' - ' - ' for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself
And ne’er had been before ' - ' -

Wells Cathedral, 23rd of May 2009

It's a big statement, stepping up to the platform to sing the Dream of Gerontius without a score. Even without looking, I can sense the heads turning to each other with whatever the tweedies of England say when the stakes are raised. It feels good to throw the glove down and see the room pick it up. And, like throwing the glove down in front of a stranger who might better me, I am already out of the comfort zone in that act of throwing. This is a great feeling, and when I don't enjoy it any more, I shall give up.

My first entry is "Jesu, Maria, I am nearto death/And Thou art calling me. I know it now" and I play "don't care". This is a useful choice, as not only is it the opposite of all the shite excess baggage of character, situation and - God help us - creating an atmosphere, but by playing “don’t care” my shoulders sit square and relaxed and my larynx feels in neutral position, not pushed up with nerves. What I want most at this moment is to get a good clear note to start with, like a nice forward defensive to the first ball. The first few notes come out nicely and I know I'm OK. As we go on through the first part, there are a couple of words I have to change because I can't remember the text, but I know I don't remember them just before I get there and I have time to find a substitute. It’s funny how the brain knows when to give up trawling for the right word and that the best thing to do is think of something else.

Way down the nave of Wells Cathedral are a couple of round, open faces and I have good long targets at which to "tube" my voice. The idea of “tubing” is important in a huge disparate space like a cathedral. There is no way one can consciously fill the whole space, behind, around and above, so the point of concentration is a long tube of sound down to the back door. That, coupled with the attempt to speak personally to someone maybe thirty yards away whose features cannot easily be seen is my best chance of being heard over the orchestra. It's sixty-odd of them to one of me and today I need to work hard at this in so resonant an acoustic.

I come to the big aria in the first part and, thankfully, the conductor gives it a strong forward momentum and it’s like surfing a big Hawaiian wave. After the aria comes the Beecher's Brook moment, when, after pages of big singing followed by a pianissimo section and two more pages of spitting out words against the brass section, comes the killer: "Some angel, Jesu, such as came to thee In thine own agony"all up on top of the stave. "In thine own" is E flat, E flat, top B flat". Carrie has suggested singing "In - thi - n'own" in order to start the high B flat on an "n" rather than an open “o”. It's a good idea, and it was OK in practice but as the moment arrives, it feels a big risk. But I go for it and, BANG, out comes B flat, no problem.

At the end of the first part, Gerontius, my character dies (of old age - not violently) and the priest, a bass, sings "Go forth upon thy journey, Christian Soul. As he does so I step off the platform thinking I might sit down in the audience among the mortals, as it were, but there are no seats. So I walk all the way to the back to give the bass a moving target. He takes up the offer as well, and he says afterwards that he liked the moving target.

The interval. Something of the Factory way has stayed with me in concerts, notably that nowadays I don't always go off-stage into a dark corner to psyche myself up for the second half. I sit with Carrie and we chat about this and that, and other people come up for a chat, too. I wonder if the Factorite lifting of the barrier between audience and performer is more important than we realise. It probably doesn't win many diva points, but apart from the reassurance that at least some of them are having a good time and would like to hear me sing the rest of it, there is the added effect of keeping my mind off what I'm about to do, which, as we know, and if we have done our work, is all to the good. So I start Part 2 without being what I used to think was “ready”.

Part 2 we have done with Al, and I'm feeling confident about it. But at the start, a strange thing happens. A ginger cat walks across in front of us on the platform, so I pick it up and pass it to someone at the side, to the general merriment in choir, orchestra and audience. “There are cats in heaven” I say. At this point, the conductor wants to go off and come back on because “we’ve lost the atmosphere”. But we stay, and the new, relaxed atmosphere is a real gift. Not only am I feeling nicely chilled out, but the audience seems nearer, more approachable, and whatever the “appropriate” atmosphere for the piece may be, I’ll take this one any day.

I now start to pass into the play-zone for periods of time long enough to feel accustomed to it. Sometimes I drop right out of it again by doing something naff, or just attending to musical tasks. But, and I don't know if I can describe this feeling very well, I have the impression that the music and I are moving in a shared rhythm, like two dancers, one taking the lead, then the other. And I stop thinking about what has just been and what is about to come and, for want of a better word, I enjoy my time. Gerontius himself describes a feeling not dissimilar as he contemplates his new surroundings in the afterlife:

' - ' - ' for I feel in me
An inexpressive lightness, and a sense
Of freedom, as I were at length myself
And ne’er had been before ' - ' -

It’s an intriguing and wonderful paradox that the more our senses are concentrated on how “the other guy” is feeling and doing and away from our own pre-occupations, the more like ourselves we become. This sense of freedom is the play-zone and periods spent there are, for me, both tantalising and short; as soon as I become aware that I'm "in it", I lose it immediately, the cunning devil of Ego knowing just how to steal the reins at the right moment. How to deal with this, I am not sure, but I am in awe of those - and Factory has more than a few of them - who seem to be in the play-zone for most of the time. Do they know how hard it is to stay there?

Usually in Gerontius, and other oratorios, for periods where one isn't singing, one sits. But we have no chairs and stay standing as other things happen. Staying in the piece like this is much less tiring and more energising than taking time out. By the end I could have sung it again.

Luckily I will sing it again, next Tuesday, which gives me an early chance to ditch what I did on Saturday, and turn my mind to other things. These other things might well include staying with the orchestra, as I know they haven’t played the work before and I will have to listen hard both to stay with them and bring them with me. Singing, like acting, is to work with a transmitter and receiver both going at once.

J'Ox