got a costume fitting for Don Carlo
which is one of my favorite operas.
We're usually working on about 4 or 5 different operas at the same time
in lots of different languages. They can range from Czech
to French, German, Italian, Russian...
There's the Musorgsky opera Boris Godunov
which I just find impossible to learn. It's about four hours long
the Chorus are on all the time. It's all in Russian
and I'm sure any Russian people would be up in arms to hear me say this
but to my ear a lot of vowels sound the same
and a lot of the words sound the same
so I find that really difficult to learn.
We have a chorus here of 48 full-time singers.
That's supplemented by the extra chorus
and that can be 20 to 30 voices sometimes depending on the production.
We've been working on Nabucco for a long, long time now
because there's a lot to learn in it.
We've worked with Luisotti before
we know he is dynamic
You have to be a kind of drum
put a drum inside of the voice.
Very, very, very, very, very, very dark!
He asks so much of us. That's great.
...in sotto voce, but sotto voce doesn't mean piano.
He understands a lot about voice
so particularly when he was talking to the men and telling them to do this very 'rrrrrrr' noise
he was telling them how to do it safely.
...sotto voce is this one
so what's going on here
it is sotto voce
but you can hear very well
because I am doing sotto voce, fortissimo!
The result was fantastic.
They all sounded amazing and suddenly it was like 'wow'.
There's an awful lot of words, tens of thousands of words stuffed into this head.
We become a specific memory vessel
because you learn things for a very specific period of time.
Then it disappears and it goes into the drawer
somewhere at the back here
then three years later you open the drawer and take it out again.
It's just like a conveyor belt
so it's just chugging along, it's in your head
then it chugs straight back out. And another one comes along after it.
It's a very competitive job.
It's very hard sought after.
When I applied there were four jobs available
two sopranos, a bass and a tenor job
and 400 people applied for those jobs.
A chorus job in Britain is gold dust.
There must be less than 100 full-time jobs
in the whole of the country
so we tend to hold onto it.
It's my 14th season.
I found being a soloist a very lonely thing to do.
I was away from home a lot
so you're in a hotel room a lot.
I worked here as an extra
and totally fell in love with the place.
I remember the first lunch break I went upstairs
and it was a wonderful view from the staff and artist canteen.
I looked out over London and thought I'd just love to work here full-time.
We've all very much chosen to be here
and have strived to get to where we are now
and that's why this chorus is of the quality that is.
For me, it's absolutely brilliant. I can take kids to school in the morning.
If you've got an afternoon off make tea for them
and then come back in and do a show.
Just nipping out kids to do La bohème
I'll be back at half past ten, bye!
It's a bit confusing today because we have Italian directors
and quite a lot of what they say gets lost in translation.
This is like 80 people running around in circles
and there's three people who don't speak English terribly well trying to control them.
But that's what happens and it will settle down.
This is only our second rehearsal.
I think they're running from the enemy.
I think we're panicking.
But I think the whole thing is like a whirlpool. I think that's the effect.
It's quite difficult to sing because it's a fast chorus
and having to manoeuver around these stones without knocking them over
I think to the audience we will look like we're panicking
which is great. I think it's what he wants.
This is our dressing room.
This is where we all come back to
where we occasionally moan about something
not very often, of course.
A lot of laughter goes on in here, I can tell you.
This is our home.
This is if you feel like doing a bit of yoga
This is a few bits and pieces that I might need.
You never know it might be sunny.
A variety of 'might need' items because we're here a lot of the time.
There's a bay which is a knitting bay
a lot of knitting
I don't know how much time you'll get to do this in Nabucco.
In the Magic Flute you get about 10 of those knitted
per night.
You can really learn a lot about someone's life
just looking in their bay and what kind of photos they have up.
Now I'm worried that my bay doesn't say enough about me
I need to put some more pictures up.
When the schedule gets very busy I literally come into work
see what costume is there and then think, oh right, it's that show tonight.
When you're going on stage you are thinking about what's the director wanting.
You can also be cross-referencing with your colleagues
just double checking that I know exactly what we're doing.
The modern dress of the show
I think people can relate to it more, it's much more familiar.
The nice thing is we haven't got wigs as well in this show which is good
but it could be worse we could be in suits of armour
and you in that case you discover you want to drink your coffee
but that's as close to your face as you can get.
Everybody of course knows 'Va, pensiero' it's the big famous chorus.
The chorus is spectacular, they're fantastic
and they are really devoted to the music and the texts.
They do everything for the music
and they're so special. Really, I'm impressed.
You're looking out at 2000-odd people who are listening to you
it really just flows through your body that kind of emotion.
Even now when I've been in the chorus for 20 years
there are those moments which are just exciting to be there.
What I hope that people will feel at the end of Nabucco
is moved because when it's put over well
the audience can go home in shreds
and if it's their first opera just keep coming back.