Tannhäuser and Wonderland (with pictures!)

As per the Deutsche Oper's general feeling on rehearsing, I of course only had about 10 minutes of rehearsal for my bit part in Tannhäuser. I sing the part of the Shepherdess, who comes on, sings a song cappella, listens to a beautiful male chorus, and then sings another line before leaving. Usually the shepherdess also plays a shalmei (well, fake plays a shalmei while an English horn plays offstage) but in this production, no shalmei. Less to learn for me! 10 minutes of rehearsal may have even been too much – I literally walk across the stage, stopping about 1/3 of the way to sing, then walking almost to the other edge, singing my other line, and walking off. Straight line. No excitement. Only thing to be nervous about is staying in tune. Well, the first performance was just fine, except that the stage manager never came by to tell me when to enter, so I just made that part up. I was warned that the conductor would try to conduct my little solo, but thanks to the immense amounts of stage smoke, I couldn't even see him (I'm all the way at the back of the stage). Hope he doesn't complain later. I stayed in tune, felt I sang well and carried well into the house, sang my next little part as best I could, again unable to see the conductor, and all the while wearing a little white dress that was probably a size 16. I'll try to remember my camera next time. After three months of barely performing, it's so nice to get on stage again. All I had were those two Marie Victoire performances. Oddly enough, because I've been so happy to finally get to perform again, I haven't been nervous at all and have been thinking much more about character and motivation than what words may or may not be coming next. Those months off have taught me that I really do love doing this.

And now, what you've been waiting for. Alice im Wunderland! Let's start with some photos. The costumes are AMAZING. Only got photos of a few of them though.

Here I am!

My face and floppy ears.

My cute bunny feet and poofball tights.

Here's my cute bunny tail.

This is the caterpillar who smokes.

The mouse.

I don't actually know what he's supposed to be. It's Krunke in German.

The kids love the bunny costume. I enter from the back, step on a few kids, end up on stage, and from then on, every time I come on stage, even if just for a few seconds, the kids are saying "Kaninchen! Kaninchen!" At the last performance a couple little girls in the front row had bunny face paint on. No idea where that came from, but one of them let out the biggest smile when I sang one of my lines to her. So cute!

We did five shows, and our final dress rehearsal was for an audience, so sort of six shows. Two a day for three days. Very sweaty. Whoever thought that a thick velvet jacket lined in polyester was a good idea for a character who pretty much only dances, should be shot. I have never sweat so much in my life! And twice a day! I've never performed for kids before who are only a few feet away, and I've gotta say, it was fun! I was nervous that the talking and laughing would distract me, but instead, I felt more relaxed, because no matter what I did, they were going to laugh and point. My dance was just great every time, never thought about it or got nervous. My dialogue was fine, never forgot any words. I noticed that when I was speaking, the kids were mostly quiet, but when many of the other characters were speaking, they were talking to each other. I've had so much training on speaking loudly on stage, and it seems like most of the rest of the cast didn't, so I'll be the kids were paying attention to me because a) they could hear me and b) they love the bunny.

After one of the shows, I was attacked by a couple of the kids on the way to my dressing room! It’s hard enough to understand German, but even harder when little kids in their high-pitched voices are talking over one another and trying to ask questions. Luckily one of their mothers arrived just in time before they got the change to pull my ears off (they were grabby!). After the last performance, a mother asked if her daughter (probably about 3 years old) could have a picture with me. I of course agreed, and squatted down to get to the little girl’s height, and she was scared to come over to me! She said something about my big scary feet. She finally came over for the picture, but I have a feeling she looked distressed.

I am totally beat up from this show! My back is killing me from having to do backward rolls, my knees are black and blue under, on, and above my kneecaps, my elbows are black and blue, I have a huge scrape on my arm from something, it's definitely not as much fun as it looks! There's a big box on stage that I jump into headfirst, it's got a thin mattress inside it like a slide. Everything's fine, except that at the bottom of the slide is a step, that's not padded or anything! So every time I've gone down it, my elbows and my knees have gone over the corner of the stair, getting worse each time. Not the best planning! At the fifth show, had another costume malfunction. One of the toes on my big bunny shoes almost fell off and it was hanging there by a thread. Luckily it happened right before bows at the end, but a couple kids in the front row noticed and I thought they were going to cry. Speaking of crying, lots of that going on, I guess there are some scary parts. Not when I was there, I dried up the tears!

I have a bit of good news. Despite not having anything coming up next year, I’ve been in contact with Opera in the Heights, a small company in Houston, TX. They really liked my audition a couple of years ago, and now that they know I’m coming back to the States, they have offered me the four heroines in Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann for September-October 2010. The Tales of Hoffmann is my favorite opera, I adore the music, the story, and it’s just so much fun, so I am really excited about this. I’m also penciled in for the future for Lucia in Lucia di Lammermoor, Gilda in Rigoletto, and Blondchen in The Abduction from the Seraglio, assuming I’m still around and available. These are all fantastic roles for me, so I definitely have something to look forward to once my time in Germany is over, even if I will have a year off.

Broken sets, costume malfunctions, me dancing - all the good stuff

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.

Here's me in front of Big Ben.

Here's Hal and me in front of the White Tower at the Tower of London.