Helena premiere and a couple of divas

I just sang in the premiere of Helena on January 18, and according to some of the other singers, it was the most well-received premiere here in years. The singers were all incredible. Laura Aikin, the coloratura, was such an inspiration. She's sung everywhere, is the sweetest woman, has two adorable kids, and has a voice that doesn't have any hint of age in it and is just spectacular. The Helena, Riccarda Merbeth, also has a gorgeous instrument, but expects the world to cater to her. Throughout the rehearsal process (6 weeks), she never once acknowledged any other singer's presence, and her favorite pastime was taking off rehearsal costume pieces that she no longer needed, walking by another singer with a smaller role (like me), and dropping them into our arms, as if we were her dressers. All of this while walking forward and not looking in our direction. There was one time when she simply held out her coat in the middle of rehearsal and let it dangle from her fingers for about a minute before finally realizing no one was coming to take it from her. She huffed and laid it on the bed on stage. Needless to say, the show makes absolutely no sense, but it's beautiful to look at, and the audience cheered like crazy.

The costumes were definitely cool, even if they were a little painful. My corset one rehearsal was pulled a little too tight and for the next few days I felt like someone had kicked me repeatedly in the ribs. It's fun looking like a weird 80's rock star though!

Here I am, the pink elf. (We're not really elves, we're ladies of the night.)

The three elves.

Three elves, two maids, and Laura Aikin as Aithra.

Speaking of divas, it's been loads of fun working with Agnes Baltsa, who is singing our Clytemnestra in Elektra. She is the first superstar singer I've gotten to sing next to here (even if she is in her 60's), and she's absolutely hilarious. At the first rehearsal, we were all called at 10am, and we did nothing until 10:30am because Ms. Baltsa was telling the director everything she would NOT do. Which is basically everything. The stage is basically a pit of tiny, dusty, gray pieces of cork that everyone has to stand in at some point or other. It's smelly and gross, but oh well. Well, when Ms. Baltsa saw it, she said no, she would absolutely not walk into the stuff. Now Janice Baird, singing Elektra, has to lie in it and writhe around, and she's doing it! But no, not Agnes. Then she was told she has to carry an axe around with her. What did she say? First, in her 25 performances of this role, she has never had an axe and it's not in the character at all, and second, my personal favorite, if she were to carry an axe, that would leave only one arm left to emote, and Clytemnestra needs two arms at all times. All of her complaints were followed by her opening her mouth wide enough to swallow her head, and laughing. It was pretty funny! For the scene that I'm in as her confidante, we're up a good height above the cork, and she doesn't want to be there because it's too high and too far back. For her entrance, she is supposed to walk left, then right, then down the middle, and finally end up center to sing. No no no, she says, when I come in, I make my entrance and stay, my character would never walk across 3 times. This is not a new production, by the way, so it's not meant to be changed at all. Anyway, she's, how do you say, difficult. But at least she's fun and talks to us and doesn't toss her costume pieces towards us when she doesn't need them.

The set for Elektra, including the cork, was a complete death trap the day of the dress rehearsal. The door where we stand about 20 feet up is like a drawbridge, and the front couple of feet where we actually stand had nothing to either side except a 20 foot drop down! My hands were shaking when I was up there because I thought at any moment Ms. Baltsa would bump into me and I'd drop to my death. For the performances, they thankfully closed in the gap so I felt a lot better! The cork itself has got to be the most unsanitary substance on earth. It's from last year, was packed up in plastic bags for safekeeping until this year, and it's constantly being watered down to keep the dust level low. The bacteria levels must be off the chart!

I was lucky enough to get to sing 10 days of rehearsals of Zerbinetta since Jane Archibald was at another gig. I sang through most of the role with the conductor, and a few staging rehearsals. It was so much fun! I was sad when I had my last rehearsal, but after hearing Jane do the aria, I am so excited to see her in the role. She's incredible. The conductor, Jacques Lacombe, seemed to really like me, and mentioned to one of the staff members that we had a great backup Zerbinetta here, so that made me feel great. Hopefully, if anything goes wrong with Jane, they'll give me a call.

Carmen rehearsals just started, and even though I don't get to sing Frasquita until June, I've gotten to sing all the musical rehearsals with Yves Abel, the conductor, since the March Frasquita is currently sick. Yves is wonderful to work with, and I'm really looking forward to singing the role on stage!

It looks like I'm going to be in another premiere now, which isn't making me too happy. I had a relatively free mid-February through mid-April, and I put in for some vacation time so that I can do auditions and maybe even take a little vacation. The forms were signed, the time off was approved, and two days after I got the forms back, Herr Seuferle popped into one of my rehearsals and told me that even though he signed my forms, he was going to need me to be in the premiere of Respighi's Marie Victoire due to his miscasting a mezzo in a soprano role and only now realizing it. It opens April 9 and will have 6 weeks of rehearsal, and even though it's always nice to get more stage time, I'm a little annoyed. I'm only in one act and I have about 5 lines, and it's a role that's unimportant in an opera that I will never be singing again. At least if it were something useful I'd feel less annoyed about giving up my vacation/audition time. I told him that I really needed to be available for auditions during the time of the rehearsals and performances, so I will be sharing the role with another soprano who can't make all the performances but can be there for the rehearsal period. I did have every right to say no since I already had the forms signed to be gone, but I do appreciate everything he's done for me, and I really want him on my side if potential employers call him to ask about me.

All in all, I've just been super busy since the new year started, and it looks like I'm going to stay that way for the next few months. If I can sneak in and get pictures of the Elektra set and cork, I will, but no promises.

Hope you're enjoying the cold weather more than I am! Brrrr.

Happy Holidays! (And time to get to work!)

To begin with, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! And soon to be, Happy New Year. 

December has been super busy and also a bit frustrating. Good stuff first: the Christmas Markets are fantastic, full of great food and arts and crafts, and I've seen just about all of the ones anyone's heard of. I've eaten all sorts of delicious sausages, crepes, melted cheese, perogies, salamis, soups, quarkballs (basically donuts made with sour cream), chocolates, and other things I can't remember. Yum! Sadly, they're all over now, but they sure make being away from home during Christmas less sad. My sister visited for a week in the beginning December, also a lot of fun, and I got to walk around more of Berlin that I haven't seen, and try out interesting restaurants like a Sri Lankan place I'd like to go back to. I've also managed to memorize Zerbinetta, which is great since Ariadne auf Naxos starts on January 2.

And now the not-so-much-fun stuff. We started rehearsals for Strauss' Die Ägyptische Helena (which I now am calling Hell-ena). The cast is wonderful, and surprisingly, mostly made up of Americans. The Helena is German and expects the world to rotate around her, but she has a fabulous voice so I'm not too bothered by her attitude (many of the other cast members are ready to kill her for being such a diva, but I haven't had any major run-ins yet). Our conductor, Andrew Litton, is lots of fun, American, always buys the wine at dinner, and speaks no German. The director, Marco Marelli, speaks English to the conductor, but not to us. Two of us don't really understand him, and the other girl doesn't seem to care, but I do. It's so frustrating to be told something in German, understand some of it but not all of it, and then after looking confused, have the director say the same exact thing in German again. I also hate having to always ask another cast member to translate, but it's what I have to do. I can't go from not understanding German to understanding it fluently just like that. I do get a lot of what the guy says, but there's only so much I can get at once, and it's not nearly enough.

I had mentioned before that we're in the whole show, even though we only sing in one scene. During a 3-hour rehearsal, we cover about 3-5 minutes of the opera. We do the scene over and over again, and we barely change anything. And if Marelli wants to change something, instead of just going over the one part, we start the whole scene over again. And then the next rehearsal, it ends up changing! It takes so much energy to be there, and he expects more with each repetition. By the time you get to the 20th rep, everyone's making stupid mistakes because we just can't focus anymore. We've been working on the show since the beginning of December, and we basically have seven days of rehearsal left before our first dress rehearsal. We still haven't staged half of Act I, and the elves haven't been put into Act II at all (and I know we're in it!). I don't know how this show is going to come together in time. However, all that being said, if it does come together, I think it will be a beautiful production. The costumes and sets are gorgeous, and I think it will be fun to watch even if the process is tedious. Hopefully we won't get booed like Tannhäuser did!!

I've had three performances of The Cunning Little Vixen. It is the cutest production – everyone's in amazing animal costumes, and there are a number of dancers. I am a grasshopper in the beginning and the end, and I eat leaves and play a violin like it's a guitar, and dance like an idiot. All that while being very green and wearing a grasshopper head that I can't really see in.

In another scene I'm one of two boys (well, more like a big boy since I have a padded stomach on my costume). We torment the vixen and get thrown back inside by our dad.

We had two performances yesterday, one on December 17, and one coming up on January 9. I only have a few lines to sing, but the music is fairly difficult rhythmically, and we have a conductor who doesn't think it's his job to cue singers, so we are always off. The audience would never be able to tell, but it's annoying to never get things right – as soon as one singer is slightly behind or ahead, we all end up singing it wrong. Oh well! I suppose if he cared, he'd cue!

January is going to be super busy. I'm singing the first 10 days of Zerbinetta rehearsals, starting January 2. I'll also be at most of the other rehearsals because of covering Zerbinetta and Najade. Hell-ena opens on the 18th. And then we're starting Elektra and possibly Carmen. The big news about Carmen is that we're no longer doing a new production since the director had to pull out for health reasons, instead we're remounting the old one. This will take substantially less time rehearsing. This is good because I'm already busy enough and will appreciate the extra time, but bad because I'd like to have a chance to really rehearse Frasquita before being thrown on stage. I'm also not performing the role until June, so I don't know if I'll be called to the early rehearsals. No matter what, they can't call me to more than 6 hours a day of rehearsals, so I'll be busy, but not that busy.

Not too much else to report at the moment. Happy New Year everyone!

A month later, still alive!

I just realized it's been a long time since I've written a post! Over a month, actually. I think I figured you needed a bit of a break after the small novels I kept writing about China. I sure needed a break after all that wall-climbing and dumpling-eating, and I got my wish. Most of the operas I'm in start in December, so I've had lots of free time in the last month to learn music, sing another Queen of the Night, and eat sausages. (And now that the Christmas Markets are open, I can eat a different sausage every day by walking around the corner and pointing!) Speaking of China, I finally took a picture of the jacket I had made for me. Here I am!

My biggest excitement this month was Queen #2. MUCH better than the first time. After the costumer left my dressing room, I took the heels off, hid them under the couch, and put my own shoes on. So, about 90% less tripping occurred. I say 90%, because my dress was now about an inch and half too long, so I had to pay more attention walking. I felt great on both my arias, and this time around, I actually got more applause than Pamina. This is really my goal in this role, to be on stage for 10 minutes and somehow manage to get more applause than the girl who was on stage all the time and had to work way harder than me. Thanks, Mozart! Here are a couple pictures of me as Königin der Nacht in the big production. Not quite as exciting as the costume for the kids' show.

Last week I got to fly to NY for the Opera Foundation Gala. The Opera Foundation is the group that gave me my scholarship to Berlin, and so they bought me a plane ticket to come sing at their annual dinner. It was a great event. Depending on how much you want to donate, seats are either $500 or $1000, so I was expecting the food to be perfect. And it was. First course of lobster, followed by rack of lamb, followed by a lovely dessert with fresh fruit and different sorbets in a chocolate shell. After the lobster, the three scholarship recipients sang. I sang the Queen of the Night's Vengeance Aria, and also a duet from The Barber of Seville. The aria got lots of cheers, and as soon as I sat down I was given a business card from a publisher of Opera News, who told me to call her. She said she was just thrilled with my singing and wants me to stay in contact. I was also approached by a woman from New York City Opera, saying that even though they're going through some transitions, she wanted to pass along my information to them. I even had a few of the wait staff come up to me with compliments! Here's a picture of me with Harold Wilson, a former scholarship recipient and the emcee of the evening, and Elizabeth Walbröl, New York socialite and in charge of the Opera Foundation.

Back at Deutsche Opera, I'm in two productions that are starting rehearsals this week, a premiere of Strauss' Die Ägypstische Helena, and Janacek's The Cunning Little Vixen. The director for Helena has decided that all the singers with smaller parts that should only be in one scene of the opera will be on stage for the entire opera. This means I'll be called to every rehearsal until opening. Not so much fun. Vixen will be fun, I have three tiny roles and get to dress up like different animals. Probably more exciting than both of those things is that I found out that the woman singing Zerbinetta in our new production of Ariadne auf Naxos will be absent from the first 10 days of rehearsals. And I'm the cover! So that means I'll get to sing all of her rehearsals during that time and probably stage all of Zerbinetta. I'm almost done learning the role – it's not easy but it's a ton of fun to sing.

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving. I had two! My parents moved it up a week to when I was home, and then on the real Thanksgiving, I went to a big dinner with a bunch of American friends here in Berlin. Glad I at least got to spend one holiday at home this year, since Christmas and Easter will be spent here.

Tonight I went to the premiere of Tannhäuser. I was told that at premieres, the applause at the end can be the most exciting part. Some singers were cheered more than I've ever heard in my life, and the Elizabeth/Venus was booed. I don't think I've ever heard boos before in a theater. Her boos weren't anything, however, compared to the boos for the director and designers. The whole theater booed as loudly for them as they had cheered for the Wolfram. Crazy stuff! Glad I was there to experience it. I found the production to be sort of blah, not great, not bad. Certainly not boo-worthy.

I'll post again once I have something more substantial to write about, like my upcoming rehearsals and shows. Until then, have a great December!