2007-02-09 - 12:05 p.m.

Against all reason, I apparently got the part of a plantation slave, though thankfully there�ll be no shoe polish or any �where am dat warty melon�-style pronouncements. Blacking up � now there�s a tradition that doesn�t need resurrecting.

Comical racial mismatch aside, it�s a fairly daunting task that lies ahead. The last opera was a doddle, really � we all sang in unison to easy, musical-esque melodies for 55 minutes, were only on stage for maybe 15 of those and outside of having to learn Jewish folk dancing, it was relatively easy to pick up if you turned up to enough rehearsals.

For this, although I�m really a bass, I�m singing tenor, and having to pick out what look to me like scarily complicated harmonies that are a nat�s chuff away from the other notes being sung � i.e. the lines are doing crazy jigs all over the top of my range. It�s a 90 minute �proper� opera (propera?) and it looks like we�re on stage for about half of it (albeit some of the time sitting around chewing hay in anticipation of our slavery being abolished, etc.) and we�ll be playing to a house of 1,500 instead of 500.

8 weeks until opening night when I have to be a melodious black cotton-picker, and I�m currently a conspicuously tuneless white boy. Well, alright.