Hi, I’m Eliane and I’m an opera singer. Sounds like opera singers anonymous… Well, it has taken a long time to put that out there into the world. For a very long time I’ve been afraid of using that name, because it felt like it had such a lot of weight attached to it. And what does it mean, really? I guess it means that you sing songs that come from operas – but there are plenty of classically trained singers who don’t sing opera, whom we still refer to as ‘opera singers’. So it is a style of singing? Well, yes, but within the opera genre there are as many styles of singing as there are people who sing. I guess I think of it as similar to gymnastics. We train our voices so they can cut through an orchestra, even when we’re singing quietly. We sing music that moves people to tears, even if they don’t understand the words. It’s not always great, sometimes I fall asleep at the opera. But when it’s good, it’s so wonderful. Anyway, this is the very first blog. It’s late, I’m rambling, but there will be more… In the meantime, here’s a clip from a concert I did recently, featuring the delicious styling of Orlanda Bolton: