Backstage with ...

Christian Lindhorst

Christian Lindhorst heads the Children’s and Youth Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. He rehearses with them twice a week – but on the big night they’re on their own.

Anniversary concert: Children’s Chorus turns 10
Conductors: Christian Lindhorst (Berlin), Wolfgang Götz (Salzburg); With the Children’s and Youth Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Salzburger Festspiele und Theater Kinderchor, with Flurina Stucki, and Bryan Murray
26 March 2019

Some of them may deny it, but they all have butterflies when they’re waiting in the wings for their big moment. And rightly so. Singing and acting at the same time looks a lot easier than it actually is.

The Children’s and Youth Chorus of the Deutsche Oper has 170 members, of which thirty children are involved in CARMEN. There are five different chorus groups. The ‘Mini Chorus’ is for our youngest singers. They don’t get to sing onstage, as we consider children under the age of eight not yet ready to perform in front of a large audience. Members of the Children’s Chorus may feature in stage productions, as may the Concert Chorus, which is made up of children with considerable stage experience who have received a certain amount of formal vocal training. We also have a ‘Voice-Changers’ group for male teenagers whose voices are breaking, although the group also includes a few fully-fledged adult male voices. And then there’s the Youth Chorus for young gentlemen and ladies aged 16 and over.

Three factors determine whether a particular singer gets to sing as part of a stage production: voice, acting ability and maturity. We rehearse twice a week and shortly before a performance we brush up on the opera again. After that it’s all down to the children, although they’re not totally on their own: I’m always standing in the wings, conducting with my little red-filtered torch. It’s a little trick I have. That way they know I’m there and know when they’re meant to come in.

In a rehearsal interval © Max Zerrahn
 

CARMEN is quite a long opera, so they never get to hear the applause at the end. The opera runs to 10.30pm, which is the absolute limit laid down by law for hours that children can spend singing. So they all scamper off up to the rehearsals room, change out of their costumes and go home. I sometimes feel a little sorry for them, but if you ask me, the kids don’t really think it’s that important. We’ve got so many other projects on the go. They don’t just sing in the operas; they also give concerts in their own right and go on chorus tours. To mark the tenth anniversary of the Children’s and Youth Chorus the collected members will be up there together on the main stage. And when that happens, you can be sure there’ll be no going home before the final ovation.

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