Top coach to hold singing workshops at Ucheldre, Holyhead

Nov 18 2009

LEADING opera voice coach Marian Bryfdir takes a new series of five workshops at Holyhead’s Ucheldre Centre, beginning with finding your voice and singing in the operatic chorus.

No experience is needed for this introductory day, but there will be an opportunity for solo singers to audition for lead roles in subsequent workshops.

Marian specialises in vocal tuition for singers, actors and singing teachers. As singer and opera director her experience is wide and varied, from her early career at Covent Garden to directing composer Bill Evans' new opera Cei Llawn Cyffro at Galeri, Caernarfon in June 2008.

Beginners can see if they have operability by working on excerpts from different operas as part of a chorus with members of Pocket Opera assisting.

Commencing on Saturday, November 21, the course continues in 2010 on 23 January 23, February 20, March 20 and April 11 plus possibility of performing in the chorus of Swansea City Opera’s performance of the Pearl Fishers in the Ucheldre Centre on Saturday, April 17, 2010.

The workshops run from 11.00am-6.00pm and cost £10, £5 concessions, full-time education.

The Ucheldre restaurant will be open from 6.00-7.30pm for evening meals so please stay on to see a performance by Pocket Opera of Figaro and Friends, special ticket price of £4 for Figaro and Friends for course participants.

The opera itself gives a glimpse of the happenings in the Almaviva household: the Count’s tireless pursuit of Susanna (soon to be married to Figaro), the housekeeper Marcellina’s equally tireless pursuit of Figaro (later revealed to be her long lost son), a teenage flirt called Cherubino (who is a girl, playing a boy dressed up as a girl…) and a Countess suffering a mid-life crisis together with a gossip-mad priest and a nervous and incompetent lawyer.

The multi-faceted singers of Pocket Opera divide and share a multitude of characters from this and many other operas between them, using minimal props and costumes to create an evening of music and theatre in their own style.

Saturday, November 21, 7.30pm

£7, £6 concessions, £3 children

For further information please contact The Ucheldre Centre, 01407 763361 or e-mail he@ucheldre.org