Swamp Thing...

As many of you may have surmised from reading my blog, opera is not nearly the glamorous career path that one expects.  In fact, any career path that requires one to move to Binghamton, wear a fat suit and to take crap from people sitting behind a folding table in a studio in New York City (and forces you to resist punching them in the face..or at least mooning them in protest) is a career path you may want to rethink.  Keep in mind, young readers, that accounting really IS a better choice when in school.  You may die of boredom, but that beats dying of humiliation.  But I digress...yesterday I sang opera in the parking lot of a swamp.

"Its not a swamp," I can hear the Head of the Company (from now on known as HotC) growl at me.  "It is a wildlife preserve on marshland."

Uh huh.  So why is the only wildlife around the flies buzzing around the port-a-potties and the mosquitos trying to suck out my life's blood?

As part of our partnership with the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, we are collaborating on a series of outdoor (!) concerts around New Jersey in an attempt to "bring culture to the people." Hey, these are tough times people and if Muhammad won't come to the mountain, the 60-person orchestra and 6 opera singers come to Muhammad.  And while I am delighted to take part in these concerts (and get paid for singing "Three Little Maids," which only requires a good belch to warm up on) we are stuck singing in some pretty interesting venues.

Hence the swamp parking lot.  In order to get to this particular venue, we had to walk though some pretty serious marshland, which left me greatly worried about our chances of survival. And our only toilet options came in the form of some terrifying port-a-potties.  I brought disinfectant gel with me (never leave home without it!), but I didn't have enough to throughly hose my body off with, which is what I really wanted to do every time I used one.  And I used them a lot.  My bladder has this unfortunate ability to surmise a nasty bathroom situation and suddenly go into overdrive.  I will not have to pee all day, but I suddenly get on an airplane or show up in a swamp, and said bladder loses all powers of liquid retention.  Thank God it was still light out, because using a port-a-potty in the dark is one of the more harrowing experiences of my life.  I am still in therapy for that incident.

And there wasn't really a place for us to hang out in after we ran a sound check, so the company van became our green room.  The person I felt the most sorry for during all this was our soprano who is singing the title role in Lucia.  She is used to singing at the MET and at various glamorous venues around the world, and here she is lounging in a van filled with take-out containers.  While she was very sweet about it all, she absolutely refused to use the port-a-potties, which means she must have a steel bladder and I am very jealous.

However, we survived the concert (and the threatening rain clouds) and the stop at Wendy's on the way back helped soothe our souls.  And then I got home and took the longest post-port-a-potty shower ever.  Let us hope tonight's concert venue is a little less "swampy."

And yes, Mr HotC, it was MOST DEFINITELY a SWAMP.