Rehearsals for the World Premiere of Trial of the Cannibal Dog Opera took place in a space used by Opera New Zealand next to the Wellington Railway Station down near the waterfront. This was about 20 minutes walk from my apartment in the Wellington CBD .

Composer Matthew Suttor wrote the final parts of the opera while we were rehearsing which added a dynamic I have never seen before in a rehearsal room. Although I was worried to see Francis coming towards me with a handful of new music every couple of days for the first few weeks of rehearsal, I was much more frightened when a printer and reams of paper were brought into the rehearsal room after the first week or so. Luckily very little of this was aimed at me and I enjoyed the process of watching a composer work to make the opera more singable for me in places which included a key change of one of my arias into a key more suitable for my voice. 

The director Christian Penny was an interesting character.  Penny is very much an actor's director and therefore I sometimes watched in wonder as he went directly against what is the norm in the opera world, however when Penny got going I think the results were really worth the wait. Some of the moments in the opera were incredibly powerful . 

I really enjoyed working with Peter Scholes and the orchestra who were handpicked. Diana Cable did a superb job of choosing the orchestra and the performers who were stunning. I think the success of the opera really hung on the fact that the cast were so prepared to change and adapt constantly. This constant changing is to be expected much more in a new opera such as this. Singer Andrew Collis as Captain Cook was not only fantastic on stage but so patient with the constant changes made to his role. Not once did he lose his patience which I think inspired the rest of us to bear with the 'journey'. 

I'll blog some more on this on youtube as I'd like to say more about the wonderful cast. Not just the cast but the whole team were really positive and worked tirelessly to solve problems. 

Now I'm back studying at Law which is really fantastic. I'll blog next month. It may be that I am off to China to sing soon which is exciting, I'll let you know! I really enjoy China and am excited whenever I get the chance to visit! 

Until then,there is a video of a TV interview for the Trial of the Cannibal Dog Opera on my main page. I hope you enjoy ! Deborah