Things I’ve learned from Alice im Wunderland:
1) I can dance!
2) If the set looks like it’s going to break but you’re told to do what you’re supposed to do anyway, it’s not entirely your fault when you break the set.
3) I am really good at German dialogue.
4) The German word for splinter is Splitter. Ouch!
5) It’s a lot harder to get out of the big boxes on the set than it looks on the DVD.
We open next week with five performances over three days. The show is adorable, with fantastic costumes and a great set. I pretty much open the show as the White Rabbit with a short monologue and a cute opening number in which I dance and sing. The dancing’s very Charlie Chaplin, complete with a cane. And I can actually do it!! It’s even fun! I managed to break a set piece (the lid of the box I come out of at one point broke in half when I opened it) in the middle of my first rehearsal and I felt pretty bad. I also came out of that rehearsal with black and blue marks all over my legs, knees, and ankles from crawling around on the floor and jumping into a big box that wasn’t as padded as it looked. Getting out of the boxes isn’t fun either, they’re about 4 feet tall and the wood at the top of the box isn’t finished or anything, so I’m hoisting myself up and climbing over. It’s not as much fun as it looks. And yesterday I got a splinter!
Moving on, or backwards I should say, I had two performances of La Novice in Marie Victoire last month. I’m on stage for an hour and twenty minutes, and I had one rehearsal before my first performance – the morning of my first performance. Lucky for me, I had attended a few rehearsals that I wasn’t called to earlier, so I was somewhat familiar with the music and staging. The hardest part for me, that I didn’t find out until a week before my performance, was that I was supposed to memorize the Salve Regina in Latin, to be repeated over and over again out loud over a dead body on stage. I resolved that I would only memorize the first five lines and repeat only them instead of the whole thing. Then I didn’t really have them memorized in time, so I sneakily wrote them on my hand before the performance. During the show, all was going well, I was singing at the right times, doing my staging correctly, and then I knelt over the body, clasped my hands together in prayer, and started reading. Everything was just fine until the lights started getting dim, and then it was completely dark on stage! And the orchestra got soft, and there I was, supposed to be reciting the prayer out loud and I couldn’t remember any of the complete lines! I think I repeated the first two words of a few lines over and over again, softer than I was supposed to, hoping no one would be able to tell. I think it worked, but to be honest, the word “shit” was going through my head a lot more than the Salve Regina! Needless to say, I memorized it for the second performance.
Now, my other problem during both shows was a major costume malfunction. So when I had my costume fitting, they put this robe on me (I’m a young nun), and the back is completely open the whole way down and just has one little hook at the top. They made it sound like it wouldn’t be open for the performances. Wrong. The back was completely open (luckily I was wearing a tank top underneath), and of course the little hook came undone within about 30 seconds, so my robe started falling off as soon as I stood up. And since I don’t leave stage the whole time, it continued falling off the whole show. I complained afterwards, and told my costumer that the hook came undone and that the robe was falling off. For the next performance, they sewed up the back of the costume about halfway, but the same stupid hook was still there. So it came undone again and wasn’t really much better than the first time. Oh well! Nothing I could do about it! Here's what I looked like. Keep in mind that I was imprisoned and about to have my head chopped off. You woulda looked this bad, too.
I’ve been covering Clorinda in Rossini’s Cenerentola (that’s one of the stepsisters in Cinderella for those of you who aren’t familiar with the opera) for the last few weeks. I’ve been going to every rehearsal and have really learned my part well, which is good since I actually had to sing a 3-hour rehearsal last night. I was a little scared since I hadn’t seen all of the scenes we were doing that night (I had to miss a few rehearsals for various auditions), but the director was very understanding and showed me what to do. Good news is, I knew my music, and did a pretty good job with the staging. The conductor told me my Italian was very good also, which shocked me since I was trying my best to fit in all the right words into these super fast ensembles. I’ve never had a music rehearsal or a coaching, so I learned this all on my own and this was my first time singing with the other singers. I think I might have another rehearsal to sing Friday night, since the girl I’m covering has a performance of Traviata.
Speaking of auditions, I’ve had a few recently for agents, who have all pretty much told me the same thing. There’s nothing out there for my voice type right now, so there are no auditions they can send me to. They’ve seemed very happy with my voice though, so that’s a good thing. Unfortunately, Deutsche Oper is not hiring me back next year (long story, but it’s not personal), so I’ll probably be unemployed and doing auditions for a little while. But for those of you that live in the States and may have missed me a little bit this year, I’ll most likely be around quite a bit next year! I have one more house audition coming up – I’m singing for the Hamburg State Opera, so if they decide to hire me for next year, I’ll be a Hamburger. :-)
On a personal note, I did have a bit of time off in the last month, so I took a trip with my boyfriend to London. I’ve never been before and I had a blast. And everyone who told me that the food in London all tastes like cardboard is wrong. I loved eating there! And I was there right before Easter, so I stocked up on some Cadbury eggs before coming home. I’ll also be flying off to Toulouse, France in a couple weeks to visit the boyfriend again for a few days. After I come back, my parents arrive for two weeks, and then I go to Madrid for a week with my mom. I’m very excited about all the traveling and visitors coming up! Between Cenerentola and Alice im Wunderland and a couple performances of the shepherd in Tannhäuser, my next two weeks are insanely busy, so it will be nice to take a little break.
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