Better late than never: singing the Queen in Spain, some future gigs, and the best engagement of my life

It's been three months since my last confession...I mean blog. Guess I've been busy, lazy, forgetful, or all of the above. I kept meaning to write about my experiences in Spain singing Queen of the Night at the Festival Internacional de Música de Almansa, and somehow, I never got around to it. Until now.

So here we go, assuming I can remember a majority of the details. Almansa is a tiny little town full of very friendly people who don't speak a lick of English. They all know each other, and they all love Martín, the trumpet player at Deutsche Oper who is from Almansa originally and started this music festival. They have a theater but there has never been an opera performed in it before. The whole town basically raised the money for us to come, and while we didn't get paid much, we were staying in a fantastic hotel, got free use of the olympic-sized swimming pool in the center of town, were given discounts and freebies at restaurants, and were thrown a number of parties at wineries just outside of town with all the jamón and manchego and other Spanish tapas we could eat (and that's a lot!).

Now, due to a tremendous lack of funding, we had one makeup/wig girl and one dresser. This was not a high budget production. It was like being back in undergrad again, where we just figured out how to do things ourselves. This didn't bother me so much, but a lot of the Germans who are used to the special treatment weren't too happy. Thanks to having only one makeup girl, our call times started about 3.5 hours before the show, which is pretty unheard of in the real world. We did each other's pin curls and wig-caps to make things go faster (things that were always done for us at Deutsche Oper). By the time my wig was on and makeup was finished, I had about 2 hours before curtain. After I finished the book I was reading early in the week, I started offering to help, and ended up doing the whole wig process for the three spirits, played by three adorable little girls with terrific voices. I might be the first Queen of the Night ever to double as a wig girl. Pretty crazy, thinking back on it. Guess it proves I'm not a diva!

The performances were great and the audiences just ate it all up. I've never felt more like a celebrity. I received so many cheers and bravos, it was incredible. The majority of the audience members had never heard anything like my two arias before, and they just went wild after both of them, especially Der Hölle Rache. I had people coming up to me afterwards saying they had tears streaming down their faces when I was singing all those high notes, and the head of the festival told me that I was definitely the crowd favorite and that they couldn't stop talking about me after at the end of each show. It was an amazing way to end an amazing season!

Here are some pictures of the show and my costumes.

Here I am with Pamina, she looked very 80's. This was my first costume.

Same costume with two of the spirits that I wigged.

This was costume #2, that I wore with a cape on top for my first aria. Hello Vegas.

Costume #3, that I wore for Der Hölle Rache, the better known aria of the role.

Here I am holding my favorite Spanish snack food between acts: Ham flavored potato chips.

Action shot from Act I.

And another.

After Spain, I flew back to Berlin for a day, repacked, and took off for NJ. Then I left for Santa Fe two days later to spend a month and a half with Hal, who was singing a couple of roles there this summer. The Monday after I got there, I got some bad news. Opera in the Heights messed up, and I'm no longer singing the heroines of Hoffmann there next September. It's a long story that I don't need to get into, and I am really disappointed. However, I am definitely on the schedule in a couple of years for my first Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), my first Gilda (Rigoletto), and my first Blondchen (Abduction from the Seraglio). They're not coming up for a little while, so I'm back to doing auditions and trying to find singing jobs. My first priority right now career-wise is finding an agent. I should have a couple of auditions for agents this fall, and hopefully someone will want to represent me and get me into the bigger auditions.

The same day I got the news about Hoffmann, another engagement came about that evening, the best one yet. Hal proposed! We had gone out to a good Mexican place for dinner, and on the way home, he took a detour. We ended up at 10,000 Waves, a fancy spa, and Hal had rented a private bath for us, which was basically a really large outside hot tub with a cold plunge and a private sauna. After a little while of soaking, we got really warm and stepped out of the tub to cool down. We were sitting on a bench on the side and all of a sudden Hal started making a speech and got down on one knee, and asked me to marry him! And then as an afterthought, he said "And I got you a ring, too." And it is absolutely perfect! It's an antique ring from 1920, completely hand made, and the diamond is over 100 years old. It's been a couple of months, and I still can't stop staring at it. :-) The big day will be in May, and I can't wait to be Mrs. Harold Wilson!

Here we are overlooking a sunset in Santa Fe.

And here's the ring!

That's life for now. Having no jobs at the moment leaves me plenty of time for wedding planning, which is pretty nice. I'll be sure to update you when I have more singing news, and hopefully that won't be too far away. Hope your summers were also wonderful!

I posted some new recordings on my website. You can check them out at www.ericamiller.papaphonic.com. I also redid the look of the site, it's a little different and in blue instead of red. Matches my favorite Queen costume that I have on the home page.