Mini Opera Adventure and More

Last night I went to a jewelry store, of all places, to see an Arias and Art Songs thing presented by a local organization called The Opera Project.



I found out about the event from an old friend (as in, high school!) who is friends with the woman who owns the jewelry store. So this friend of mine went to support her friend, the entire time saying, "Me? Opera? I don't know..." while I kept assuring her that she will leave in awe of the music people are able to produce from their bodies.

The program was in two acts. Most of the singers in the first act were older and pretty much... in my league! I thought, "Holy S***! I could sing with this group!!" The second half was mostly younger people who definitely have a future in opera. Beautiful voices, beautiful performances, the whole package. Totally out of my league.

Some time in the middle of the second half my friend said something like, "Wow. This is an entirely different level of good singing - it's nothing like American Idol - and I thought the people on that show were good." Yeah no kidding. I actually have never seen American Idol but I can imagine. So when she said that inside I was like, "Hooray!!! She likes it!!!" Or at least she appreciated and understood the appeal.

At some point I got around to reading the blurb on the back of the program. Turns out the Opera Project is two groups - The Opera Project itself supports young singers by providing rehearsal and recital opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have since they're not yet "finished." Then the other group is the Classical Singers Network, for people just like me!! People who maybe started later in life studying voice, who get together to support one another, give feedback and finally, because of the Opera Project, are able to perform in recitals such as the one I saw yesterday. Amazing! So after the performance I found the Guy in Charge and asked him how one gets involved. I explained when I started studying voice, and where, and he was very enthusiastic. Their group is made pretty much exactly for people in my situation, as he cornily said, to give people like me the "operatunity" to perform! I'll call him during the week. I think I want to talk to my voice teacher first. I guess I could call her rather than wait until Thursday... we'll see. I imagine I'll have to audition or something - I definitely need to talk with my teacher before I call this guy!

Another Fun Fact about the evening was that one of the singers was in the chorus when I supered in Romeo two years ago, so of course I had to have the, "You look familiar..." chat and then I helped him guess how he knew me.

Spent this evening making some earrings... I just need to figure out how and where to sell them so I can go to more opera and pay for more voice lessons!!!!





Finally - I've added a new blog link to the list to the right: Once More With Feeling. Check it out!

The Thing Tonight!

Just got home from the final run-through rehearsal for tonight's thing. They've redone the order of the acts and now our Papageno duet is the 2nd act. I'm disappointed because Paper Moon is nice and low - it really warms me up nicely. Not that I don't warm up before - I do - but singing Paper Moon actually does make my throat feel warm. Now that's near the end. Oh well.

We had the accompanist today, and while it wasn't a total disaster, it wasn't good. We couldn't get the tempo and kept losing our place. Turns out my partner and I both practiced along with the instrumental version on the Very Best Opera CD, so we decided to sing with that instead. They have an iPod player and a CD player so we did get a chance to practice.

Now I have a few hours before I have to figure out what to wear and get back there... my goal is to NOT sing between now and then, which is hard since I'm always absentmindedly singing something. The director wants me to lead the chorus in a warm-up in some little room somewhere before we begin. Yes that does sound vague, because it is. Then I have to remember to stand up straight, breathe low in my body, make eye contact, use those abs, relax the jaw and just have fun. And I believe the evening will be fun. We have ballroom dancers, martial arts demonstrations, a yoga demonstration, poetry readings, skits and music. There's a silent auction and there will be food. Hopefully we'll raise a nice chunk of change for our ill coworker.

A Crack-Tastic Day

Today we had another choral concert at work. For some reason I just wasn't finding my voice. I couldn't find the high notes and I was cracking on those in-between notes.

When we all filed in I ended up a little past the mic. "Good," I thought, "Just as well." The women on either side of me have very nice voices, so I figured it didn't matter. But then the woman who directs us kept motioning me to move over to be in front of the mic. When I say motioning I mean urging me with her hands and mouthing to me to move. Where? We were packed together and the woman next to me who was in front of the mic is bigger than I am - it's not like I could nudge her down! Plus she has a really nice voice! But the director woman kept pantomiming and mouthing so finally I just pantomimed that she should move the mic over. That felt weird because it's not like I wanted it there, but I really wanted her to stop playing charades. Then the woman on the other side of me asked me what that was all about, and I whispered that they wanted me in front of the mic and she was like, "Well." This woman has a little solo part in Silent Night so I backed up to clear the mic for her but she didn't move. When I told her later she said that she doesn't need a mic for the high notes, just the low ones. Ha! I'd rather NOT be amplified for the low ones, what with my voice taking on a life of its own and cracking when the notes entered That Funky Range. I held back the energy the way I practiced in my lesson and it seemed to help. But of course that mic was plonked down in front of me just before one of the crackiest songs in the set. I was ok, probably better than I think, but I bet the recording would have been fine where the mic originally was. Hmm I wonder if it picked up the monotone "alto" voice of the person behind me? Not that it matters - this is a really nice group, anyone can join and it's a lot of fun. They videotaped it too so hopefully I can get my paws on a copy.

The In-Between Times

I'm in between the chorus performance at work and my voice lesson. Yes, here I was yesterday thinking there was nothing to write about because I forgot all about today's performance.

It was fun. A bunch of us were in a conference room waiting for someone to come with a keyboard, I think, to warm up. I couldn't just sit there so I sort of started things going - had everyone stand up and stretch, showed some breathing techniques and gave suggestions on how not to shrug the shoulders up, as some people were doing. Then the keyboard came (I'm not sure but I think it was a toy) and we did some vocal warm-ups.

The performance was fun. I learned that I am not the only one who didn't know all the words, and in fact, I knew them a lot better than most of the people standing around me!

One thing I noticed - actually I couldn't NOT notice this - was that I was getting lightheaded. It's like all that deep belly breathing was similar to hyperventilating. What's up with that? In between songs, or when I didn't have to sing, I concentrated on normal breathing so I wouldn't pass out. I never felt faint, but the whirly-twilry head feeling was there. And of course, while I was singing and feeling this, I was wording a blog entry about it in another part of my brain. Multi-tasking! I'll ask my voice teacher about it tonight.

Why I Smiled, Laughed and Laughed Again

Traviata #4 was this evening.

As I was wending my way through the halls and passageways to the dressing room, the stage manager pulled me aside. "I want to talk to you," he said.

Uh oh, what did I do now?

"I wanted to let you know that... [dramatic pause] we've put weights in the bottoms of the glasses to help keep them from tipping."

Whew, is that all?

He said we were all doing a great job. That's nice to hear. I mean, what we do isn't very difficult (except for the spillage issue) but still, it was nice of him to say that. Thanks, Stage Manager!

Mild drama pre-curtain: No one had seen one of the singers, someone who has a part, which, coincidentally, is the only part in the opera that has no cover. (A cover is an understudy, someone who learns the part just in case the singer can't sing a performance.) So there was a little excitement there for about 3 minutes, until someone confirmed that this singer was, indeed, in the theater.

Whew again.

So here's why I smiled:

Pre-curtain, we were all in our places, which means everyone backstage except Liz (Violetta), who is laying (lying?) on the table. Before the curtain rose, Michael (Alfredo) ran out and kissed her. Isn't that sweet? It was an awwwwww moment.

Here's why I laughed:

So the chorus and supers come slowly onto the stage. Then during a rest in the music the chorus starts slowly moving to a count of 8. Some fast music starts in the middle of that but they ignore it... they freeze, there's another rest in the music, then the lights come on and they move normally and start chatting, laughing, etc - you know, party noise. That's when the supers move forward and set the table. So today, just as they went from silent to partying, one of the guys in front of me sneezed. I don't know how he held it in, but he did. He waited until the very moment that the orchestra began playing loudly, and then..... AahhhhCHOO! So as I moved forward with the flowers I laughed. The entire chorus is on stage laughing and partying so it didn't matter, but after half a second I was like, "Wipe that grin off your face and look serious!"

I laughed again after the drink serving because we had no spills! Although I did learn that one of the prop people lost a trayfull backstage when they were setting them up for us. But that doesn't count!!!

Liz sounded fabulous tonight. I know, I sound like a broken record. All you young'uns out there, think of "broken record" as a skipping CD that plays the same bit over and over... get the idea? I wish I could've stayed for the 3rd act but the pizza I had for dinner wasn't sitting well in my stomach so I decided not to hang around.

Everyone looks tired. You'd never know it from their performances, but as soon as they leave the stage they droop with fatigue. It reminds me of those first few months of parenthood. At least they have the opportunity for several hours of sleep in a row.

Next and final performance: Saturday afternoon. And my Internet Friend will be there!!! Today while I was standing there sweating on stage at the end of Act 2 I realized that I can see the people in the standing room section, where my friend will be. I thought about what it's going to be like next week - I'll be scanning the crowd for him and then scrambling up there to find him during intermission. I'm really looking forward to meeting him!

So THAT'S Where I Left My Saw

Show # 3 of 5 tonight. And... fabulous news!! NO SPILLS! Someone pointed out that if all the glasses were grouped together in a clump they'd support each other. So we did that, and lo and behold, the glasses survived all of our trips across the stage. If only we had known sooner! Physics strikes again, this time to our advantage.

The theater in which this performance takes place is piggy-backed onto another, larger theater. They have separate entrances but are attached via partially underground hallways. Partially, you say? How can that be? Well the older, larger theater is uphill from the newer, smaller one. So to enter the backstage area for the smaller one from outside you have to go down a short flight of stairs. Then as you wend your way through the halls and passageways you go up a few steps. From there you wiggle about a little, go through a room full of I don't know what, pipes and wires and planks and things, through a door, around a wrought-iron spiral staircase and into a hall where you can find doors leading directly to the sidewalk. The theater (the older one) is still a flight above. In those hallways you will also find a green room, some private dressing rooms and the chorus/super dressing room. The spiral staircase leads to the backstage area of the larger theater. I'm very glad I don't have to climb that staircase in my dress! It's hard enough going up the standard staircase to the theater we're in. I have to gather the thing up and I hold it in front of me in a ball. And forget about going to the bathroom. Actually I can't forget about that - I always need to go, usually the moment I get my costume on. But so far, so good. Meaning, I haven't dipped my dress in the toilet, always a good thing. So where was I? Oh yeah... today I noticed that in this vague room in between the hallways that connect the theaters, not only are there pipes and wires and planks and things, there is also a circular saw with a piece of wood on it and a pile of sawdust below it. Like, right next to where we have to walk. How odd, I thought, to be going back and forth from the green room to the stage past a large scary saw.

As I watch the chorus members get more and more tired from constant rehearsals, master classes, coachings and other performance-related projects, I realize that there is no way I could do what they're doing. I think I would drop from exhaustion. The fact that they don't drop, that they keep pressing on, to me shows that they're all very serious and dedicated about what they do.

Spillage, Take 2

Today was our second performance, a matinee.

On the door of the dressing room was a note from the director saying how great it was on Friday night, but can the cast please not drop any glasses in act 1 - it looks terrible.

Well yeah, we know. I'd like him to try walking across the stage holding those very light, top-heavy glasses while trying not to trip on a too-long skirt!

So today I had myself so worked up about those darn glasses that I was shaking. Gee, counter-productive or what? It didn't help that I had just had the conversations referred to in my previous post. So I took a deep breath and out I went with my wobbly tray. Instead of crossing downstage to the people on stage right, I headed for the nearest clump. Everyone had seen the signs about dropping the glasses, so thankfully two of the singers took two glasses each and handed one to his companion. I made it off stage without any mishap.

One of my fellow supers, however, was not so lucky. In the very opening scene, when I bring out the flowers and we set the table, her task was to bring full glasses to the table, plus the sugar glass that Violetta later smashes to the floor. As we move forward to set the table, some choristers move across the stage. Everyone was in a slightly different location than they had been before, and someone ran right in front of her, knocking into the tray. It all went down, including the special breakaway glass. Oops. Luckily, since we reenter immediately with our trays of glasses, she was able to get a new sugar glass for the table. And then, once again, I went BACK onstage to clean up the floor. My co-super had wiped some of it up, but it was a Big Splash.

Everything else went smoothly. Everyone sounded great, as usual. Michael and Elizabeth, our Alfredo and Violetta, were wonderful, and of course super sweet. He's so funny. We can see across to the other wings and during the toreador bit he was back there disco dancing to the music.

I would have stayed (and no doubt cried) for Act 3 but Husband had a ticket to a local AA minor league baseball game that evening so I skipped out.

Next performance: Thursday night.

Opening Night Report

Hoo boy so much to tell, so little time. I'll just tell it in order as I remember things. Photos to follow in a future post.

Before the show, the costume woman came to the dressing room and said, "Liz walked out in the middle of the Cenerentola dress rehearsal." Shocked silence. We all thought, "But... I just saw her..." The she went on, "That's the third assistant to quit on me." Later we found out that we all thought that she meant our Violetta!

I had gotten Liz (the singer, not the costume person!) a gift to celebrate opening night - a very sparkly purple and pink stuffed animal octopus. I should have taken a picture of it. I also got her a cute sparkly sequin-covered pen that perfectly matched the octopus. She wasn't in her dressing room when I got there so I sort of jammed it in by the doorknob. She seemed to like it. Who wouldn't love a purple and pink shiny octopus?

Moving right along... places please for the top of the show! Here's where I must ask - What is the purpose of a final orchestra dress rehearsal if things are different on opening night? It was no big deal that instead of a vase, the bouquet of flowers was now in what appeared to be a crystal ice bucket. It had a handle. There was 1 real flower and the rest were fake. The director wanted fresh flowers but it probably wasn't in the budget. So as the show began they totally blacked out the backstage area. While we were standing there waiting everyone was very quietly goofing around and being silly. Then Michael did his opening thing onstage, came backstage and was immediately blinded. Then, there in the dark, he said, "Oh man, I don't have water." I had just put a new bottle of water down against the wall so I gave it to him. It had one of the rubber chickens attached... (I picked up a few more after I gave one to Cody) So then the clog guy from the previous post said, "That was nice of you." and I said, "Not really." I wouldn't want our lead tenor to crack on his high C because his throat was dry... besides, I had another full bottle down in the dressing room. But even if I didn't I would have given it to him, or anyone who needed it. Well, maybe.

Ok opening scene was fine. A little crowded as Rachel was trying to put glasses on the table in one direction and I was going the other way to put the plates from the chairs to the place settings, but we worked it out. Then we went off to prepare to serve the drinks. That's when I encountered another difference from the final dress - there were heavy blackout curtains along the wings. It was impossible to see where the openings were. So I got my tray of champagne flutes. New flutes - I'd never seen these before. Nice and... light... So I was holding the tray, trying to negotiate around this heavy curtain without sizzling my costume or skin on the thing of lights back there and without tripping on my skirt... and the curtain swung back and hit the tray. It was like slow motion. One, two glasses went over. I put the tray down on the stair prop where they rolled and knocked the other three over. Rachel was waiting to go after me and I said, "I'm not going!" Couldn't go out with a wet tray of nothing... then when they came back Kelly said that two of her glasses spilled, so Casey, the asst stage manager, got some paper towels, then they were standing there all staring at each other like, "What do we do?" So I said, "Here, give them to me!" And I went on stage from the most upstage wing, found the spill, got down on my hands and knees and crawled along drying the floor, all while "Libiamo" was going on around me. I was behind the table, and there's a long table cloth, so the audience probably didn't know I was there. I was trying not to laugh, and wanted to get off stage as quickly as possible, so when I got up I went straight back, which meant I had to split up a couple who had their arms around each other. I don't even know who it was - I was just intent on getting the heck outta there. Later a lot of people were like, "Wow, that was great the way you came out to clean that up! You're a great actor." I think they thought I came up with that idea on my own.

We run back onstage for the money-throwing scene. I lapsed into believing that it was real - I was truly concerned about this fight and horrified when he threw the money. I felt it happening to me and I just relaxed into it. Then there's a little scuffle/fight and they stumbled upstage near us, and then I was actually concerned so that was easy to portray.

Then we were done. No chorus or supers in Act 3.

In the dressing room I learned that most of the chorus was leaving, either to go back to the dorms to drink, or out for a drink. Seemed like very few were hanging around for the reception, although some indicated that they were going out for a drink and coming back. I was a bit surprised that no one wanted to stay to watch and support the principals for the rest of the production. Kelly and I went upstairs and sat on the floor near the balcony railing. One of my coworkers is a volunteer usher and he was there. He came over and said, "Were you up there?" Uh, yeah? He didn't recognize me when I was on stage, how funny is that? "Were you singing?" Uh, nope. So I leaned on the balcony and lost myself in the story. My heart was breaking for Violetta when she read the letter and lost it and cried, "Where are you? I've waited and waited and now it's too late!" and the tears started to well in my eyes. I got more and more weepy as Violetta became more desperate, then Alfredo comes, joyful reunion, more tears, then the "I'm better, I'm worse, I'm cured, I'm dead," is so beautiful and moving. I'm just like my mother, beautiful opera makes me cry.

There were no other mishaps, at least not from my perspective. Everyone sounded great. Liz was amazing. Micheal was too, but she stole the show, by far. Andy, who plays Alfredo's father, was great too. Everyone was.

So after making sure my mascara hadn't turned me into a raccoon face, I went downstairs to wait for the reception to begin. There I met Jen Aylmer, who you might recognize here. My first impression was that she's short! And... that was her first impression of me too. "You're short!" she exclaimed. "I guess I appear tall in emails," I replied, "It's the long hair!" she said. It was funny. She wants to meet Alex, her youngest fan. When I told him he said he didn't want to meet her. We'll see...

The reception was your typical post-opera reception, sans alcohol. There was hummus, veggies, fruit and cookies, and a fountain of cranberry juice-ish punch. And of course the same set of older patrons I had to shove through to meet John O. The performers descended upon the food like vultures. I'm including myself in that group. All we had backstage for the past 3 hours was chocolate. Sounds nice in theory but real food was suddenly very attractive.

Our next performance is Sunday at 2. Hopefully someone will hold that snarky curtain aside so I can get on stage before I spill it all. I mean, someone WILL hold it. After all, now that my secret fantasy to crawl around on my hands and knees in front of a paying audience has finally been fulfilled, I want more, heh heh heh.