Camerata Call Out

Feb 18 2017 | By Thom Dibdin More

Open call for singers

Opera Camerata has put out an open call for amateur singers to audition for the company’s 2017 production of La Belle Helene.

Auditions will be on the weekend of March 18 and 19 2017. The production of Offenbach’s opera bouffe will be staged at the Church Hill Theatre this Autumn, running Wednesday 11 to Saturday 14 October 2017.

Beside the principal performers, the company is looking to audition new chorus members and is particularly keen to hear from those with tenor voices.

La Belle Helene (The Beautiful Helen) parodies the Greek myth which tells of the elopement of Helen with Paris that set off the Trojan War.

Helen, Queen of Sparta, married to the weak king Menelaus, feels troubled by the Fates – a feeling fuelled by shady soothsayer Calchas. Little does she know, but Paris prince of Troy, has won the right to the heart of the most beautiful woman in the world, after awarding Venus first prize in a beauty competition.

With Paris turning up disguised as a Shepherd, the scene set for Offenbach’s librettists Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halevy to create a whole boulevard farce, with word games, bed-swapping, dreams that turn out to be real, seaside abandonments and a sacrificial trip to appease the gods.

First performed in 1864, the operetta’s musical pattern pretty much set the form for the classic three act operetta.

Anyone wishing to to audition for the production or wanting more information should contact the company’s musical director Alison Rushworth on AlisonRushworth@btinternet.com.