When lockdown was announced in March this year, theatres and opera houses closed their doors, and almost all forms of live performance were forced to cease. However, outdoor performances were given the go-ahead in July, and Waterperry Opera Festival was one of the first companies to admit audiences in its ‘Mini Festival’ series from the 13th to the 16th August. Rather than the planned productions of The Elixir of Love, Hansel and Gretel and Dido and Aeneas, there was instead a scaled back programme of Ariel by Jonathan Dove and Cosi Fan Tutte by Mozart - all socially distanced, of course! Our Social Media Programmer, Niamh, was lucky enough to watch Ariel and caught up with Daniella Sicari, singer of the title role, after the show. Read on to find out more about singing while cartwheeling, the logistics of socially distanced rehearsals, and performing for an audience for the first time in eight months…
Firstly, congratulations! This must have been your first live performance after a long while - how did that feel?
Really good! So the last performance I did was at the end of December, so this was the first performance with a live audience since then. Through lockdown I’ve done different live streams and stuff but this was the first in-person performance. In the dress rehearsal I took my bow, and that was the moment for me - I hadn’t bowed in five months, and it was just such a strange feeling!
Obviously ‘live streams’ are live but does that beat having a real-life audience?
Absolutely not, the audience just gives you such a buzz, and when you know people are watching you, you have to sort of up the ante!
What was the rehearsal process?
I met with Rebecca (Meltzer) about a week before the festival started, and I travelled down to where she was staying in Dorset. It was quite a big space so we were able to keep our distance - we rehearsed in one of the areas of her garden which we set out as if it was the studio, using the stones that featured in the show! We did everything outside except for one day, when it was just really hot (this was mid-heatwave). During the rehearsal process, we chatted about Ariel, the piece, and the interpretation and feelings that I’d had while learning it, and then Rebecca shared her vision. We discussed a lot and then we created this idea of Ariel being set several years later, and being free but not being completely free because they hadn’t processed the trauma that they had gone through. The second session of that day, we just did physical movement, just kind of figuring out what Ariel’s physical vocabulary was, for instance, their hands being like roots or feelers almost, at one with nature, either really smooth or jagged and twitchy. We established that quite early on, along with a couple of postures Ariel has and their walk. By day 3 we were actually pretty surprised because we had blocked everything, so we ran it and realised songs 1 and 2 weren’t working with where we ended up at number 5. So, we went back and reworked those numbers - and then we were happy with it!
Ariel is a unique piece, and you were the only performer on stage. What can you tell us about this, and how did you deal with it?
So the actual music itself is just one line, the vocal line, and there’s quite a lot of suggestions about the tempo slow/fast etc. Rebecca also came up with the idea of this preset, of Ariel having a nightmare and panic attack, and that dream/recurring dream of being ‘stuck in the cloven pine’ by Sycorax - that’s the only thing we added that was different from the score. You don’t have an orchestra or a conductor to watch, so you have to create that intention in the space, and make sure that there’s enough space, enough of an internal monologue to get you to the next note. I think when you’re preparing something like that, when you’re preparing anything really, you have that scaffolding - the musical preparation, the dramatic preparation. Dramatically, I always try to have an internal monologue - it’s so easy to think ‘the words I’m saying are the ones that I’m thinking’ but that’s not always the case. Because there are so many silent moments, and because the other characters are set within the piece too, I had to have a reaction. For the dream sequence, I wrote it out almost like a story. Musically, Dove wrote it with lots of arpeggios, and so he implies the harmony which is really helpful. Even in the more vague moments, you kind of hear the implication because of what’s come before and what’s coming after it. I wrote all the chords that I was hearing in my mind on my music, and I would play while I was singing, just to have the feeling of either the crunch or the space so that I could hear that from the first note of the arpeggio. I think that by now I hear music when I’m performing - I don’t know what I hear! I’m not sure what the music is, but I hear all the harmonies to it, and that’s how I keep pitch.
There is so much movement in the piece - what’s your movement background, and how did you rehearse the movement? For the record, Dani does a full cartwheel while singing!
When I was in high school I used to train as a rhythmic gymnast, and I did a bit of dance too, and with rhythmic gym especially I love the way the music and movements were linked. So much of it was about embodying the music, which has stuck with me, and any chance I get I try to use it. Rebecca does a lot of movement directing, so it was great to go through this process with her and explore what movements were right. We had talked a lot about the fact that I had a gymnastics background, so we thought we could do a million things, but we knew we’d just be putting it in for the sake of it. So we had a bit of a play, and we just saw what came naturally - we very much tried to make sure that all of the movements were as natural as possible, and found that there were only two moments where [gymnastics moves] would be right, which was enough. We were also trying to look at the music, and where there’s space, and the moment for [a gymnastics move] in the score like during a rest. We only did it where it was available - and where it was low enough in my voice that I didn’t feel like I was straining! Also when I was studying at undergrad, our acting teacher got us to do loads of different movement things, and be able to explore the extents of our body, being different animals, copying peoples’ walk - and I really loved it!
How did you find performing outside, and had you done anything similar before?
No, I had done very little performing outside - and if it was, it was normally with a microphone, doing the national anthem or something! So the first thing I did was get used to the space, first the rehearsal space and then the performance space, and learn to just trust my voice even when I couldn’t hear anything of what I was singing. You really do just have to trust the sound and trust the process. In terms of being outside, I kid you not, I had so many bugs crawling on me in that preset but it was all a part of it - not a bad thing! Even when we were rehearsing, I was doing so much stuff on the floor that you just get over it really quickly and accept you’re going to get dirty. On the very first day, it was pouring with rain, so I got covered in grass and mud - it was ridiculous! And then the next day it was scorching hot, sunscreen-every-20-minutes-type weather. But because that happened in the first two days, we thought, if we’ve done it in two extremes, it’ll be fine whatever the weather! We were very lucky to have great weather for the actual performances.
Can we expect the film to be released any time soon?
Yes! It’s now available on the Waterperry YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_taEWyBeqQ
Thank you so much for your time! What’s coming next for you?
Well, this year I was meant to be singing at the ‘normal’ Waterperry Festival as Gianetta in The Elixir of Love, so I’ll be coming back to Waterperry next year to do that, hopefully!
Daniella Sicari is an Australian soprano, who trained at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth, Australia, and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England. She graduated in 2018, and has since performed with the Buxton International Festival, Clonter Opera, and the Bergen Nasjonale Opera amongst others. Daniella is the recipient of numerous awards such as the Western Australian Young People & The Arts International Award, Amanda Roocroft Prize, The Joyce & Michael Kennedy Strauss Prize, The James & Mary Glass Scholarship, John Cameron Award for Lieder, The Elizabeth Harwood Prize and Robin Kay Memorial Prize. She most recently came second at the Bampton Opera Competition.
Check out reviews of “Ariel” here (Be aware! The video is only available until September 1st!):
https://www.oxinabox.co.uk/review-waterperry-opera-festival-was-a-truly-wonderful-occasion/
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