The Brighton Early Music Festival has begun and this year I'm delighted to be involved in special performances of Francesca Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina. At last year's festival I performed in a programme centred around the Cries of London by Orlando Gibbons. Our group, The Fieri Consort, was being nurtured by the festival in their Young Artist scheme. Within our small space, one of Brighton's best pubs, we tried to bring alive a snapshot of the hustle and bustle of the 17th-century London streets. The BREMF team was extremely supportive, encouraging us to be as creative as possible. So it's fantastic to be back in 2015 performing in a fully staged opera, a first for the Brighton Festival. 

I sing with many consort groups and we often explore music rarely performed or only recently discovered. Ruggiero is one of those pieces and, as the first know opera written by a woman, holds a special place in history. It has been performed very infrequently but really is a treasure of the time. Francesca was a singer, lutenist, composer and poet. She was the Medici court's mostly highly paid musician at one point, due to her flair and virtuosity. It is wonderful that the festival has put the spotlight on this fantastic composer.

I am cast as third damsel/female monster, and I'm glad to be given the chance to delve into a variety of character traits! Last week I performed in the festival with Musica Secreta, singing newly discovered anonymous music, written in convents. It is thought this music came from the pen of Lucrezia Borgia. It's is amazingly mesmeric and brilliantly written, a reminder that there is so much music by female composers still to discover. The festival is really putting the spotlight on neglected and undiscovered works by women, a fantastic thing to be part of.

The first step of learning a new opera is of course memorising the work. Since the summer, I have been following a recurring pattern of committing the piece to memory by various means. Mostly in front of my keyboard and pacing around my living room, but also spare moments on buses and tubes (strange looks expected). There is wonderful variety within the score and I'll be singing solos, duets, trios and chorus numbers. The opera consists of warriors, witches, sorceresses, plants, monsters, sirens and much more. Music in the 17th-century courts was all about decadence and invention. The intermedi and early operas of the time were composed to be spectacles and to entertain royalty and aristocracy. This opera is full of wit and moments of real intensity. I believe that the audience in Brighton will be just as entertained!

Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola di Alcina will be performed on November 5, 7 and 8 at The Old Market, Brighton. For further information, visit: www.bremf.org.uk