An uplifting evening at Basildon’s Towngate Theatre from the Thames Opera Company Chorus and guests. 

Choruses, arias, duets, trios and ensembles from Verdi’s, Nabucco, Il trovatore, La traviata; Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George; Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, Idomeneo, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte; Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin; Delibes’s Lakmé; Barber’s Vanessa; Boito’s Mefistofele; Richard Taylor’s Ludd and Isis; Puccini’s La bohème; Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio; Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor; Bizet’s Carmen.
  No one – without having been told – would realise that the Thames Opera Company Chorus had not been auditioned; with some having little or no prior knowledge of performing (in general), or of opera, or how to follow a score, or sing in a foreign language. As usual for most amateur – and some professional – choruses female voices outnumbered the male voices (here by almost 3:1) but they were so splendidly coached by TOC Artistic Director Jeremy Haneman and TOC Musical Director Ashley Beauchamp that the balance of voices was fine throughout. Beauchamp providing excellent support to all the varied musical items on the programme from his piano.
  A starry line-up of singers were present to sing alongside the chorus or have their own moments in the spotlight: Patron of TOC – who needs absolutely no further introduction – famed baritone Roderick Williams; former Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artists Anita Watson (soprano) and Luis Gomes (tenor); and young mezzo-soprano Nancy Holt (one of this year’s Garsington Opera Alvarez Young Artists). Intriguingly they were joined by a former member of the Thurrock Community Chorus from when she was 8 (!), soprano Blaize O’Callaghan, whose studies in singing are ongoing and who is aiming for a professional career. On the basis of her resplendent Blue Fairy’s Aria from Jonathan Dove’s The Adventures of Pinocchio her future seems assured.

  Among much else for all the soloists, Roderick Williams was sublime in Mozart – in a Don Giovanni duet with Anita Watson and a trio from Così fan tutte with Watson and Nancy Holt – but relished going OTT as Bizet’s swaggering toreador; Holt’s warm-toned mezzo-soprano was heard best in the plaintive Must the winter come so soon from Samuel Barber’s Vanessa and with Watson in the Classic FM-favourite Delibes’s perfumed Lakmé duet; the extended Act I finale from Puccini’s La bohème sung by Watson and Luis Gomes was just as good as you might hear anywhere and Gomes’s pliant and bright tenor stood out in the ensemble shenanigans of the Chorus of the Wedding Guests (from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor) and Verdi’s Brindisi.

  What was clear for all to see in Basildon’s packed-out Towngate Theatre was how much the chorus of Thames Opera Company were relishing being up on the stage and performing to family, friends and anyone else drawn – like me – to this uplifting evening. There was a true ‘love for the art’, an all-for-one, one-for-all feeling of real community endeavour and, last but not least, let’s not forget how genuinely talented they all appeared to be.