Final Dress...

Last night was our final dress and we had a friendly, and familiar, audience full of the casts from the other shows and various Opera New Jersey employees.  Thank you to all for the laughs at all the correct spots!  My friend, and fellow blogger, I'd Rather Be Sleeping was able to come to the show and was a delight to talk to afterwords.  She even made me a beautiful pair of earrings (because she is talented like that) and we got to discuss the perils of being an opera blogger.  She was also able to score tickets to Lucia (which I couldn't help her with, since I got out of that chorus) and I know she will enjoy it.  In fact, if any of you are in the New Jersey area, I strongly suggest you check out Lucia di Lammermor (after you see The Mikado, natch) because everyone is brilliant.  Hell, just see The Abduction from the Seraglio while you are at it because the cast is so damn talented.  I don't usually get all excited like this about opera, but it is pretty cool to be amongst such talented (and regularly employed!) opera singers.

However, I did not sing as well as I would have liked, because I would get so caught up in the moment that I would forget proper technique.  One of my voice teachers used to tell me to PLEASE keep at least 20% of my brain focused on vocal technique while on stage, but the lure of the audience's laughter was too much to resist.  Perhaps a brain washing is needed before we open?  And the flop sweat generated by the beautiful kimonos we wear is getting to be a problem.  By the time we took our curtain calls, I could smell myself, and that is never good. Not to mention the fact that these beautiful kimonos have trains that make it difficult to dance in and, if I did not worry about living out my life, I would take scissors to the damn things.

Too bad you would never find my body after the costume women got done with me.

Full Day...

• Today we had both the first dress rehearsal and the first orchestra rehearsal.  Needless to say, we are are wiped.  Especially the Studio Artists, who now have to go on and sing the chorus for Lucia.  And while the company bought both lunch and dinner for them, both meals consisted of pizza.  So unless they are handing out Metamucil with those slices, things are going to get ugly later on.
• After today's orchestra rehearsal, our rehearsal pianist came up to me and told me I "sounded great."  Then she had to follow it up with: "you sound so much better than you did on the first day of rehearsal.  Much fuller and richer."  Uhhh, if you wish drive a singer crazy in less that 60 seconds, saying crap like that is a sure way to do it.  Because now all I can do is obsess about how awful I must have sounded back then, instead of concentrating on the compliment.
• Our kimonos are beautiful, but are the same weight as blankets, so you can imagine the unfortunate flop sweat that occurs during our dance numbers.  At one point, I started getting a little dizzy in the dressing room, so I greatly increased my liquids.  Have you ever tried to pee in a kimono?  DON'T.
• The wigs are pieces of art on top of our heads and are about as heavy as an oil painting to boot.  Every time I bowed in the show, I was worried my head would come back up, but not my wig.  And standing around in a wig cap is not my idea of a good time.  However, the weight of the wig has caused me a mild headache, and the back of my neck hurts from holding the thing up.  Beauty is pain people!
• I actually look Asian in my stage makeup.  Rock on.
• I need to remember to bring deodorant with me tomorrow so my dressing room-mate doesn't hate me.
• The tempos for the songs are faster when we sing with the orchestra.  God help me not to fall behind.

Because I needed a laugh today....

Awkward

Today's first tech rehearsal for The Mikado was one of the most uncomfortable tech rehearsals of my life.  The chorus is upset about the amount of changes that have been made to their blocking, the tech crew is frustrated with the set, the director is upset about his lack of time with the chorus, the stage manager is annoyed with the director, and I am just trying to stay out of everyone's way.  I am so tired from wincing every time people yell at each other that I am going to need Botox for the frown lines.

Can't we all just get along?

Part 2

You know how I said I was going to continue my story?  And then I didn't?  For a looooong time? And now you hate me?  And then I posted it and you forgave me because rehearsals have been so intense that all I do now is barely sleep and then do funny things on stage whilst singing?  And now we are friends again?  Remember?  Good times.

So I finally found the teacher's studio, after the trek of the century, and I sat waiting for him to finish up the lesson before mine, all the while chewing nervously at a hangnail.  Now this man is a very good teacher and has several students that came to him with huge vocal issues and now sound so amazing that they are singing around the world...so he knows what he is doing. However, he isn't afraid of being blunt and will tell you (apparently right away) if you need to lose weight, if you have a lot of work ahead of you, if you sound like crap or if you should just give it up and get that CPA license you have been pondering.  And I really didn't want to hear that my future is in the exciting world of accounting...even if it does mean a steady paycheck.

So the student before me left and the teacher and I sat facing each other across the kitchen table.  

"You ready to show me what you've got?" he said.

Eeeep!  Scariest words ever spoken.  I clutched my Tori Burch so hard my knuckles turned white.

So we went over to the piano, I handed him my repertoire sheet and he had me run some scales on a "zzzz" sound.

"Hmmmm," he said, "that is some chest voice you have there."  I believe that is the only compliment my chest has ever gotten.

Then he had me slowly sing down the scale, and then he sped up and had me singing scales until we were higher on the piano than I have ever been and I felt like my eyes were going to pop out from the altitude.  And then we headed back down again.  So now the man has heard my whole range and I am officially exhausted.

Then he closed the piano and picked up my rep list.  Uh oh.

"Why has no one had the foresight to tell you that you are a true Rossini mezzo?"

Wha?  You mean the ones that sing fast and all over the place?  I don't think so big guy.

"Do you find yourself being complimented on your voice, except for that flutter in your vibrato?  And did you notice it just went away there with fast enough music and good technique?"

Come to think of it, I did seem to be making a lovely sound.  "But aren't Rossini mezzos retarded sopranos?  I thought my voice was too dark to fit into that category.  Plus, I have to take a taxi to get it to move, so I think there may be a mistake...."

He gave me a LOOK over the piano.  "True Rossini mezzos have a naturally dark color and most certainly are not, as you so eloquently put it, "retarded" sopranos.  This is a very exciting development.  There are much less of your kind of voice out there...you are a niche market. Love it.  Own it.  We have a lot of work and some exciting prospects ahead."

Wait a minute, I am covering Katisha this summer, the ultimate low mezzo role.  If I tell people about my new direction, they are going to laugh me out of the theater.  So I raised my hand...

"Um, this can't be right.  I sing low, slow stuff like Dido's Lament and other sad, weepy arias.  Did you hear the chest voice?  I believe we had a discussion about the chest voice...."

Again, I got a LOOK.  "You will still need that chest voice, and we will keep a few of those "weepy" arias.  They show versatility.  But were you getting jobs singing what you have been singing?"

He had a point....

"No?  Then what have you got to lose?  This is a very amazing discovery and you should be thanking your parents and their genes for giving you this voice."

That was a nice thing to say, but both of my parents are tone deaf.  So tone deaf that when my first voice teacher in high school called my mother to tell her that my voice was perfect for opera, my mother thought she was calling to say that I was a vocal disaster and perhaps I should take up the tuba.  My parents hum "Happy Birthday" so that other diners at restaurants will not be offended by their singing.  I am an odd fluke.

Ignoring my daze, my new voice teacher went on to describe how the next few months should pan out.  Translation: I have a LOT of work ahead of me.  And I am pretty excited/terrified about all this, even though I am not looking forward to the looks of disbelief I am going to get from people who know me and my voice when I tell them the news.  

I foresee lots of head pounding on the piano in a small practice room.

How I feel after getting less than 12 hours away from the rehearsal room....

Falling down the rabbit hole...

Yesterday was a very long, kind of amazing, day.  I headed into New York City from Princeton for the first time and, like the little planner/OCD/psycho I am, I double checked the departure times, locations and travel times about 300 times.  I can now happily list (from memory) when the New Jersey Transit train to Trenton arrives and when it will drop you off at Penn Station in New York. Impressed?  I THOUGHT so.

I was in the city for a voice lesson that didn't start until 8 pm (I KNOW, SO past my bedtime) and I got into the city around 5:45 pm.  Thank God my chronic need to get everywhere hours ahead of time took effect, because I used nearly every one of those minutes up to 8 pm to find the man's studio.  First off, the subway stop for his place was the last one before you hit the Bronx, which means, for those of you up on your NYC geography, that you go so far uptown that you might as well be in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  I was surprised that I got phone reception way up there.  And the subway ride all the way from 34th street to 215th street (!) took a fair amount of time, seeing as we were heading up to Canada.

I had been warned that finding his place was incredibly difficult (something about finding a magical toadstool, talking to animals and stumping a Spinx with a riddle), so I called up a friend of mine who had been to this teacher's place before and asked for some help.  OF COURSE I didn't have my NYC map with me because, despite all that planning with the train, I had completely forgotten a map.  I figured the area I was headed to had a Border's or a souvenir shop.  How wrong I was.

So after talking with my friend, who was very kind, but unsure of which direction I was coming from and was trying to help me out via memory, I ended up accidentally walking over the bridge to the Bronx.  Not as scary a place as you out there in the Midwest might think, as there was a Target across the street from the McDonald's I stopped in to get a Diet Coke and collect my thoughts.  Seeing as I had no map and was quite confused as to how to find this teacher's street, I did what an savvy, city-dwelling young woman would do: I called my mom.  Look, I knew she would have her computer nearby, probably wouldn't ignore my call, and would be able to tell (via Google Maps) if I had gone too far.

Obviously, since there was bridge crossing involved, I had gone too far.

She helpfully (thank you mom!) got me back on track and I arrived at my new teacher's place, where I was told (by my friend on the phone) not to ring the bell, but to proceed to the side, spin around three times, walk into a courtyard, past the laundry room and into his studio. Apparently the first test with this man is that if you can find his place, you are up for the challenge of learning to sing.

Part 2 Coming Tomorrow...dun, dun, duuuuuun......