Welcome to 2021, things are about to get fiery... Ferrero Rochelle and Rosie Verbose are delighted to start off the New Year with a bang by chatting to Bria Lovegrove (née Kelly), a soprano whose Masters dissertation was on the impact of tragedy in opera. She shares her experience of how training as a professional classical singer affected her mental health, visiting areas such as perfectionism, self-medicating, the impact on her bank balance and the "grin and bear it" culture she experienced at conservatoire. Do the classical arts glamorise mental ill health?

Find Bria on Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/briakellysoprano/

CW: anxiety, depression, alcohol as coping mechanism, perfectionism & OCD. Plus a few F bombs, but in our defence, we were pretty PO'ed.

Some useful links for mental health issues mentioned in this episode: Help Musicians UK; help with substance abuse here and here; OCD-UK.

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What are you grateful for? Be in the next episode of our podcast and tell us what has you feeling thankful lately. You can message us on Facebook, Tweet us at @inviscabaret or DM us on Instagram (@invisiblecabaret)!

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Things mentioned in the podcast:

• Find out more about Brianna 
• Help Musicians UK study, "Can music make you sick?"
• Classical Magazine 2019 study on mental health provision in music
• Invisible Cabaret 'Tortured Artist' lip-sync: get a flavour on our Instagram 
• Text 85258 to SHOUT UK helpline if you need to talk to someone, especially a crisis counsellor

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Edited and mixed by Matt Ennis, www.mennismixing.co.uk

Music: Shades of Spring by Kevin MacLeod , available by license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

www.invisiblecabaret.org

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