Latest news with #GuildhallSchoolofMusic&Drama
North Wales Live
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- North Wales Live
Aspiring opera singer wins W Towyn Roberts Scholarship at National Eisteddfod
An aspiring opera singer travelled to Wrexham to successfully take part in a prestigious competition at the National Eisteddfod. Manon Ogwen Parry, of Penarth near Cardiff, was one of four finalists in the W Towyn Roberts Scholarship on Monday afternoon. She is taking part in a series of concerts at the Edinburgh Festival and made the long journey from Scotland to take part in the Eisteddfod. She said: "Winning the W Towyn Roberts Scholarship would be an honour. It would make my family really proud, my father is from Bethesda. "I've been competing in the Urdd Eisteddfod, the Llangollen Eisteddfod and the National Eisteddfod since I was about five years old and this is a prize I have looked up to while growing up." The scholarship was set up in memory of Towyn Roberts' wife, Violet Jones, Nantclwyd, to promote vocal music for soloists in Wales and is awarded to the most promising competitor to enable them to follow a vocal training course at a recognised music school or college. Sign up for the North Wales Live newsletter sent twice daily to your inbox She was joined in the competition by sopranos Ffion Mair Thomas from Crymych, Pembrokeshire; Glesni Rhys Jones, of Bodedern, Anglesey and baritone John Rhys Liddington from the Rhymni valley. After deliberating for some time the adjudicators decided Manon worthy of the Scholarship with John second and Ffion third. It was a busy day for the 25-year-old soprano who is currently studying opera at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London. During the morning she was inducted into Gorsedd Cymru before taking part in the competition. This was as a result of her winning the Osborne Roberts Memorial Prize for the most promising soloist at last year's National Eisteddfod at Pontypridd. It has been a whirlwind year for Manon who made her debut at New York's Carnegie Hall last year and is set to perform at the BBC Proms later this summer as well as the Edinburgh Festival.
The Guardian
29-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The shocking hit film about overworked nurses that's causing alarm across Europe
The world could face a shortage of 13 million nurses by the end of this decade. For her new film, Swiss director Petra Volpe imagined the consequences of just one missed shift on a busy night at a hospital, and found herself making a disaster movie. With Late Shift, Volpe aimed to shine a light on the frontlines of the looming healthcare catastrophe through the eyes of the dedicated, exhausted Floria. Played by German actor Leonie Benesch, the young nurse shows an initially acrobatic grace in her workday, whose first half resembles a particularly hectic episode of the restaurant kitchen series The Bear, but with life-and-death stakes. Arriving for her shift cheery and energetic and taking the time to ask about her colleague's recent holiday, Floria soon hears that another nurse has called in sick. The looming workload suddenly grows exponentially, compounding the stress and driving up the likelihood she will make a fateful mistake. The Swiss-born Volpe said she had chosen the film's German title Heldin (Heroine) because it took a mythic term often reserved for warriors and applied it to the bravery and self-sacrifice of care work. 'This work, which is extremely complex and emotionally charged, is completely devalued in our societies,' Volpe says. 'I find it very symptomatic because it's women's work – 80% of the people [in many countries] who do this work are female.' Volpe was inspired by a longtime roommate who worked as a nurse, and by the autobiographical novel Our Profession Is Not the Problem – It's the Circumstances by German former care worker Madeline Calvelage, who advised her on the script. 'My heart was pounding from the first chapter and I thought to myself – this reads like a thriller,' Volpe says. 'But within that stress you find the most tender, human moments.' The film revolves around the escalating and competing needs of patients on a hospital ward, with a different set of medical and emotional demands lurking behind each door, signalled to the staff by a shrieking call bell. Benesch's turbo-driven career has already included roles on The Crown and Babylon Berlin as well as film parts in Michael Haneke's The White Ribbon, Munich Olympics attacks drama September 5 and German Oscar nominee The Teachers' Lounge. She says a common thread in her most recent characters was 'people who burn for what they do'. But she notes it was rare in TV medical dramas to see nurses and their everyday feats front and centre. 'You're used to getting the physicians as the heroes and then in the backdrop a nurse might hang an infusion bag or drink a coffee or have an affair with the senior doctor,' Benesch says. 'Before this it wasn't clear to me how much of the actual medical responsibility rests on nurses' shoulders.' Benesch, who trained at London's Guildhall School of Music & Drama, said she spent several shifts trailing real nurses at a Swiss hospital to learn the 'choreography' of interactions between staff and patients, and the manual skills of prepping a syringe or taking blood pressure. 'I wanted real nurses not to be able to tell the difference between me and a professional,' she says. 'I just hope people aren't scared off by a film with subtitles because the story is absolutely universal.' Late Shift has stoked heated policy reform debates and proved a critical and box office success in German-speaking Europe, even besting the latest Bridget Jones movie in Swiss cinemas. At the world premiere at the Berlin film festival in February, several nurses were invited to appear in their uniforms on the red carpet and take the stage after the screening for a round of applause. Days before Germany's general election, some held #wirsindfloria (We Are Floria) signs. One of those guests was Ingo Böing, 47, who worked in hospitals for a quarter century and is now on staff at the German Association of Nursing Professionals, which lobbies for better conditions for care workers. 'It was incredibly moving,' he says of the film gala. 'Watching several of the scenes I thought 'Wow, that's really how it is.'' Böing says Late Shift did a convincing job depicting the 'vicious circle' of nursing, in which people working at the absolute limits of their strength call in sick at short notice, leaving those who show up for duty with an even more daunting task. 'It's that feeling of trying to meet so many needs at once and not managing,' he adds. He says waiting lists like those used by the NHS in Britain, although frustrating for patients, would help hospitals in Germany better prioritise while keeping medical staff from getting overstretched. Franziska Aurich, 28, who works on a cancer ward at Berlin's Charité hospital, also found the film 'very close to reality'. Asked what she'd advise Floria, Aurich says: 'I would say go back to work tomorrow because like her I can't imagine doing anything else with my life. But join a union, so you don't have as many shifts like this one.' Volpe, who divides her time between Berlin and New York, says she was gratified to see nurses going in groups to see the film, and hoped it would make the rest of the audience into better patients. 'Nurses should be at the very top of our social hierarchy but we live in a world where it's just the opposite,' she says. 'This film is a love letter to the profession.' While the film is set in Europe's creaking but still intact social infrastructure, Volpe said she saw in the USnited States where Donald Trump's swingeing cuts to Medicaid, which mainly serves poor and disabled people, threatened to hurt the most vulnerable. 'You see a great cruelty in all these measures,' she says. 'Elon Musk said he saw empathy as the biggest problem of our time which is of course completely monstrous. The least an artist can do is to push back against that. Sooner or later we're all going to be dependent on that person standing by the bed.' Late Shift will be released in the UK and Ireland on 1 August
Otago Daily Times
30-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Feminine rage and power
The artist formally known as Calla is back and raging. Rings the bells and sound the trumpets — Calla of Ursa has been born! The operatic soprano, violinist, and producer formerly known as Calla has metamorphosed into a bold new incarnation, filled with righteous rage at the state of the planet and ready to bring her music to the world. Her upcoming show in Ōtepoti, celebrating the release of her cinematic and danceable "electro-folk opera" album Animal Reaction , will be her final Aotearoa performance before she heads overseas to chase new musical horizons in the UK and Europe. She leaves in just weeks. In preparation, Calla Knudson-Hollebon, 27, has just come from a farewell of sorts from her role as the programme manager of Crescendo, in Tāmaki Makaurau — a social enterprise delivering free music programmes for young people. It has been a fitting job for the musician, who says music "simply pours out of her". Calla of Ursa has played violin since age 3 and was singing before she could talk. She holds a first-class honours in performance voice and a key reason for her move overseas — as well as international touring — is the prestigious opportunity to study at Guildhall School of Music & Drama, in London. Although one foot is in the classical world, the other is firmly in the contemporary; she taught herself electronic music production on her grandmother's desktop computer — "I was just messing around," she says modestly. The songs of Animal Reaction effortlessly merge these analogue and digital worlds in mutually enhancing ways. "Real-world sounds ground the timbre of the composition, while the digital makes it more than it could be in real life." This hybrid — combined with her unique blend of classical and contemporary stylings — results in an album that feels timeless and fresh, rich with drama and texture. Calla of Ursa's violin and the cello of her accompanist Olivia Wilding shift between eerie Tom Waits-esque plucks and scratches and lavish multi-layered soaring; the electronic production adds gritty industrial texture and tribal-inspired pop beats. Calla of Ursa's inimitable voice soars and whispers throughout, guiding the album's emotional arc. The songs often begin gently, gradually building towards bold, booty-shaking climaxes. One standout single, Face Me , withholds a beat almost entirely, instead luxuriating in layers of strings and honeyed vocals — the late drop is worth the wait, though you can't help but wish it lingered. Calla of Ursa says she's constantly trying to "pave novel terrain" with her sound, even approaching To Be Sacred as a kind of symphony. "It took ages to finish," she says with a laugh. She admires artists who are equally boundary-pushing: "like Billie Eilish". "She's huge for a reason — the music is so beautifully done and interesting." Animal Reaction has a cinematic quality that conjures vivid, unbidden imagery. "I want it to sound like a condensed movie score," says Calla of Ursa — and that goal has certainly been realised. The album could easily soundtrack a film or serve as the theme for a prestige HBO series. It's theatrical, even carnivalesque at times. The jerky rhythms of To Be Sacred invoke unsettling visions of the musician manipulated puppet-like. Film scores are a goal for Calla of Ursa, and she has just completed her first: Bodies of Water , a Magnetic Boots production set for release soon. Thematically, Animal Reaction is an album about feminine rage, she says. After hearing a man remark that women are "a bit crazy around that time of month," she began to reflect on how society perceives the menstrual phase. "There is so much fear and apprehension around women feeling strong things; what are we afraid of?" Animal Reaction is a reclamation of rage as a valid emotion; an exploration of what feminine rage might look like on a global level. This is channelled into a response to the climate crisis, and the systemic subjugation of both people and the planet. But the album is deeply personal too — "there are also songs about love, in all its different colours," she says. "The ugly stuff, not just the pretty stuff." Music is healing for Calla of Ursa, and through her own catharsis she hopes to facilitate catharsis for others, she says. "Countless people tell me they've had transformative experiences through my music — it's an incredible honour." She hopes people feel the themes of Animal Reaction deeply, helping them connect to their rage and become less complacent about the world. Calla of Ursa sure seems more connected to her rage than "Calla" was, aesthetically at least. Gone is the soft ethereal fairy in a forest; here is a woman with stormy dark eyes and drips of blood-like red down her cheeks. Her new name is inspired by the etymological root of Calla: Callisto, the Greek nymph who was transformed into the constellation Ursa Major. "There were too many 'Calla's'," says the ambitious artist, who hopes to make a splash in Europe. "But I'm also going to lap up all the creative goodness over there and bring it back home." She's particularly eager to explore traditional music from Norway, Scotland, and Ireland, regions tied to her heritage. "Like kulning — it's a Scandinavian technique for singing to cows." So, rest assured: we haven't lost her for good. And when she returns, she'll have some new tricks up her sleeve. The gig • Calla of Ursa Animal Reaction album release gig, DropKicks, Dunedin, Friday June 6.
