Work, Pizza, Song

Yesterday I learned that my company has a chorus that performs during the holidays. I joined, and today was the first rehearsal. There were maybe 20 people there. Denise, who I've mentioned in this blog before, is the musical director. Someone was playing an electric piano. Denise had us warm up with scales and other little vocalises, all the while shouting out little tips - "Deep breaths!" "Yawn!" "Relax your jaw!" and so on. Then we just jumped right in and sang Pastorale, "Tu scendi dalle stelle," an Italian Christmas song.

We met in a conference room. Think of your typical office conference room, that's where we were. The chair I was in was too low - it was like I was sitting on the floor! So my feet actually touched the ground, but it made my knees come up too high. You may be thinking, so what? But you must understand that this is very unusual for me as I am a mere 60 inches tall. Ok, 60 and 1/2. But still... so what this is leading to is, I ended up standing up near the wall because I could not produce the tone I wanted while sitting in that bizarre position. Stan, who I've also mentioned as he was one of our Romeo party, seemed annoyed by this. He said, "Just press your hands to the floor." Hmm has he been reading my blog? Anyway, I stayed standing and no one else noticed or cared.

And because the song was in Italian, we had pizza for lunch.

Number 101!

I just signed in to add some more links to the sidebar and noticed that I have 100 posts! So this is number 101. I need to get a life.

Been watching Bathroom Divas. It was on all day yesterday so I recorded it. I'm learning a lot! I think any amateur singer (like me!!) would learn a lot from it. They have vocal coaches, opera directors, orchestra conductors and other music specialists all providing feedback and guidance to each singer. It's great! One of the vocal coaches says and does some of the exact same things to the singers as my teacher says to me. It's kind of creepy... but not really.

Traipsed all over my office this morning looking for a working photocopy machine to copy my music. Now I need an Italian-English dictionary to do my word-for-word translation. I also need to learn more about Despina. I will become her for this aria I'm about to learn. I know what Cosi is about, but I need to study the character in depth. I'm looking forward to learning a new aria, something longer than what I've sung before.

Last week during warmups I hit a C sharp. And to think I sang tenor in high school chorus because there weren't enough boys.

Did I Mention that I Love the Internet?

Turns out one of my online opera friends has access to many many opera recordings... I now have Nathan Gunn as Figaro in San Francisco Opera's Babiere, The Met's Die Zauberflote with Nathan as Papageno and I'm in the process of obtaining one of 3 different dates of the Met's Barbiere with Juan Diego Florez!!! I also have the info to get a video of Billy Budd with Nathan as some other, smaller part, but I don't think I like the opera enough to take the time to download it.

Gracias a mi amigo que tiene la llave a todas las grabaciones!

Debo escribir en espanol de vez un cuando. Por que no? Si la gente que leen mi blog no entienden, no me importa. Yo se que hay mucha gente en el mundo que si, entienden espanol.
Pero como puedo poner acentos y tildes? No se parece en el keyboard y no se como ponerlos. Pero esto no tiene nada que ver con opera, por eso...

Maintenent, en francais. No... je ne raconte rien... il y a boucoup d'ans... and I'm sure I'm spelling it all wrong...

Ma, italiano? Io parlo? No, non parlo italiano. Mais je desire estudiarla. Ha ha una mezcla.

Ok all this talk of opera is keeping me up waaaay past my bedtime. So what else is new?