My next gig

Some of you have asked me to post about my upcoming performances. (Thank you for the ego boost, my dear, dear friends!) At the moment, the only thing on the docket (other than my students' studio recital in June) is a concert of the Faure Requiem and the Lauridsen Lux Aeterna mass (both with orchestra) with the Musicians of Saint Clare at St. Paul Lutheran Church (16th & Grant, Denver) at 8 PM on Saturday, May 17th. I am not a soloist, but it is a very enjoyable program worth the $18 admission ($12 students/seniors).

Opening Night

Last night was opening night of The Flying Dutchman, and it was awesome! It’s ridiculous that they pay me to have this much fun. I enjoyed it even more last night than at the sitzprobe. It helped that Hasmik Papian (Senta) was singing full voice this time so I could hear her better – gave me goosebumps! I was grinning from ear to ear when we got offstage for the intermission after Act II. Three of my good friends from high school came to the show, which also made it more exciting for me. When the show was over, I caught Maestro Stephen Lord as he was walking through the chorus area and asked him to pose for a picture with me.

Opera Colorado - excerpts from my diary

The sitzprobe went well and I found the Ellie Caulkins Opera House to be a fascinating place. They call it “The Ellie” for short [as you saw in my previous posting], and they even shorten that to just “Ellie” in many cases, so all of the trash cans and music stands have “Ellie” stenciled on them. It’s funny to see my name stenciled on a trash can. And there are signs that say “Ellie Stage Door,” like they are there specifically to tell me where to go. And they have a marvelous PA system to corral all the performers – “gentlemen of the chorus, stage right in five minutes, please.” “ladies and gentlemen of the orchestra to the stage, please.” “Maestro Lord, stage right, please.” “The rehearsal will begin in 30 minutes.” Etc. It’s so FORMAL!

I had been in the theater before in the audience. It is really a beautiful hall. As the women are not in the first act, I was able to enjoy the first act from the first balcony of the audience, and in doing so, I got a much better view of the hall than I had from the floor when I saw Carmen there with Denyce Graves at the beginning of The Ellie’s opening season. I really enjoyed the first act – it’s such a fine opera [The Flying Dutchman].

I spent the second act on stage. The women sing a little in the beginning of the 2nd act, and then sit there for an hour. This would have been marvelous if we were in front of the soloists and able to hear them better. In any case, it was a very different view of the theater, equally breathtaking, with its three balconies. And I was constantly enjoying the swell of emotions I always feel with a full orchestra, choir & soloists in collaboration with a world-class conductor (here, Stephen Lord). It is a magical scenario to me. The music was so dramatic and emotional and, well, there’s just no way to describe it really – it’s just magical to me – I love it. And this was just a dress rehearsal! Friday night we’ll all be in concert black and the hall will be full of people. While I have been in situations like this a number of times as an adult, it particularly reminded me of the concert-version operas in which I participated while singing in the Columbus Symphony Orchestra Children’s Chorus [in the late 80s and early 90s].

Sometimes I feel a little sheepish being so enthralled with this stuff. I’ve been around it all for more than two decades, but I marvel at it as though it is my first time. A small part of me thinks it’s probably more “cool” to be ambivalent, but the never-ending magic reminds me why I became a musician to begin with and makes me thankful for the line of work I have chosen and been privileged to pursue.

The third act is quite short and has the most chorus music. It is the only time both the men’s and women’s choruses are on stage together. I am particularly fond of the men’s chorus music in this opera. I get a thrill listening to them sing it. It has a magical quality of its own, especially the way they sing it. I also love it whenever the men’s chorus applauds the women’s chorus – I don’t know why. I like thinking they are impressed by us and proud of us. Must be that “words of affirmation” love language thing again.

What the world is coming to

So, they've had this giant sign up at the Denver Performing Arts Center for several months... maybe longer... and I have always found it amusing. Today I finally took my camera and got some pictures of it.





Have I mentioned that I LOVE sharing my name with an opera house?

Rehearsals, by the way, are going well - I'm having a great time with it.

First rehearsal

Today was my first rehearsal with Opera Colorado. I left in time to be early, but the traffic by the performing arts center was terrible, barely a crawl. I was so upset to be running late to my first rehearsal! I finally found a lot, paid an astronomical $15.00 to park there (it would have taken another 20-30 minutes to get into the DPAC garage) and sprinted the two blocks to the Tramway building for rehearsal. As it turned out, they delayed the start of rehearsal because so many choristers got caught in the traffic. Whew!

The rehearsal was fun and the time passed quickly, but it was not at all like I expected. The atmosphere was very casual and lighthearted, the group was smaller than I expected – about 60 total – 25 women, 40 men, and oddly enough, overall, they were not very good sight-readers. The music is really not that difficult, and I’m singing the harmony (soprano 2), but the rest of my section, in particular, was a little slow catching it, I thought, and wanted/needed a lot of it played for them. In that regard, Clare Choir is much more sophisticated. However, here I can sing fully and operatically, which I cannot do in Clare Choir, despite how often our director says she wants us to sing fully. She is constantly toning me down, it seems. It’s a different style of music, though. This should make for an interesting two weeks.

NATS

The NATS chapter auditions were yesterday. I think they were successful, even though half of the finals weren’t posted until well after they were to have begun. Truthfully, I think we’d have been fine on my original schedule, but Steve had asked me to condense it, and we just weren’t able to tabulate that fast, as I had predicted. Half of my tabulators never showed up, so the teachers pitched in during the afternoon. The room was full of tabulators all afternoon and we still seemed hopelessly behind. But all the double checks left me feeling confident in the quality of our work.

My colleagues have been very supportive. Sometimes I wonder if they are as positive about me behind my back as to my face, not because I think they are two-faced, but because they go much easier on me than I expect anyone to. When I lamented lightheartedly that things were not going like clockwork (as I had become accustomed to at regional), my colleagues were always very quick to point out my strengths and the exceptional challenges that made these auditions different. I was particularly surprised to find that we managed substantially more auditions today in just one day than regional does over two days. That made me feel like we accomplished quite a feat, even if it did take longer than we’d hoped.

Most of all, I am proud of myself for maintaining a level head at all times – even those times when I was sure everyone must’ve thought I was the worst auditions chair ever (which, in reality, probably was not true), I kept my focus. I acknowledged the stress in my internal dialogue, but I kept redirecting my thoughts to the task at hand so it wouldn't overwhelm me. I was able to smile all day. And when people came up to me throughout the day with problem after problem (i.e. they sang in the wrong category, they didn’t meet the repertoire requirements, a judge didn’t show up, finalists didn’t show up, the doors were locked, room conflicts with other CU events, etc.), God granted me the wisdom and quick thinking to come up with solutions that seemed to keep everyone happy. In short, it was an answered prayer. A lot of answered prayer. I also learned a lot today – I have many ideas for improving things next year in order to avoid some of the pitfalls I discovered this year. I had the best training in the world for this job, but it definitely still has a learning curve.