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.