Week 7: Intense…Watching and Recording
Opening Night of Die Walküre at ROH
Date: 1st May 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 4:30pm
Venue: Royal Opera House
Genie and I have previously have decided to include Brünnhilde’s music in our project, therefore I have bought myself a ticket to watch Die Walküre at the Royal Opera House (ROH) (Definitely not because of my interest in Wagner’s operas and Antonio Pappano is conducting that night) so that I can understand more about the characters. Although we have cut it out from the list of materials that we are going to include a few weeks ago, I still think watching the opera might provide me the opportunity in learning the nature of Brigit Nilsson’s career. Brünnhilde is Brigit’s favourite role to perform, Wotan’s favourite daughter, the god of battle and the ruler of gods. She has a lively characters during her first appearance and was ordered by Wotan to help Hunding to separate Siegmund and Sieglinde. However, later in the opera, Brünnhilde was moved by Siegmund’s steadfast love when she met him. Her compassion changed her mind in betraying Wotan, she decide that to help Siegmund’s hence infuriates her father. She was then received the punishment from Wotan that she will remain in sleep in the wall of fire until the a brave men pierce through to take her as his price. The challenge of the role Brünnhilde does not only lies in the singing, but the physicality as well as we have to project Brünnhilde’s liveliness with ‘Hojotoho’ calls as well as presenting the distinction before and after compassion hit Brünnhilde, the wickedness when she got Wotan’s order and emotional and humane side of her character, which were well presented by the Brünnhilde of the night Elisabet Strid.
This is my first time watching a Wagnerian opera live but it is definitely the the best opera production that I have ever seen. I would never have thought I would like this modern adaptation of Wagner’s oepras. It is a very bold statement considered the fact that I do watch opera quite often but I do really experience the sense of Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) in Wagner from the performance. A car drove on stage at Fricka’s entrance, blood pours out from the tree trunk after Siegmund got stab by the sword and the tree that Brünnhilde was concealed in was lit with fire under the direction of Wotan’s spear. They are all very fascinating to me. Although we are not including Brünnhilde’s character in our project, Gesamtkunstwerk might be an element that we could include in our project as visuals. Genie and I have talked about including visuals in our project but yet we dont really have much direction of the how to work on it. We have talked about the idea of day and night in Tristan and as we are adapting the idea of day and night in the opera. My initial idea at the moment using shades Black and white to incorporate with the electronic alternation that we do with the visuals. Although it is still yet to be discuss with Genie of the feasibility in acheiving given the limitation of the time that we have. But I think it would be a great component to include in our project as well.
This opportunity in watching Die Walküre at the ROH provide me an inspiration different from what initially I might have thought, but this accidental surprise seems to have given us some ideas to elevate the project to a higher level.
Recording Day
Date: 2nd May 2025 (Friday)
Time: 11:30am
Venue: Pats PA09
Genie is away to visit her boyfriend’s family this week in Kent, therefore we intended to take the complementary collaboration approach [1] (division of labour) this week, it also provide some time to create some materials at own time so that we can work more infusing our creative product into the elevated one. In the previous meeting that Genie and I had last week, Genie suggested that it might be worth for me to record the materials that we intended to include in the project so that we can more sound materials to work on. These recordings will be used to build our compositional aspect of the project which will be achieved through editing, electronic enhancements, etc. These recording can also potentially be used to create instruments through electronic alterations so that it provide with sounds with different textures.
In these during the recording section, I have constantly referred back to Brigit’s recording of these arias and try to mimic her techniques, articulations and interpretation as close as possible so that it closely connected to out theme as the tribute to Brigit Nillson as it was sung in her idiom rather than merely the musical fragments. I also referred back to the notes that I made with Genie when we met on week ? so that I can be more aware of what I need to do in project Brigit ‘s voice in me. But of course, this also led to certain compromises as there is no way for me, as a 22-year-old singer, to equip a voice as mature as a singer at her prime time and be able to excel all the components that Brigit’s do at the golden years.
To record these track are definitely no easy task especially all of these fragments that I choose are in constant high pitches that required very a big stamina and well-breath control. Although this sounds like tasks that a normal singer should cope with, the soaring heat on the day it’s making it rather difficult, especially I can’t have my window open during the recording process. I also concerned a lot of whether these takes are good enough to replicate Birgit’s interpretation, therefore there are times that I record, listen to the recording that I am not satisfied with and delete it. Some of them are just not ‘Brigit’ enough, some of them are the ones with the best control. I also kept several version of good takes that I can choose from at the ends. Constant retakes are making sustaining long notes very hard as it tired me up very quickly, especially I intended to darken my tone a bit to match with Brigit. It’s ashamed to say that but sometimes I really push my voice a bit too hard on that day in achieving the effects that I intended but that also resulted in putting extra tension to my voice which make my voice a bit coarse. I made adjustments as soon as I notice the issue which having breaks in between tracks and to make sure I am full hydrated. The adjustment luckily makes the rest of the recording more effective and less torturing to my voice.
This recording section makes me reflect on my own practice the idea of “these repertoires are too big for singers for your age, you need to be very careful of how to use your voice” which is a recurring thought that singers and tutors around me constantly suggested. Initially, I am very confident about the choice of choosing these repertoires. Part of it is due to the fact that I think I can get away from only doing fragments and part of me I think I used challenge myself. I won’t say that that I regret this choice of repertoires and indeed I have had a lot of fun researching the relationship between Birgit Nillson and these operatic characters. However, it just rings the bell that I need to be extra careful in the remaining time of the project that I won’t harm my voice in order to achieve certain effects.
After the recording, I spent some time in listening to all the track that I have and collected the best takes that I did in each musical segements. I then sent it to Genie so that she can have a go it building something with my recordings through her magic on the electronics. There is no energy left in me for the day, therefore I go straight a had a good 12 hours sleep in recovery.
[1]
