A day rehearsing an opera for farters and drunks

Rory Musgrave is making me yawn. He says that when you yawn, “the air goes in completely unimpeded and goes out completely unimpeded. That opens up everything, so you’re getting the maximum capacity of your lungs and oxygen in your blood.”

Musgrave is not a quack doctor, but a very fine opera singer. He recently featured in the Rape of Lucrece and is currently in the chorus of Silent Night, Kevin Puts's operatic take on the first World War Christmas armistice in which British and German soldiers played a game of football. "Like Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace video," I say with excitement.

My tastes are significantly more lowbrow than Musgrave's, so I'm pleased that he, along with piano-playing répétiteur (director of rehearsals) Eithne Corrigan, have agreed to teach me how to sing an operatic aria in the lovely Wexford Opera House.

I love to sing. I was in a touring band and I studied music, but I know nothing about opera. Opera singing can seem strange to fans of contemporary pop or rock, but it evolved for a reason. Before PA systems, concert performers had to hold their own against musical ensembles. Musical combos were small in the days of Mozart, says Musgrave, but during the Romantic era they expanded “and the voices got bigger as the orchestras got bigger. [The style] developed to compete with the sound of an orchestra.”

Complete control

Opera singers have to be in complete control of their whole bodies, says Musgrave. “You’re using your body, your head, all of the cavities, your breath control, everything; you’re using that to resonate the song to create a performance and harmonics that just ping. We are our own amplifiers. That’s fundamentally what it comes down to.”

He likens opera performers to athletes. Not only do they have to sing pitch- perfectly, they also have to act and move at the same time. "You're expected to sing while fighting and crawling over rubble," he says. He mentions a scene from a production of Billy Budd in which opera star Simon Keenlyside sang while hanging with one arm from the stage rigging.

“I won’t be doing that,” I tell him firmly.

The song Musgrave and Corrigan are going to teach me is Der Vogelfänger bin ich Ja from Mozart's The Magic Flute. I will be singing the part of Papageno. After a scene in which a prince is saved from a serpent by the Queen of the Night's attendants, the stage directions introduce the character: "Papageno enters dressed as a bird. He describes his life as a bird-catcher, complaining he has no wife or girlfriend."

"The Magic Flute is about as lowbrow as opera gets," says Musgrave.

“Thanks for that,” I say.

"I mean that in the best way," he says. "It's not grand opera quite in the same way as Giovanni or Figaro. People were paying their penny to see this and they were getting drunk and farting and chatting among each other as people were acting their heart out. This was vaudeville, circus clowning with singers."

It does sound right for me when he puts like that.

First we go through the verse line by line, ensuring I get the German pronunciation right. Then, we go through the melody. Eithne and Musgrave carefully correct my mistakes as we go.

It’s good fun, but I don’t sound remotely as sonorous as Musgrave. It’s all to do with breathing and relaxation, he says, and that big, powerful sound only comes with practice and time. He gets me to do a big yawn and a stretch. It hurts. “It’s probably not good that that hurts,” I say. He laughs.

We do more stretching. He gets me to stand more imposingly with my legs apart. “That’s the ‘noble posture’,” he says. “This way you can be relaxed and the weight can balance over both legs.”

He gets me to stand behind him holding his ribs so I can feel how it expands as he breathes. Later he does the same to me. "It's a bit like in the film Titanic," I say, and put my arms out like Kate Winslet.

“It’s a very intensely focused relaxation,” he says of opera singing. Then he laughs. “Singing is riddled with contradiction.”

We chat about how classic rock singers aren’t intensely relaxed but coiled and tense. “That’s part of the aesthetic of rock singing,” says Musgrave. “The charm is that raw, untempered energy and sometimes aggression, that very visceral thing that training would perhaps stifle.”

Singers of popular music, he says, tend to sing like they speak. In contrast, “nobody goes around talking like this all the time”. He does what sounds like an impression of Brian Blessed.

To help my breathing and projection, he gets me to sing the first few syllables of the song while simultaneously conjuring up a yawn. "Der Vogel," I say, sounding like a man yawning ("Der Vogel" means "the bird").

"Der Vogel," he repeats operatically.

"Der Vogel," I say again, still sounding like a man yawn-talking.

Then I repeatedly sing the verse, and Corrigan and Musgrave chip in with adjustments and observations. They’re very patient and sweet. Corrigan asks me if I’m nervous about singing opera in front of opera professionals. I don’t tell her that in the past year I’ve learned the harp, dressed as a clown and walked down O’Connell Street dressed as St Patrick. I no longer have any shame.

Their advice is really good. Musgrave tells me to hold the score up in front of me because “it will make you stand straighter”. Corrigan tells me to pick a point on the wall and focus on it. At one point she gets out the English translation because I’m singing what should be an upbeat song rather mournfully.

I read the text. It turns out that Papageno really, really wants a girlfriend. In the second verse he says he wants a net for catching girls. Then “all the girls would be mine”, he declares.

“He’s basically a sex pest,” I say.

Musgrave points out that Papageno would trade all these hypothetical imprisoned women for the one woman who loves him.

I suppose they were different times, I think.

It’s now nearly time for a performance. An audience of eight theatre professionals are ready to come in and see my progress.

“Don’t look down until I’ve finished playing,” says Corrigan. “And don’t move a muscle until they applaud.”

I introduce myself, sing my song and enjoy myself. I am not run out of town.

“So, could I be an opera singer?” I ask Musgrave after the audience leaves.

“With another 10, 15 years of solid investment, definitely,” says Musgrave. I’m a bit disappointed by this timescale. “It [takes] years of dedication to really understand and build in all the elements that make an opera singer,” he explains.

On the other hand, he observes that “big beardy baritones” often find career success late in life thanks to a surfeit of roles for kings, priests and fathers. “But if they think they’ll take up opera singing at 39-40 and become the next Pavarotti, it’s very unlikely.”

“Challenge accepted,” I say, and vow to quit my job.

“We’ll meet up in 10 years’ time and see how you’re doing,” says Musgrave.

[ wexfordopera.com ]