Ian Sidden

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Premiere: Hamlet – Sein oder Nichtsein

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Today is the premiere of Hamlet: Sein oder Nichtsein at the Kinder und Jugend Theater Dortmund. This is a new work by Timo Jouko Herrmann and André Meyer based on the Hamlet story, though it diverges in a few meaningful ways.

In December I wrote this on Facebook:

And that remains mostly true. It’s not as atonal as I originally thought (Ophelia has some especially lovely and melodious passages), and it’s actually meant for teenagers from the age of 14 and up (this hews much closer to Hamlet than, for example, The Lion King).

But I had thought that I’d never get to do any of Hamlet’s famous speech, and here we are singing it in the chorus in a dark but colorful and rich production. This is an exciting work visually, thematically and aurally (the sounds coming from the orchestra are especially thrilling).

Toi toi toi to all involved!

More information here.

Premiere: Die Blume von Hawaii

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Deutsch

Heute Abend im Opernhaus Dortmund findet die Premiere von Paul Abrahams Die Blume von Hawaii statt. Ich singe die Kombi-Rolle Kanako Hilo und Kaluna (Kanako spricht und Kaluna singt, obwohl praktisch bin ich Kanako Hilo die ganze Zeit).

Wie Roxy und ihr Wunderteam ist die Musik eine Jazz und Operette Mischung. Man kann klassische Stimmen und Stepptanz von der Bühne hören, aber es gibt viel mehr dazu zu erleben. Viele Farben. Viel Humor. Viel, das schön und kreativ ist.

Ich freue mich sehr auf die Premiere. Toi toi toi an allen Beteiligten!

English

Tonight in Opernhaus Dortmund is the premiere of Paul Abraham’s Die Blume von Hawaii. I’m singing a combination role of Kanako Hilo and Kaluna (Kanako talks while Kaluna sings, but practically speaking I’m Kanako Hilo the whole time if that makes any sense).

Like Roxy und ihr Wunderteam, this contains a mixture of jazz and operetta musical influences. The audience will hear classical voices and tap dancing very near to one another, but there’s much more to experience. Many colors. Lots of humor. Much beauty and creativity.

I’m very much looking forward to it. Toi toi toi to all!

Mehr Infos/More Information

https://www.theaterdo.de/detail/event/die-blume-von-hawaii/

Debut and Premiere: Wagner in Gounod’s Faust

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Tonight at Theater Dortmund, we’re having our Premiere of Gounod’s Faust. I’ll be singing the role of Wagner, which has been a ton of fun. The audience will be treated to an exceptional cast and a thoughtful and beautiful production.

More Information

Heute Abend in Theater Dortmund findet die Premiere von Gounods FAUST/Margarethe statt. Ich singe Wagner, und das hat sehr viel Spaß gemacht. Das Publikum wird eine klasse Besetzung in einer schönen Produktion sehen und hören.

Mehr Infos

Updates and Email Subs

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In the past few months, a lot has been happening.

The Move

My wife and I have moved into a new apartment, and in Germany that requires a remarkable amount of effort. Things like cabinets, window dressings and so on are installed by the renter, so that’s occupied a lot of my attention. Only in the past couple of weeks does it feel like we’re really in, even though we’ve been here officially since the beginning of March.

Email Sub-Weirdness S’more

Simultaneously, the service that’s been providing the email subscriptions on this website has just been awful. It had been sending repeat emails of old posts, and then finally it just stopped. The service is called Feedburner, and it’s a service that Google doesn’t really want to support anymore, so when it breaks, there’s no real recourse other than doing rain dances and hoping it starts working again.

Solution?

I think, I think that I’ve fixed it by changing how emails are sent out, but honestly, this is just hard for me. I know a lot since I’ve been doing this website for longer than I care to add up right now, but it’s not my profession, so I just didn’t know how to move forward here in way that was mostly seamless and didn’t cost me a lot (or anything really, since I basically make nothing from this website).

Email subscribers shouldn’t notice anything. For folks subscribed via RSS, I strongly suggest that you subscribe to this feed:

https://iansidden.com/feed/

The Feedburner feed should keep working for the time being, but I have no idea when it will shut off. It may be years. Nevertheless, I cannot move your RSS subscription for you.

This problem has been vexing me so much that’s it’s caused me to abort any writing attempts, it just felt like a knot that I didn’t know how to untie.

Catching Up

Nevertheless, there were some posts that weren’t sent out via email, and maybe you’d be interested in reading them. Here are the posts that aren’t just updates about performances I was doing:

  1. The Dramatic or the Musical Choice
  2. Singing with Earplugs
  3. Actually Doing the Job
  4. Meditation Practice

I think those four are enough for now if you’re interested. I’m proud of them and hope you enjoy them.

Hitting Publish now. I hope this works.

Premiere: Peter Grimes

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English

Tonight in Opernhaus Dortmund is the premiere of Peter Grimes. Aside from signing in the chorus, I sing as one of the various fishermen and as a Burgess.

This is an all around terrific production, and I wish everyone a hearty toi toi toi!

Auf Deutsch

Heute Abend findet die Premiere Peter Grimes in Opernhaus Dortmund statt. Ich singe im Chor und als einer der Fishermen und Burgesses.

Es ist eine großartige Produktion, und ich wünsche an allen Beteiligten ein herzliches Toi Toi Toi!

More Information/Mehr Infos:

http://www.theaterdo.de/detail/event/peter-grimes/