Grange Park Opera

Warm Woollen Mittens - Claire Rutter

26.01.2012

WARM WOOLLEN MITTENS ...... CLAIRE RUTTER (SOPRANO)

1. Your favourite piece of machinery
My Italian ‘Francis Francis' espresso machine

2. The greatest invention in history (excluding above)
Spectacles

3. Favourite symphonic work (no singing in it please)
Prokofiev's ‘Romeo and Juliet' Suite

4. Apart from home, your favourite city just now and why
Wish I didn't have to say London, but I just love it - there's so much going on culture-wise with opera, theatre and exhibitions

5. A pre-performance ritual ....
Cleaning toilets and bathrooms - usually in my own house! Don't know why. It's mindless, I guess, and I just want to do something mindless to while away the hours before I'm in full-concentration mode by the evening

6. The dead composer you would most like to chat to
Giuseppe Verdi

7. The most beautiful railway journey you have done
Edinburgh to Inverness (although I've only ever been on railway journeys in the UK)

8. Should we move the clocks forward one hour so we get lighter evenings? Yes, No or Don't Care
YES! Longer days at Grange Park would be lovely

9. Kung Fu Panda or Ratatouille? Who is the greater hero?
Ratatouille of course. Can't resist a good-hearted rat, who saves the day

10. In which past age would you prefer to have lived: 1083, 1492, 1897 ? And where?
1083 . . . Well, Eleanor of Aquitaine is my 21x Great Grandmother - not sure I would want to have seen what life was actually like!

1492 sounds like fun. It's alleged that another of my ancestors (Sir Henry Sinclair) actually discovered America 100 years before Columbus... but that's a little contentious. I would love to have been an explorer - discovered new lands - which is why I suppose I love the gypsy lifestyle of being a globe-trotting opera singer.