Cenerentola - Small Glitch, Large Fun!

Cenerentola in HD was so much fun!! What a great production. It's the same production I watched last week during the free Met Player weekend, only, of course, with an entirely different cast. It was kind of cool to see it with all different people because that meant that, in spite of the music, the scenery and the costumes being the same, it was still very different because each singer brings his or her own self to the part.

The small glitch was that the people who worked in the theater didn't seem to know what they were doing. Usually during an HD broadcast, the screen is on about 30 minutes before showtime. The people in the movie theaters can watch the people find their seats at the Met, we can watch the orchestra tune up and they also show little trivia questions and ads for other HD productions. This time... nothing. At about 12:25 the lights went out completely for approximately 30 seconds, then came back up. The sound was on and then.. it began. Blank screen. Brightly lit theater. Then we got the sound. We could hear Thomas Hampson introduce the production and then he introduced the Maestro and then... it started... and still... blank screen, bright room. About 3 people went out (including me because I can move fast compared to the rest of the crowd there) to find out what was going on. There was one youngish girl on a walkie talkie trying to reach a manager... a manager type finally showed up behind the popcorn counter and said, "It's a live feed. We're waiting for it." And we were like, "Uh, it's here. Turn on your projector and shut the lights..." Finally someone got a clue and suddenly in the middle of the overture the screen came alive and the house lights went down. Hooray!

I love watching the orchestra. Usually you don't get such a close-up view of the individual musicians. I love seeing how totally absorbed they get with the music, swaying, making faces as they play and so on. I love seeing all the bowed instruments move together like a dance. This particular overture has plucky parts and it was really cool to see them all pluck at the same time. It sounds silly as I reread it but it was cool to see.

The performance was so much fun. Everyone was fabulous. Elīna Garanča (yeah I pasted her name in from wikipedia because I have no idea how to type those characters over the i and c) was so cute!! She was so pleasant to watch. And she sounded wonderful. The two sisters were HILARIOUS!!! Perfect - great sense of timing, beautiful singing, silly but not too silly - perfect.

The guys were all great too - the stepfather was ridiculous. During the intermission interview he said that he takes the ridiculous characters seriously because the characters take themselves seriously. They don't know they appear ridiculous. He was awesome.

Dandini and then of course the Prince - WOW! The Prince - Lawrence Brownlee - WOW WOW WOW! What a voice! Beautiful, like sweet liquid flowing out of him and into your ears. The moment he first sang I regretting not seeing him live in Philadelphia last fall. I'm sure I'll have other opportunities to see him live though. Gotta save my pennies and sell more earrings. And the fairy-godmother character... he's the Prince's advisor, and also, apparently, an angel come to save C. from her wretched life - that was John Relyea. He was great. We've all seen him before - he was the music teacher in the HD Barbiere with Joyce DD and JDF. Basses fascinate me - how do they sing sooooo looowww??????

I was a little distracted during the performance - see my most recent posts where I discuss feeling blue and so on - but the beautiful sounds did finally draw me out of my funk and into their crazy world. Oh and I almost forgot - things caught on fire!! On purpose, that is. Don't get all freaked out! During the thunderstorm scene the house gets struck by lightning. The rain had been leaking in the roof so C. gave the stepfather an umbrella... and... BOOM! FLASH! Umbrella ablaze! The walls caught too. You could hear the entire audience, both at the Met and in the theater, gasp. Love it! Fire. Very exciting moment. And then silly of course because the characters didn't seem to care.

Then today I had a fantabulous day with Husband and Alex - picnic in a park, hike in the woods, we saw lots of people on horseback, played on a cool playground that had a fence-maze, played in the backyard, I had a nap (hooray!!), we grilled chicken and shrimp and then we roasted marshmallows over the coals and made s'mores with spicy chocolate! YUM!!!

Next event: Vocal evaluation, this Wednesday. So far I feel pretty good about it but ask me again on Wednesday afternoon...

HD Today - La Cenerentola

Don't know if I'd classify this as an adventure, unless battling the senior set for ideal seats in the theater qualifies as one. I'm looking forward to seeing La Cenerentola today. I haven't read the reviews so I don't know if the production is more traditional or if some clever person decided to change the setting.

Husband, of course, didn't want to go, plus we have no childcare, so I'm meeting a friend from work there.

It's supposed to be hot out today. Will the theater be warm or will it be overly air-conditioned and freezing? Layers are in order. And snacks. Time to tuck snacks into my giant purse.

Blog Post Salad

Many things to write about. I considered making a separate entry for each topic but decided instead for ensalata mixta.

Starting with: Mixed greens

This past Thursday's voice lesson!!!!

The lesson was great. Really great. I love the vocal exercises she has me do. I really love them. I practice caressing the notes and smoothing things out and ironing the break and all that other fun stuff. I had my eyes closed and I pictured myself on a stage. Since I've actually been on a stage as a super I imagined that theater. In my mind, the house was mostly empty save for a few people in the top row and standing behind that top row. I sang so that they could hear me. Ok, I'll admit it - I pretended I was auditioning. For what? For anything, really. Bathroom Divas. Opera chorus. Community theater. And WOW it totally made a difference. Adding that exercise to "sing like no one is listening" improved my sound immensely! Of course if I really were auditioning for something I'd probably be so nervous that I'd open my mouth to hear a trembling warble, but alone with my teacher in the room it was really good. We did Una Donna a few more times before putting it back on the back burner. Amazing how far I've come with it.

Then we went back to The Tipsy Waltz from La Perichole. Even with IPA and my own pronunciation notes I have trouble remembering all the vowel sounds. French has different sounds when you sing it from when you speak it, because apparently French isn't difficult enough for native English speakers to pronounce just one way. I studied French for years, which makes it worse - I have that interference (along with Spanish and Italian) when I try to sing. But little by little I'm improving.

All in all a pleasing lesson, I'm making progress and (this week at least) I'm happy with the sounds I'm producing.

Next in the salad: White asparagus, tomato and ventresca

Lucia in HD!!! Anna Netrebko as Lucia - WOW that woman can sing. Talk about caressing the notes - in the mad scene her voice was like luxurious silk. Different sound than Diana Damrau. I loved loved loved Diana at Lucia. But I loved loved loved Anna too. And then of course, it was the HD thing. In the movies. So I heard the woman on my right tell her companion that Lucia is her favorite opera and she even has the libretto. Yep. She hummed along for about 75% of the performance. One of my friends was on my left. The man next to her... cough... cough... slowly unwrap cellophane hard candy... fold the wrapper. What is UP with folding the wrapper??? Hint to all opera goers who might want a hard candy during the performance: Unwrap them before. Ok so then the movie situation itself. The teenagers running the thing didn't turn the lights down until about 10 minutes in, after about 6 people left their seats to go tell someone to turn the lights off. THEN they had the projector focused in such a way that the subtitles didn't show. Well that's not entirely accurate. When there were two lines of titles, the top line showed. So every 5 minutes or so we'd see a line of text. At the first intermission one of the alta kockers in the audience clued the teenage projectionist that maybe they could zoom out just a little so we could READ ALONG???? At this point some of you might be thinking I'm a bit harsh with my alta kocker reference. But seriously. The hard candy guy was letting them rip, audibly, during the last act. Lucky for me my hair is still long enough that I could pull it around and use it as sort of a shield, like a gas mask.

Yep. You pay $22 for a ticket, you get a $22 experience. Oh and the water. I won't tell you how much I paid in the theater for a bottle of water, but it was a good percentage of the ticket price.

Finally: The salad dressing. And some boquerones for good measure. Yum I might have to order a can or two. But as usual, I digress...

Check this out! Opera Karaoke! Ok so it's really piano accompaniment for a bunch of different arias and duets and so on. But you can download one or many without having to purchase an entire book and CD. Fun stuff.