Post-Covid reflections
Giving Voice Society is so delighted to be starting a new sheaf of live events in India, starting this coming August, very appropriately in Mumbai and Goa – where we first started over 12 years ago. During the necessary two-year break in transmission we initiated online singing classes covering both basics and higher-level interpretation, and also in-depth lectures on the history of the Lied and the Renaissance.
The achievements of GVS in just over a decade of work in India has been spectacular. We’ve sent or assisted many students abroad for higher education in the US, the UK and elsewhere. We’ve put on regular concerts in India featuring our students for over a decade, and seen them performing in India’s many festivals and concerts in Mumbai and Goa. But, most of all, we’ve managed – with the help of magnificent supporters in India – to present 4 fully-fledged operas in India with Indian production teams, directors, musicians and, of course, singers.
The first was Britten’s Community opera, The Little Sweep, judiciously chosen to usher our new singers and their audience gently into performance . Without Parvesh Java and the Con Brio festival, this first operatic venture wouldn’t have happened. Next was the eternal opera staple, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, with more soloists and (still) a lot of chorus. An in-between event was created to showcase four staged opera excerpts at NCPA in Mumbai, before the reopening of Mumbai’s Royal Opera House allowed us to produce Cimarosa’s Secret Marriage in four sell-out shows.
Before lockdown we continued our series of entertaining operas suitable for young voices with Haydn’s Fedelta Premiata. As our students and their voices grow we shall continue our opera journey – through Mozart and Donizetti to Carmen and beyond.
This is GVS’s continuing vision, to create meaningful opportunities for Indian students to learn and perform at the highest possible level. GVS is picking up where we left off, inspiring the next generation of Indian star students just like those previous.
