The Sugar in the Tea

“We want to see your faces!” It’s not an unusual thing to hear in a choir rehearsal. Getting your head out of the score to look at conductor and public works musical wonders. But it had a sharper quality when I heard Rob Gildon say it in a workshop run by Streetwise Opera at the Southbank Centre in London. Streetwise, a music charity that works with people who have experienced homelessness, was preparing several performances in November. Right then, the group of 20 or so participants was practicing the Neapolitan street song “O sole mio,” the “Ombra mai fu” that opens Handel’s “Serse,” and, dividing in two, the concluding duet from Monteverdi’s “The Coronation of Poppea.”