Our first Day of Christmas 2024
The ‘inside story’ from Company Director Anna Gregory
In the music world, looking forward to Christmas and the New Year is sometimes a rather daunting prospect. Working musicians often crash headlong into the 25th of December having shopped online during breaks in rehearsals in the hope that everything will just work out. There is little time or mental capacity for planning.
Our Music Director Pavel Timofeyevsky played his fingers to the bone throughout December, exchanging brief messages with me regarding potential casting decisions and dates for our diaries but really never managing more than a rather exhausted wave. You could be forgiven for thinking that we were drowning not waving! But one rather brighter star still shone over our gruelling December activities in the form of The First Day of Christmas, Devon Opera’s latest fundraising concert at St Michael and All Angels’ Church in Heavitree, Exeter.
The venue, suggested by Anne Foreman, our Chair, was simply beautiful and had a lovely acoustic.
It was perfect for our esteemed board member Alison Kettlewell, who had recently returned from her debut at the Royal Opera House where she had been singing Madame Larina in Eugene Onegin. It was a great joy to sing with this talented friend and we were sensitively and elegantly accompanied by Joyce Clarke, who is one of those Devon Opera ‘finds’― a local professional pianist of great quality.
To kick off this latest fundraising effort, the performers did a great job with very little preparation time. All three musicians donated their performances, so the revenue from this happy event will help support our main production of La bohème in May 2025. The supportive audience created a surplus of almost a thousand pounds, so thank you all so much for coming and applauding, and even joining in with the action! Some lovely reviews have emerged from this concert and the extra money in the bank puts us well on our way towards even bigger things.