Happy Birthday to Opera Chic
Amanda White’s opera blogging buddy *~the gr8 OC~* celebrates her 2nd blog birthday. If you are not reading her yet, you are losing at life.
Also, in addition to my landmark interview with Opera Chic for Classical Singer Magazine, which launched my Tech-Savvy Singer column (I won’t bother linking because you can’t see it unless you’re a subscriber), the interview for which took place a month ago this coming Wednesday, our girl has been interviewed by another Amanda. Does Opera Chic have an Amanda fetish, or do Amandas have an Opera Chic fetish? Either way, if you have any opportunity, please drink a margarita for Opera Chic and her blogday, which she will appreciate since my understanding is that Italy sucks at margaritas.
Amanda White is running late so she will have to wait til later to update you on Pirates of Penzance, and how I finally met my “tenor”… Talk to you all soon.
Love always,
Amanda
A typical concert day?
7:30am-9:30am: I keep waking up and wondering why I keep waking up so early. I finally remembered it’s because I went to bed “early” last night at midnight because of my exhausting weekend.
11am: I think I’m finally awake, but I can’t motivate myself to get my day started. All I had to do is practice for my concert, run some errands, get ready for my concert, and maybe exercise- oh, and do my concert- so I’m not super pressed for time. I manage to get out of bed long enough to change the channel, eat a slice of leftover pizza, and check my email, but am just too wiped so I fall back asleep.
2pm: Now I’m really awake, having slept 14 hours.
3-ish: I call the Met box office to ask if I can still exchange a ticket for that night. A bunch of friends have already told me they’d take it if I couldn’t, but I really want to see Traviata (again) so I’d rather exchange it. The lady on the phone says “Probably not” but encourages me to go to the box office and try.
3:30pm: The box office says no, so I start calling close friends trying to give away my ticket. No one is available. I suddenly remember that I don’t have a top to go with the skirt I was going to wear, because the tank top I bought for it broke last year during Veil of Forgetfulness.
4:30pm: On my way home from the rest of my errands, I realize that my watch has stopped and it’s not 3:15pm, it’s 4:30pm. Dammit. I then get on the wrong train.
5:00pm: I call some other friends to see if they want my ticket, but no one is available. I advertise the free ticket on Facebook, but no one grabs it. By 5:30 I realize it’s too late as the curtain rises at 7:30, and the ticket goes to waste. I am majorly bummed.
5:30: I practice for the show- making sure my high notes in Chacun le sait (an E and two F’s) are in order, and drilling the tricky parts of the Vaughn Williams.
6:15: I’ve been trying for a week to get someone to come over and help me for 5 minutes to fix something in my apartment, and finally a neighbor tells me he’s available. He comes over, we fix it, problem solved. Except it’s now 6:30 and I have to leave at 7, and I haven’t groomed myself or picked an outfit.
6:45: I’ve rejected several possible outfits and decide on the originally planned skirt with a velvet off-the-shoulder half-sleeved top. I know I had tried it on last year when I had this problem and vetoed it, but now it seems good enough.
7:00: I’m finishing up my make-up. I decided against a shower, as I don’t want to show up with wet hair, and I don’t have time to blow dry it.
7:10: I try on a couple pairs of shoes, and decide on the pointy ones- except they aren’t comfortable enough to walk to the church in, and I don’t want to spring for a cab. I compromise by putting on my comfortable heels and bringing the others with me to change into.
7:15: I’m trying to get out of the door, but I can’t find my purse.
7:20: The purse is hanging on my coat rack, but now I can’t find the lip gloss I wanted to wear. I really had my heart set on that lip gloss. It matches my lipstick and the caramel apple flavor makes me smile. I tear apart my apartment looking for it, dumping out purses onto the floor and shoving papers off surfaces, but I don’t find it and settle for a similar color with an icky taste.
7:30: I finally finish sticking everything into my tote bag and run out the door. And I literally run. I don’t run four marathons without acquiring some useable skills. I realize quickly that this skirt does not take to running, or even really walking. I then remember when I first bought it at the Central Square Goodwill in Boston, and how I was running the first night I wore it too, and managed to pop off a few buttons (which my mom replaced when I was in Chicago last year, except that she replaced the muted pewter buttons running up the top front of the skirt with huge crystal ones and I complained she was giving me sparkle crotch).
7:35: I dash past the projects and a group of black teenagers bursts out into amazed laughter seeing me run in my heels with my elegant skirt hiked up to my knees. One little boy, no more than 9, runs after me and catches up with me asking, “What happened?? What happened??” like he was really worried. I took out my headphones and answered him calmy and with clear enunciation as I ran, “I am a late opera singer,” and left him in my dust.
7:40: I miss my turn AGAIN, just like yesterday. Some of the streets don’t run through and you lose track of which block you’re at. I have to backtrack two blocks.
7:45: I get to the church, sweating and panting, just in time (Gena had told me to be there at 7:30, no later than 7:45). I clomp red-faced up the stairs and sit down in the green room.
7:48: I go to put on my dress shoes and realize I only have one. I remember a time in Boston when I’d been rushing to work and lost a shoe out of my bag. I had realized what had happened as soon as I got there, explained myself to the boss, retraced my steps, and found it sitting outside the 7-11 on Boylston St. I picked it up and two construction workers watching me burst out laughing. They had been wondering why there was a single heel lying in the sidewalk. I figure the same thing probably happened, except now I don’t have time to go back and look for it before the concert starts. I have to make do with my round-toe shoes.
7:55 I talk to the other singers and involved parties. I am embarrassed because I cried in front of everyone the day before, but no one says anything. All the other girls say they’re freezing, but I’m still red in the face from my jog.
8:05: The concert starts with readings of poems by Ursula Vaughn Williams. I hadn’t known there was an Ursula Vaughn Williams. She was his wife- eventually. They were both married and carried on an affair for years until both their spouses died. F&*%’d up.
8:10: I am rolling my eyes, knowing how long American Landmark Festivals concerts usually run. TOO LONG. Right now I’m stressed out and just want it to be over so we can have wine and cake and I can go home and take a bubble bath. I left all my reading materials at home to make room in my bag for my SHOE, so I take out my iPhone and write the previous blog entry.
8:45: I am still waiting backstage. The violinist shows up and starts warming up quietly. He plays exercises at what I guess is the instrumental equivalent of under one’s breath. I can’t hear the talking onstage over him, and I wish I could so that I know when we’re supposed to go on.
9:30: I finish up my blog entry just in time for us to go onstage for the Vaughn Williams. After an hour and a half of sitting backstage. Our set goes well- there are a few times I’m not sure if I’m on pitch or not, but usually in those cases I am, so I’m not worried. The only person who will know is the violinist anyways.
9:40: the other singers have their chances to sing at last. The mezzo musical theatre girl is singing Francis’s other piece for the evening, “Pie in the Sky,” which has a political bent, so she has some presidential race signs that she uses a props.
9:50: I go on and sing Francis’s operetta/musical aria, “Love Must be Heavenly,” and the audience loves it. Then I move onto “Chacun le sait,” which Gena had decided to put as the finale because, I dunno, maybe she likes high F’s. Fortunately I nail all the high notes and the whole thing is great- the audience is really impressed with the last note. That’s why I love old people, they’re really blown away by that kind of stuff. I can walk into an audition and sing high F’s all day and nobody notices.
10:00pm: We end by singing Happy Birthday to Francis, who is dead. The concert is a birthday show in his memory. Then we have wine and cake. I chat with people I know and people I don’t. One woman I’ve met before somehow possesses an encyclopedic knowledge about dates, like they say some autistic kids do. I told her my birthday and she told me the day of the week, the weather, and what songs were on the charts. (She neglected to mention that it was Easter, but when I pointed that out she was like, “That’s right, it was!”) I chatted with opera buffs, the authors of OperaBlog, and the President of the Vocal Record Collector’s Society. I also met the organist of the church and he asked for my card, in case he needs a sub for a non-Sunday morning gig.
11:00pm: Intoxicated opera buffs sing and make old references I don’t get as we wrap things up. I carry off an almost untouched jug of Seneca Lake area apple cider, to make hot rum and cider now that it’s cold out. It is indeed cold and I have no jacket. I begin retracing my steps, looking for my shoe.
11:15pm: Halfway home and not having found it yet, I decide those shoes weren’t that comfortable anyways so it’s okay if I lost it.
11:27pm: I get home. My apartment is a mess, with junk all over the floors from my lip gloss hunt. My shoe is on my bed. 
Is this how a typical concert day goes for other opera singers, or is it just me?
Busy sunday
I’m backstage at my concert. These American Landmark Festivals concerts are so long, and I left all my reading material at home, so I’ll get caught up on my blog…
Yesterday finally hit home to me the hard fact that I can’t function without sleep. It’s not that I can’t think or sing or stay upright, it’s that I become an emotional wreck. I can function physically and mentally but not emotionally. So many of my random breakdowns happen on Sundays, or Saturdays where I’ve had to wake up early- days when a late night work schedule and an early morning rehearsal or church have forced me to leave my nest on 2-3 hours of sleep, sometimes less. It’s a hormonal sort of loss of control- an overreaction to stress resembling pms.
Yesterday, on two hours of sleep, I had my church gig, the rehearsal for today’s concert, an evensong, and an audition.
The church gig was good- we actually got out at a humane hour for the first time since I’ve sung there. We sang “I was glad” by Purcell, which I’d never sung. Why don’t people to do this piece more? I’ll have to look for a recording.
I rushed home, ordered a pizza, and took a 1 hour nap.
When I woke up, I had a pain in my stomach which I knew was from the pizza- it was just like the cramps of indigestion I used to get from cheese when I first started eating dairy again after being kind of began for 5 years. I haven’t had that reaction in ages so maybe the pizza joint was just food poisoning me- they’ve really gone downhill in the past month, and raised their prices to boot- must be new management.
Anyway, I stumbled out the door and got to rehearsal, where I sang the vaughn Williams pieces, which I’d only had for a week, for the first time with accompaniment- a very elderly violinist who could play way better than I expected.
The pieces, especially when you add the wacky violin part, are way less tonal than you expect from folk song afficionado RVW. Some are trickier than others. I had practiced them thoroughly for several days (I would have started earlier if I had realized how hard they would be), and wasn’t sure what to expect when I tried to put it together with the violin.
Well, it was HARD. I stood my ground but I did get off-center a couple times. As soon as we finished the violinist, without looking at me, says, “you sang the entirety of #3 a whole step sharp.” way to stick to your key no matter what, Amanda! we sang straight through it 5 more times, and I made fewer mistakes each time, but I was aggravated with myself for not knowing it better, and I teared up a little towards the end. Then as I went to get my fille score, Luba and another coordinator commented how much better I sounded after the first couple pieces. I hadn’t realized it was obvious I hadn’t warmed up, so I took the opportunity to sit down on a chair and cry for a minute. Luba knows Im a baby but I felt bad for the other guy who thought it was all his fault.
Then I got up and practiced chacun le sait and Francis’s musical number and ran out to hail a cab.
I’d been unsure until the previous evening if I’d gotten the gig subbing for a guest choir evensong at st. John’s the divine, since I’d be arriving late from rehearsal, but they finally said ok. I was so glad because I’d never sung there and only been inside once. They’d run out of music binders by the time I got there though so I had to peer over someone’s shoulder the whole time. The st. John’s choir robes are a neat shade of purple.
By this time my voice was getting icky from singing straight tone all day, but I decided to go to this audition anyways. They’d said it was fine if I was late. I managed to sing well, somehow. They liked me but they might not be able to hire me because I can’t make the dress rehearsal.
I went home finally and slept for like 14 hours.
I’m still waiting to go on…
The Regiment of Penzance
Hey, what’s up?
My feet are still shredded from my September show in Harrisburg. There’s so much dead skin on the bottoms of them that I still can’t get rid of. I know I had some bad blisters but I didn’t think the damage would last over a month! Opera singer battle scars.
Pirates is opening soon- our first BIG show is on the 15th, but they’re doing a concert version on the 2nd. I’m only doing three shows total, including the Tuesday afternoon retirement home concert, because almost all of their shows are on Sunday afternoons, and I have a church gig now, and they are going to be cranky if I have to miss many more shows. I’m still doing the Jersey City show on a Sunday afternoon, which is a big one in a big theatre and is probably the only one all my friends can come to since it’s close to the PATH. But I passed all the other Sunday shows off on my double, who is happy to do them. Actually I usually like to do as many shows as I can, but I don’t want to miss church!
I am really liking singing in my new church. The music is excellent. Unfortunately it’s a painfully long morning- both the rehearsal and service are longer than at most churches. And since I’m a night person, it’s tough for me. This weekend I was REALLY BUSY and I hardly made it all the way through last night (Red Sox did not help). This is the second time in recent weeks that I’ve had a killer, sleep-deprived weekend (for business, NOT for doing anything fun), and again I started losing my voice. My top was pretty weak at Pirates rehearsal tonight, as if I were getting over a cold. I’m sure it’ll be fine by tomorrow as long as I get some good sleep tonight. I just have to avoid being busy on Sunday afternoon/nights in addition to my late Saturdays and early church- will need to keep it to light activities, like drinks with friends and short rehearsals. I have an excellent constitution but this is the second time I’ve slept like NOT and started losing my voice, so it’s time to reform. The GOOD news is that, since I have such a higher voice than other sopranos, I have a higher passaggio than other sopranos, and since this form of vocal fatigue only affects the top of my range, I can still sing a lot more stuff than most of my colleagues.
Tonight post-rehearsal I watched the Sutherland Fille du Regiment. My favorite part of the staging was where Tonio hits his first high C, and all the “peres” whip around and look at him jaw-dropped like, “HOLY SH*T!” Which is always how you feel hearing a good tenor sing that song. (Sorry, can’t find a YouTube clip of this version in particular. what the hell?)
I’d better get that sleep I promised myself. Talk to you very soon!
Love always,
Amanda White
Fledermaus vids are here!
Hi everyone!
Exciting news! I got the Fledermaus DVD! Finally had it handed to me yesterday, and I’ve already made excerpts and uploaded them to YouTube. I hope you love and adore them.
Actually, I went on an editing and uploading bender, and also added the higher-quality video of Pagliacci. (It’s from a different night as the other one that’s fuzzier.) So now you can enjoy watchable excerpts from our Pagliacci, except the beginning of the Scena Comica, which for some reason gets stuck whenever I try to upload it. It’s okay, there’s nothing musically or dramatically interesting going on, I just wanted you to see my insane costume in action.
I should embed my big aria for you because it has the fewest gaffes in it, but we all know the REAL juicy music is in the duet.
So yesterday was my big guitar gig for the old ladies in the hospital! I had a 45 minute set, and peppered my accoustic playlist with some a capella stuff to make sure my fingers held up. They barely did- I called it a set at 40 minutes. I did my plucked songs early, since those are rougher on the fingers/harder to fake when you’re getting weak. Anyways it went great, the women loved it. They sang along with the ones they knew (Danny Boy, All Through the Night)- I even, when I realized I had too much time left at the end, threw Day By Day in there for good measure (all my songs were so depressing), and was surprised that they knew that one too. The producer said I made her cry on All Through the Night. Oh, and one old lady said I reminded her of Carly Simon.
Pirates rehearsal is going great. The staging is so funny! And the people, in more than the literal sense, really bring it to life. The girls’ chorus is very young- high school and college aged, mostly- which is great because they just bring such vibrancy and commitment. They’re not jaded and stuck up yet like us “professionals,” and their willingness to throw themselves completedly into anything that’s asked of them is transforming. And the men. Men who do Gilbert and Sullivan are hilarious. Always. I mean G&S is largely a boy’s club anyways. But the people it attracts are just so great onstage, especially in the choruses- they make you feel like acting is the highlight of their lives, and the freedom to be creative on stage is the greatest gift they’ve ever been given.
Well I hope you are all enjoying my new blog house. I’ll talk to you later!
Love,
Amanda
La fille du folk rock
Oy. Insane knots in my neck. Not sure if that’s from sitting in front of my ‘puter for so long yesterday or for re-aquainting myself with my guitar.
We had our first Fille du Regiment group rehearsal today. It was the maestro, me, the Tonio/owner of the company, and the Marquise. We lack a Sulpice. If anyone is/knows a Sulpice, contact me immediately!!!
Of course we heart Maestro Yazdzik. The mezzo- Stephanie, don’t know her last name yet, never worked with her before- she’s fabulous!!! The Tonio has a wonderful voice but he is too shy. He’s Chinese so it’s probably a cultural thing, but he refused to make eye contact with me during our duet. I ordered him to look at me, and he just stared at my chest. I kept trying to make him look me in the eye but every 2 seconds his eyes wandered back towards my tits. Normally one would be offended, but I think he’s really just too shy to make eye contact with me (it’s our first time singing together besides at my audition). It was really funny. Don’t worry, I’ll get him. If I haven’t slapped him over the head with my score by the end of the rehearsal, it’ll be because the problem has been solved. Like I’ve said in previous posts, physical violence is the only way to deal with stubborn tenors! He has a really nice voice though and I can’t wait to hear his arias.
Ah, me and my guitar. I thought I had the required 45 minutes of music for the retirement home show tomorrow, but I played through everything I was planning, many things twice because I’m still screwing up, and it only took 30 minutes- and my fingers were hurting too much after that to play anymore. I will make it through tomorrow though- I will play my plucked, arpeggiated pieces first, since those are the ones I can’t play if my fingertips are sore, and I will talk between songs. These are mostly folk songs, with some Taize chant thrown in- basically the only stuff I know how to play. I don’t even know how much of my own stuff I can play anymore, since most of the stuff that was written on accoustic guitar has been rotated out, except Pull Me Up and Snowshadow.
I seem to recall it was the end of my senior year of high school that I went through a phase where I was into folk music- not 60’s folk rock as much as actual really old stuff- obscure Appalachian tunes, off-the-beaten-track Irish ballads, lullabies and stuff you sing arrangements of in high school choir. It wasn’t a long phase- I added slowly to my rep over the next few years that I was into playing my guitar (end of high school, freshman year of college- then my first year in Paris I played nonstop but I was really just doing my own music), but in the grand scheme of things it was a short-lived fad in my life that never matured. So my rep is kind of random. I was just thinking about how I was going to explain the songs to the audience tomorrow, and I don’t really know the origin of many of them. I don’t know where exactly their from, who’s recorded them, if I’m playing them right or not- never heard recordings or performances of them unless I lifted them directly from such a source. But I can explain where I got them all from. This one I learned from my mom, these a capella ones I transcribed from a CD I got from the Glen Ellyn Public Library, this one my uncles used to sing, these we sang arrangements of in choir. Isn’t that more what folk music is about? How a song came into your hands, and what it happens to it once it’s there?
So it’s my working hours and I’m feeling non-productive- I guess I ought to make a to-do list and figure out what I’m supposed to be getting done right now. Either way I decided a blog post would be a good place to start.
I wish I could record tomorrow, as nobody ever hears me play guitar (I should put that accoustic version of Pull Me Up I did back up somewhere), but the microphone to my iPod is still busted and the chances of me waking up in time to find a new one before I get my ride tomorrow are lame. Too bad ’cause I actually do sing this stuff really well. Yes, I have missed my calling as a folk singer, which is what I know my dad secretly wanted me to become. It’s like, I really enjoy it, but my heart isn’t all the way in.
No post on folk music would be complete without a mention of my girl Lissa Schneckenburger, who I hung out with last week in Brooklyn for the first time in awhile. (Girl no longer lives in NY, wtf?) You should all listen to her and buy her music. She is truly, truly wonderful.
Love always,
Amanda
Updating the website
Hey kids!
I feel like I spent all night in front of my computer.
I’m making some changes to my website.
First, I’m going to have it redesigned- by somebody else, this time! Mine is okay, but it’s obviously a home-spun page that’s several years old. (I programmed it myself from html.) I found somebody I want to hire to improve it.
Secondly, I moved my photo page to Flickr. It looked nicer the way it was, but it took way too long to upload new photos, and the pages all took forever to load. So I just made a new Flickr page with all my production photos etc, and linked to that. Aggravatingly, I didn’t know you can’t make albums on Flickr. (Sorry, you CAN, but only 3, and after that you have to pay.) How messed up is that? My personal pics are on Photobucket and I’m pretty sure they don’t have that rule. But maybe they will change it one day, and in the meantime you can enjoy my pics here.
Next, I did the same thing with the video page- I already had a video page on YouTube so I just redirected my video page to there. There will be more videos soon- I’ll be getting my Fledermaus DVD, and I also have a better quality version of Pagliacci I want to upload.
Finally, and probably most importantly to you, I finally figured out how to make a music page on Facebook. You can now be my fan on Facebook! I don’t have music and stuff uploaded yet because I’m still awaiting verification (I had to send a scan of my passport?) but you know where to find that stuff anyways. So please everyone who is on Facebook go to my music page and add me as a fan.
If you follow my twitter updates, you’ll know that yesterday I mentioned pulling out my guitar for the first time in ages. I played for 10 minutes and my fingers were hurting. Then that very night I get a request to play in a retirement home Wednesday (which I did like 2 years ago). I couldn’t say no to the modest fee so I practiced tonight and decided, “Good enough!”
Also it looks like I’ll be singing in another American Landmark Festivals concert on Monday October 27th. I don’t have the details yet or know what I’ll be singing but I’ll post the info when I have it.
Well that’s all I guess!
Love always,
Amanda
Little update
Hey people!
I don’t have anything hugely exciting to report, but I’m telling myself, “Maybe if you write more often you won’t ramble on and on so much trying to cover 10 topics in one post and scaring off your readers with huge blocks of text.”
I haven’t been able to find my Pirates of Penzance score in awhile, which is bad because I’m currently rehearsing Pirates of Penzance. I realized it was gone before rehearsal on Monday, and figured I’d find it by rehearsal today. No go- not even with me straightening up my room by fixing some broken furniture. Which looked just like this:
So before I left for rehearsal I sent out an email to the entire cast and their grandmothers asking if anyone found my score, I go to rehearsal and there’s no score, I come home and I’m like I swear to God I know it’s on this shelf!!!!! And I went through everything on the shelf, taking it out and putting it back in, and yeah, it was there. I’m cool. Well I’m just happy to have my score. I celebrated by tabbing it. I had highlit it but never tabbed it, which was driving me crazy during rehearsals. I got all rebellious and got different colored tabs than I usually use. Previously, we had yellow=recitative, blue=aria, red or pink=ensemble, and green=ensemble with chorus. (I dunno, how do you tab your scores?) The current set has purple instead of yellow, so from now on my recitatives are going to be purple. Hopefully this doesn’t confuse me.
I finally finished my “Singer’s Wish List” article for Classical Singer!!! I put it off til the last minute because I didn’t know what to put on it- Sara Thomas asked me to write it, wheras normally I propose my own topics. I could have gone the easy route and listed vague things like “a gift subscription to a spa” and “a trip to Europe,” but I wanted it to be an actually interesting article with actual useful ideas in it, so I put a shit-ton of thought into it. I never thought I’d spend so much time on an 800-word article. (My column is 1200-1600 an article, my other articles are usually around 2000.)
Today at rehearsal, under my sweater which was soon discarded because it was hot and we were dancing (with parasols!), I wore for the first time in public the prototype of my Amanda White T-Shirts! I have the white tank top. I was thinking of making the design smaller on it. What do you think?
I updated my website to include links to the store and the new blog address on all pages. Let me know if there are any broken links!
One last thing- the Stuff White People Like article I linked to the other day has been made into a cartoon!
Talk to you guys later!
Love always,
Amanda White
Carmen Completed
What a couple of months it has been. Every time I finish something and I think I’m about to be able to rest a little bit, just a little bit, I realize, “No, now I have this thing that I need to start on NOW.” My backlog of Opera Newses and Classical Singers that I need to read has become so great that my mail holder will no longer stay upright, so I’ve been tackling them as my subway reading. I dog-eared a page of the 9/08 interview with Renee Fleming, with a quote that really hit home.
RF: There was a period of years where I just worked insanely, saying yes to almost everything- and that one horrible season when I had something like ten new roles scheduled. One or two of them fell by the wayside, but it was still too much.
ON: Did you do that at the time because you learn music so easily?
RF: Yeah, and that becomes a bad habit. Unfortunately, people who are facile, like me, do more, do more. That can be hard on your voice.
God, that sounds like me. This year especially. How many roles have I done this year? Kate in Pirates (small role and on book, but had to learn the chorus parts and understudy Edith and Mabel), Mascha in Chocolate Soldier (that one was on book), Rose Maybud in Ruddigore, Nedda in Pagliacci, Serpina in La Serva Padrona (those two were huge), Madame Herz (that one was on book again), Adele, Bastienne, Frasquita has been newly checked off… And before the year is out I’ll be adding Marie in La Fille du Regiment and Mabel. So more or less, nine down and two more to go. Not counting the two lead roles I did in John Thomas’s operettas. And I got a new church job. On one hand I’m kind of bragging, but on the other I’m exhausted. I mean, there hasn’t just been this stuff. There’s been hacking away at my technique, preparing for the (admittedly few) auditions in which I’ve participated (I tend to prepare stuff specifically for each audition if I can), and the concerts (especially Opera on Tap, which I’ve done almost every month). I’m not even touching on the rock, except to say does anyone know a bass player who wants to join my band??
Well anyone can complain about how busy they are, so I’ll stop sniveling and get onto Carmen.
First off, I went to Philly Saturday, as you know, and crashed at Jessica Kasinski’s house. While waiting to meet up with her, I enjoyed the most incredible salad ever, from the Tuscany Cafe on Rittenhouse Square. First off, it was so beautiful that I could hardly bring myself to eat it.
Strawberry-Cranberry Salad
Baby spinach, slivered almonds, fresh sliced strawberries, dried cranberries, and I substituted feta for the blue cheese. Some sort of lemon poppy dressing that added to the sweetness. I didn’t expect to be impressed, but that salad made me so happy.
Here’s a strong message from the Ethical Society.
Torture is Wrong
Jessica and I went to a cafe for breakfast that served us oatmeal in goblets. Damn.
Goblet of Oatmeal
Anyways, enough about food. We should be talking about opera.
The opera went very well overall- much better than could have been predicted from rehearsals. There were a few gaffes- even a minor one or two on my part which I assure you is highly unusual- but musically things went way better than I expected, even the quintet.
Blocking didn’t feel too comfortable to me. Blocking at Amici is pretty much DIY, and we were much more in synch in rehearsals than in the performance. Standing around and not moving, clustering towards the back of the stage, almost getting run over by dancers, failed attempts at interactions. I guess it’s easier in rehearsal, when generally people feel more open to play around. Nothing went wrong per se, just a lack of chemistry. Overall though everything went really well, no disasters, people knew the music, and we even got those annoying chorus parts we had to learn. (Except the first one, which we missed entirely, but no one noticed!)
The absolute highlight of my day was that my costume did not suck. I think it was lent to us by the troup of dancers that performed during what would normally be choruses. (They were fun!!) It was a light dress that fit me to a t. I wish I’d gotten more pics, but this is a good one.
Mercedes, Carmen, Frasquita
I had to run off right after rehearsal to catch a ride with Micaela, and I got home totally wiped. Monday I had Pirates rehearsal, where we delightfully choreographed Climbing Over Rocky Mountain with parasols. Oh, and great news! My double, Elizabeth, and I have managed to get out of singing in the chorus on our off-nights. We will still be singing with the chorus at all appropriate moments when we are Mabel, but when we are not Mabel we don’t have to go, THANK GOD. You know my deal by now- it’s not the singing chorus I mind, it’s just the time commitment.
Yesterday was my first Fille du Regiment rehearsal, though it ended up being a coaching just for me. We had a load of fun working through the duet with Tonio.
Tonight was Opera on Tap and I more or less memorized two new pieces for it, starting last night. The theme was Germany, and I sang the pretty aria from Bastien, except I had to finish learning it in German, as I had started doing before I found out we were doing the opera in English, and I decided for good times to sing My Hero from the Chocolate Soldier, which would have been in German except I only have the English version! Yes technically both of those composers are Austrian, not German, but it’s all good. Oh, and then my friend and I decided to do a tag-team version of Zerbinetta, which was a circus!!!!
I have to finish this article for Classical Singer. Talk to you later!!!
Love,
Amanda
