Five Cuts, Two Operas, and a Chocolate Cake
- KiwiTenor
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Hello lovely family, friends and followers!
I’m currently in London, co-looking after a friend’s family’s lovely spaniel called Maddie — floof pictured below. At the moment I’m sitting in their kitchen having just iced my Grandma’s chocolate cake recipe, which I whipped up last night on a whim.
The recipe comes from a little book I’ve carried with me since I left New Zealand in 2013. It’s filled with my family’s handwritten recipes — notes in margins, slightly faded ink, and the occasional mysterious instruction that assumes you already know what you’re doing. Somehow it has survived every move, suitcase reshuffle and international relocation. It travels with me as an essential.
Mind you, it’s not often these days that I have access to a proper kitchen long enough to actually cook anything from it… so this feels like a bit of a luxury.
It’s been a while since my last update, hasn’t it?So let me give you a quick rundown of the past few months since “Christmas on the TGV.”
I arrived in Toulouse on Christmas Day, bright-eyed and ready to begin rehearsals for The Passenger by Weinberg. The opera was written in the 1960s but only received its premiere in the early 2000s, and it has since become a hugely important work — both for its harrowing story and its extraordinary music. Being part of that production felt genuinely exciting.
But fate — that persistent little creature that delights in derailing carefully laid plans — had other ideas.
On the 28th of December I found myself in the Toulouse hospital with severe pain under my sternum. After about twelve hours of attempting to “manage it myself” (as one stubbornly does), I eventually gave in and called an Uber to the hospital at 4:30am, doing my best to look bright-eyed and vaguely functional.
Twelve hours later the hospital team informed me that I would be transferred to another hospital and scheduled for surgery the next morning.
…what?
After a few more days of delays and investigations, the inevitable happened: an emergency gallbladder removal. Five neat little holes in my abdomen, and a surgeon sitting at the end of my bed explaining — in slow French (which still felt rapid, unintelligible and heavily accented to my ears) — that this was one of the most severely inflamed and inexplicable gallbladders he had seen.
So that was… festive.
Thanks to the immense support of the Théâtre du Capitole team and my colleagues, I did my best to get back on my feet and return to rehearsals as quickly as possible. The only real pressure was the kind I tend to apply to myself — which, in hindsight, may not have been entirely wise.
Recovering from that surgery took far more out of me than I expected. I was suddenly very aware of just how much abdominal engagement goes into singing. When you have absolutely no ability to activate the muscles that support breath and sound — the famous appoggio — you quickly realise how essential they are.
Still, without indulging in too much traditional tenorial melodrama, I managed to stagger back into rehearsals, climb into the role of an SS officer, and figure out a way to sing without placing too much strain on healing wounds.
And somehow perform a convincingly unpleasant villain on stage with only the occasional bursting of a stitch or two.
There’s a glimpse below of one of the scenes from the opera, wonderfully recorded for Medici TV. If you have the time, I would genuinely recommend watching the whole piece — it’s a powerful and deeply moving work.
After that adventure, my journey took me back to New Zealand. I travelled with a single small cabin bag, mostly because I wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavier than five kilos. Minimalism by medical necessity.
Once home, I joined the wonderful community of Days Bay Opera for Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, followed later in the month by Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno.
Returning to Days Bay is always a joy. There’s something very special about that small coastal community: excellent flat whites, long conversations, and an extraordinary group of New Zealand artists brought together by the formidable Rhona Fraser.
Those three weeks were filled with rehearsals, shared stories about the peculiar life of this industry, visits with my parents (who flew over from Melbourne), reconnecting with friends I hadn’t seen in years, meeting new ones among the ever-welcoming Days Bay locals, and excitingly teaching many of the wonderful young singers in Wellington.
All while eating approximately my body weight in Whittaker’s Fruit & Nut chocolate.
(Which, admittedly, is not the ideal dietary approach when you are also on an exercise ban.)
I’ve now returned to Europe and am spending some time preparing for upcoming work in a small version of the Magic Flute in Besançon and Salome in Toulouse, alongside a few auditions that have popped up along the way. There’s also a short visit planned to Austria to see friends, and a week of lessons with my teacher in Italy before being in Paris, and London...
...In other words — life has resumed its usual slightly chaotic rhythm.
And perhaps that’s the strange thing about this profession. One moment you’re standing on stage under bright lights, and the next you’re sitting in a hospital bed being told an organ has decided to quietly revolt and... sometimes, in the quieter moments — like icing a cake from a battered family recipe book in someone else’s kitchen — you’re reminded that the small, ordinary things are what keep everything else grounded.
Anyway… this chocolate cake has been staring at me long enough.
Time to investigate.
Bis später — alligator.
Z
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