Guest Blog: Opera Holland Park's James Clutton On Winning A BroadwayWorld Award

It's the first day of production rehearsals for the Opera Holland Park 2017 season. Following months of preparation, from countless meetings and costume fittings to music rehearsals and props buying, today is the day everyone - the conductor, director, designer, principal singers, chorus, lighting designer, stage management, wardrobe and costume staff and technical staff - all begin work full-time.

Every year as I start planning a new season, I find it's vitally important to look back at my work, particularly the most recent season: to see where we were and how we did, what we did well and what we need to improve on. I believe it's a never-ending journey of improvement - not resting on our laurels, but rather the relentless pursuit of perfection. I doubt we (or anyone else!) will ever get there, but why not try?

There are many ways to gauge success. The most important one for me is the reaction of the audience - particularly the regular audience if, like us at Opera Holland Park, you produce a season of five productions; as an annual event, it's important audiences want to come back.

Critical reaction is also important - experts with a wealth of experience who have seen many productions over a period and can put help work into context for audiences. And, of course, there are awards. We've won a couple of awards over the years - not as many as I believe we should have won, but that's another story!

It is always satisfying, pleasing and rewarding to have been nominated for or to win an award. I do acknowledge any award for the arts is fundamentally flawed, as it's based more on taste than fact - if someone wins the 100 metres or the high jump at the Olympics, they won because they ran the fastest or jumped the highest. Arts awards are very different to that, but they still can still give a clear snapshot of how audiences and critics are feeling or looking at things at that moment in time.

In January, all of us here at Opera Holland Park were thrilled by our production of Iris winning Outstanding Achievement in a New Opera Production in the 2016 BroadwayWorld UK Awards.

The fact that these awards were voted for by the public made it even more special, but there are also a couple of other reasons why this award meant so much to us all.

First, this was the only specific opera award in the BroadwayWorld Awards, which did make winning it taste even sweeter. Second, that opera as an art form featured in these awards at all is a major reason for us all to be so pleased. It's great for us and the opera community that BroadwayWorld included an opera category.

On a more personal level, that our production of Iris won this award was a delight and to some extent a surprise. Iris by Mascagni is an opera unknown to most people and before Opera Holland Park had rarely been seen.

It's also a very dark story with lots of characters who have no redeeming features whatsoever, yet with its beautiful score, a great cast led by soprano Anne Sophie Duprels, fantastic production by director Olivia Fuchs and committed, detailed work from every member of the team, including a 50-strong chorus, this piece ended up winning a public-voted award.

My long term partner-in-crime and joint Chief Executive at OHP, Michael Volpe, has long carried a torch for rare Italian opera from the late 19th century, and Iris holds a particularly special place in his heart, as it was the first of these pieces we produced - way back in 1997. So this also seemed some sort of justification for the whole through-line of OHP producing these operas over the past 20 years: a reward for doing work of this kind and indeed opening our 2016 season with a boldness that we are all proud of.

In large part because I started out as a producer of plays and musicals, my ongoing attitude to producing opera is still the same: choosing the creatives and getting the chemical balance right between the conductor, director and the entire team. I am responsible for all casting and so the same attitude applies - getting the right balance of experience and youth, and helping to shape the production throughout the design process and then rehearsals to ensure we deliver the best possible show to our audiences.

One of the benefits of producing a lesser-known opera is that there tends to be no frame of reference for the audience, and even sometimes the critics. In contrast, audiences who've seen numerous productions of La Boheme or Carmen have their own ideas on how they should be staged. They own recordings, so are used to their own tempo of how fast or slow it goes.

With many of these lesser-known works, it's like premiering a new opera - a brand-new piece with no expectations or hard and fast rules to abide by. That is a lovely feeling in my job.

One other thing that really hit me in reading through the nominations across the whole of the BroadwayWorld Awards was how so many creatives - directors, designers, choreographers, lighting designers etc. - on that list have worked in opera and manage to also work in straight theatre and musicals.

With so many votes being cast in so many different categories, it did make me think again about how we could get more of the audiences from musicals and plays to try opera. Seeing and appreciating the work of these creative teams in a different environment could be a breakthrough moment of enjoying another aspect of the arts.

I would say this, wouldn't I, but opera can be - and often is - an incredible shared experience for audience and artists. I won't water it down to try to appeal to a wider audience. I am proud of what it is and what we can give people: a night with some of the greatest musical and theatrical masterpieces ever written.

So thank you to BroadwayWorld for creating an opera award. We are very grateful recipients.

Now, if you haven't been - this year, come and give opera try....

Find full details of the 2017 Opera Holland Park season, which runs 1 June-29 July

James Clutton is the Director of Opera and Joint Chief Executive of Opera Holland Park

Photo credit: Robert Workman

To post a comment, you must register and login.