The Time of Our Singing (2024)

This season starts in Brussels at La Monnaie (Belgian National Opera) with a revival of Kris Defoort’s The Time of Our Singing which was premiered in 2021. Reuniting the original cast, creatives and crew, this production has taken me down memory lane to that time, not so long ago, when the world was still in the throes of Covid. We all worked socially distanced, rehearsals were evacuated on an hourly basis to ventilate the studios, and orchestral rehearsals took place with plexiglass shields between the wind, brass and strings. Not until this project, where I first conducted wearing a mask, did I comprehend just how much oxygen the body actually needs on the podium and how unbearable it is when it’s not available!

Thankfully, these times aren’t those, and the reunion with old friends from the pandemic-tested team has been wonderful – a rare opportunity to return to a contemporary opera and develop its interpretation with the same team. In the intervening years, I’d also had the good fortune to lead Opera St. Gallen’s version of the same production, so it’s been rewarding to bring everything I learned there to bear in Brussels. With the Premiere in just a few days, most of the hard work has been done with just finishing touches left to apply. And In contrast to the sparse and well-spaced audiences we performed to in 2021, all six performances of this run are sold out! It’s the exposure this wonderful piece deserves and we’re all really looking forward to bringing  Richard Powers’ wonderful story to life once again.