Q and A with Flora McIntosh - Director of OperaCocktail

Flora McIntosh is the Artistic Director of OperaUpClose. 

Please introduce yourself.

I became Artistic Director of OperaUpClose in 2022. Before this role, I was a full time performer, an opera singer - running a company is a fascinating, challenging, stimulating, terrifying, learning curve! I’ve discover skills I didn’t know I had, creating and curating a programme, and managing fabulous teams of producers and creatives.

What is opera?

Fundamentally, opera is a way of communicating stories told through sound in theatrical productions. The multi-layered nature of opera enhances and distills both the narrative and the characters' emotion, beyond words and obvious action, giving the audience a richer, deeper experience and understanding.

What are the aims of OperaUpClose?

What we really want to show is how theatrical opera is and that it doesn't require a special musical knowledge to understand or enjoy it. It just requires an openness to receive those stories in different ways, which we all do all the time through different mediums. Our work aims to dismantle the concerns that you need to know something about opera first. Part of that approach is about scale: we work at what I call a chamber scale, so there is a special  intimacy and feeling of immersion for audiences seeing our productions. We’re really engaging the audience directly in the stuff that's happening on stage as well as the sound and the singing. We’re keen for our production to be a really responsive space.  Opera can mean many things, but fundamentally, we're storytellers and theatre makers,

Tell us more about OperaCocktail

OperaCocktail is something that feels genuinely contemporary, whilst also echoing the thrilling things that we have in the archive of opera - what you might call the canon. Our five characters are all storytellers. The only difference between an instrumental player and a singer in OperaCocktail is just that they're commenting through their instrument, rather than through words (although they also do sing occasionally!).  It's a real ensemble approach. 

We wanted it to be light touch. We wanted it to be able to do the things that opera can do, which is to make you feel charmed and entertained and then moved, and fundamentally, to really care about these characters. 

It was really important to me that, although OperaCocktail is a ‘jukebox’ opera,  the narrative really doesn’t feel imposed. This is a story in its own right.

How does the set help to tell the story?

Anna’s design gives us a very gentle set. It leans into an aesthetic with OperaUpClose about what opera does, which is that it instantly places you in the hyper real. That’s even represented in how we've decided to have a painting on stage: there is a painting of the thing that you're seeing. There's something slightly meta going on, with the use of Pointillism, where you sort of feel like you're in the land of hyper reality, as you always are, actually, in all theatre. 

How do you want the audience to feel after they see OperaCocktail?

What I really hope is that everyone comes out of it loving the people that they've met in the story and feeling that the music gave them a deeper understanding and connection to the characters. It's a very simple production in the best possible way, but it's told through complex, interesting music. It tells you lots of things without you knowing that you're being told.

Being in the audience for OperaCocktail is a collective experience; an act of gathering and sharing that is so impactful.

How do you help your performers find their characters?

One of the exercises that I do with the cast every time we revisit the show is for them all to tell me what they did yesterday as their characters. And so I'll find out what they did yesterday and what their plan is for the day. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it totally lands us in the world. And of course, then they talk about whether they phoned their friend or who they saw. You know, we discovered that Lenny and Jo have a very interesting life:  they live together. They definitely have a cat, but they're not a couple.  They have a van. They're the kind of voyeurs of the whole afternoon: they quite enjoy seeing this stuff playing out in front of them,

What was your route into being a singer and performer?

Well, I do think I had an advantage. I grew up around the theatre and I wanted to be a performer from an early age, and that felt possible for me, but I was very determined that I wanted to be an actor. People kept suggesting that I sing, but I resisted that quite hard, initially. I had some singing lessons, and I was taken to see an opera which I loved. I thought it was cool but required a level of discipline that maybe I didn’t have or wasn’t interested in. But singing just was sort of what I did so I was encouraged to audition for the Junior Royal Academy of Music (a Saturday school). I was successful and that training made me a much more disciplined musician. There was a singing teacher who directed me towards operatic music, even though I didn’t consider myself to be on a classical music/opera path. In the end mine was a fairly traditional route into training and I went to the Royal Northern College of Music, but I didn’t ever really fit into a traditional career trajectory for opera. I realised that I’m also very interested in process and the making of the work, and subverting expectations. I love exercising the performance muscles, but I love thinking about how the story is communicated and ways we can tell stories.

My career demonstrates how many transferable skills there are in being a musician and performer. I don’t mean just in having performance skills, but being able to manage a team, solve problems and engage people in what you’re doing. It's so important. Obviously, I'm still working in the arts, but it goes across everything. Whether you're a plumber, a musician, or any other job, you need to know how to talk to somebody - it's about being able to read the room and empathise with people. There is a huge need across all industries for creative thinkers - The Arts give us a way in.