DISCOVER YOUR REAL POTENTIAL
Who or what inspired you to take up singing, and make it your career?
I’ve always sung, since I was a little girl, and I’ve always loved music. So singing as a job seemed like a natural step. However, I didn’t follow a logical route, as I first became a Barrister, after reading Law at Cambridge University. But the lure of singing was too great in the end, and so I accepted a place at the Royal College of Music and I’ve never looked back.
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Here are some of Mary Helen’s top tips for staying positive and keeping motivated:
Tune Out Negative Voices, Tune Into You
Try this the next time you hear yourself saying something negative about yourself:
– Pause and take a moment to think about what you’ve just said.
– Think about why you said that and why you are feeling that.
– Remind yourself that you are capable.
– Shift your focus to a challenge that you recently met successfully.
– Take a moment to remember and reconnect to your belief that you can achieve your goals.
Stay Away From Extremes and Work the Margins:
To achieve even the loftiest of goals you must employ a simple approach that comes down to steady, consistent work, every day.
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Magic Butterfly sees two classic operas reimagined by Welsh National Opera
Presented inside the unlikely setting of a shipping container at locations across the country, visitors don headsets which use the Google Daydream technology to present Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Puccini’s Madam Butterfly in animated form.
Thought to be the first production of its kind, WNO commissioned REWIND, an award-winning VR production agency who have worked with Icelandic singing star Bjork, to work with them on Magic Butterfly.
Visitors are invited into the shipping container in groups of four in turn to experience each of the performances – lasting eight minutes in total – while being given simple directions to control the experience.
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Domingo is leading a Wagner opera in Bayreuth during the summer of 2018. The work of choice? “Die Walküre,” an opera he has performed previously in his career.
Despite the fact that Hawkins’ career is taking off on television and film, he decided to return to Broadway because of the character he plays in Six Degrees of Separation and the opportunity to continue to grow as an actor. He explains, “I grew up a theater nerd — I actually grew up singing in the church first, that was my first love — and then in high school I was in musical theater and then, of course, they cut it due to funding, and then I ended up going into straight theater at Duke Ellington School of the Arts in D.C. I just think there’s something about coming back to the stage, man, just sharpening that tool and keeping that muscle firing, you know what I mean? And this character is one of those that’s sort of like a gymnast or an acrobat or an athlete — like, he’s a different guy in every scene — and I just thought it would be fun to do that right after coming off of a TV show. Fun, or scary as hell, and why not do it if you know if it scares you? So I just wanted to challenge myself and see where it took me, and I feel like a lucky guy.”
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