This week, I’m joined by bass Barnaby Rea for a longer-than-usual opera special I mean if we're doing opera, we've gotta go long, right?!), recorded backstage at the Royal Opera House, London.
Barnaby is a British/Irish bass who trained at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and the National Opera Studio. He was a Harewood Artist at English National Opera and a member of the Oper Frankfurt solo ensemble. He has also appeared with companies including the Royal Opera House, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Zurich Opera, Teatro Real, Opéra de Lyon, Scottish Opera and Opera North.
We recorded this while Barnaby was performing Doctor Grenvil in Verdi’s La traviata, in Richard Eyre’s long-running Royal Opera production.
This episode was also partly inspired by a recent visit to Milan and the extraordinary Teatro alla Scala, which got me thinking about opera not just as music, but as architecture, social ritual, commerce, class, spectacle and power.
So this is partly a conversation about opera singing, partly a look at the machinery of a major opera house, and partly an attempt to understand why opera can feel both thrillingly immediate and socially intimidating.
We talk about opera vs musical theatre, why singers train for so long, how a voice can fill a huge theatre without amplification, what “placement” and resonance mean, and why vibrato is not just decorative wobbling.
We also get into opera’s social context: boxes, gods, stalls, ticket prices, access, prestige, and whether opera’s elitist reputation is entirely fair.
There’s also a wider reflection on live music now: why huge arena shows can dominate the public story of the music industry while smaller venues, grassroots promoters, festivals and independent musicians are struggling.
This is a longer episode than usual, but that feels fitting for opera: there is a lot of voice, history, scale and backstage machinery to get into.
Find Barnaby Rea at barnabyrea.com and on Instagram at @barnabyrea_bass.
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Stay musically curious!
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