Canolfan UCHELDRE Centre

With Marian Bryfdir and Kiefer Jones

An opportunity to meet and work with two music professionals.

Whether you want to improve your singing voice or even find it. If you want to find those top notes or learn how to breath whilst singing. These monthly workshops are for you. 

All musical tastes are covered: classical, operatic arias, folk songs, pop and songs from the musicals. You would be joining a group of people with similar aims, and have the opportunity to have a private session with Marian or Kiefer.

This event is now full. Places for others in this series are still available

early booking is advised to avoid disappointment

Marian Bryfdir studied at the Royal Academy of Music and sang with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden before specialising in opera-in-education and voice teaching. Now based in North Wales, she arranges short intensive courses of vocal rehabilitation for individuals with vocal problems of all types and also gives short courses for young singing teachers.We are very pleased to host her workshops here at Ucheldre.

Kiefer Jones is classically trained and a solo performer. He has also sung with among others Boys Aloud.

Mezzo-soprano Clémentine Margaine reprises her remarkable portrayal of opera’s ultimate seductress, a triumph in her 2017 debut performances, with impassioned tenor Roberto Alagna as her lover, Don José. Louis Langrée conduct Sir Richard Eyre’s powerful production, a Met favourite since its 2009 premiere.

Bizet’s masterpiece of the gypsy seductress who lives by her own rules has had an impact far beyond the opera house. The opera’s melodic sweep is as irresistible as the title character herself, a force of nature who has become a defining female cultural figure. Carmen was a scandal at its premiere but soon after became a triumphal success and has remained one of the most frequently staged operas in the world.

Tenor Javier Camarena and soprano Pretty Yende team up for a feast of bel canto vocal fireworks—including the show-stopping tenor aria “Ah! Mes amis,” with its nine high Cs. Maurizio Muraro is the comic Sergeant Sulpice, with mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as the outlandish Marquise of Berkenfield. Enrique Mazzola conducts.

This frothy comedy mixes humour with a rush of buoyant melody and notorious vocal challenges. The story concerns a young orphan girl raised by an army regiment as their mascot and begins at the moment of her first stirrings of love. Complications (and comedy) ensue when her true identity is discovered. The action is startlingly simple and unencumbered by intricate subplots, allowing the full charm of the characters and their virtuosic music to come across in an uninhibited way.

With Marian Bryfdir and Kiefer Jones

An opportunity to meet and work with two music professionals.

Whether you want to improve your singing voice or even find it. If you want to find those top notes or learn how to breath whilst singing. These monthly workshops are for you. 

All musical tastes are covered: classical, operatic arias, folk songs, pop and songs from the musicals. You would be joining a group of people with similar aims, and have the opportunity to have a private session with Marian or Kiefer.

Marian Bryfdir studied at the Royal Academy of Music and sang with the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden before specialising in opera-in-education and voice teaching. Now based in North Wales, she arranges short intensive courses of vocal rehabilitation for individuals with vocal problems of all types and also gives short courses for young singing teachers.We are very pleased to host her workshops here at Ucheldre.

Kiefer Jones is classically trained and a solo performer. He has also sung with among others Boys Aloud.

In what is expected to be a Wagnerian event for the ages, soprano Christine Goerke plays Brünnhilde, Wotan’s wilful warrior daughter, who loses her immortality in opera’s most famous act of filial defiance. Tenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek play the incestuous twins Siegmund and Sieglinde. Greer Grimsley sings Wotan. Philippe Jordan conducts.

The second opera in Wagner’s monumental Ring cycle, Die Walküre has long stood on its own as an evening of extraordinarily powerful theatre. Part of this appeal lies in its focus on some of the Ring’s most interesting characters at decisive moments of their lives: Wotan, the leader of the gods; his wife, Fricka; his twin offspring, Siegmund and Sieglinde; and, above all, Wotan’s warrior daughter Brünnhilde. These characters and others follow their destinies to some of Wagner’s most remarkable music.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the classic John Dexter production of Poulenc’s devastating story of faith and martyrdom. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the touching role of Blanche and soprano Karita Mattila, a legend in her own time, returns to the Met as the Prioress.

The opera takes place between 1789 and 1794 in Paris and in the town of Compiègne in north-eastern France, the site of the Carmelite nuns’ convent. Its historical basis is the martyrdom of a group of 16 Carmelite nuns and lay sisters from Compiègne, who chose to offer themselves as victims for the restoration of peace to France during the Revolution.