This Ain't The End But You Can See It From Here..

Tonight is piano dress. The first in a series of three full-on dress rehearsals (meaning, wigs/makeup, costumes, full tech, full lights and - ideally - no stopping). Tonight is also the last rehearsal where the director has full control. In opera, where music is the key player, the Conductor takes over the last two run-throughs to fine tune the music with singers and orchestra together. Tonight is our last chance to fix staging problems before we can only sit back and take notes to type up and deliver at dressing room doors before the next run.

We've come a long way from our first wobbly steps in the noisy wrestling gymnasium in Richfield Springs. It's hard to believe that we finished staging there only three days ago. We've gone from this:

To this:

This is the exact same moment in the opera with the exact same people. We've lost most of the chairs, compacted the group so they're closer together, and of course added costumes and set and lights and everything else that turns a "play" into a "production." That's Maestro Wachner's profile in the down left corner by the way.

I've got to pack up and go. Piano dress tonight and still big changes to be made. We're all always striving towards that perfect stage picture and tonight is our last moment to find it.

Back In The Theater Again

Two days ago the Gluck/Berlioz cast and staff finished up their final rehearsal in a small wrestling gym in Richfield Springs. We move into the theater this afternoon. The production week countdown has officially begun.

This will be a smoother transition into the theater simply because we've been here before. Glimmerglass is unique in that they lump a chunk of piano stagings smack dab in the middle of your staging rehearsal process. There are advantages and disadvantages to this process. The advantages are the fact that we get to see immediately where staging ideas won't work.

The rehearsal room is notorious for giving directors (and singers) a false sense of ability. Stairs exist as mere tape lines on the floor, rehearsal chairs/tables/etc. are often chunkier and smoother than the real thing, and flying set pieces exist only in the imagination. Therefore, 5 foot mock-ups of 13-foot-tall puppets roll easily over the waxy-smooth surface of the wrestling gym and don't have to worry about stone overhangs and straw-covered arms that fly loose from their tiny bases. Tiny entrances wherein chorus members and dancers pop in from side doorways and quickly disappear are unencumbered by grievous sight lines. This is when we thank god for the early on-stage time to show us the error of our ways so that we can descend back into the studio and fix all of our misconceptions.

The disadvantage lies in the fact that any momentum and continuity gained in a dramatic sense is somewhat stymied at an earlier time than usual. We lose a bit of chorus time and dramatic discoveries are often prematurely knocked out because we have a truer sense of what will play in our own little stage space...

That being said, our little show is fully staged and ready. Most of the issues come down to pure technicality at this point, and so moving into the theater involves less nervous energy from the singers as well as the production staff. We have two rehearsals today. My hopes are that we will get through Act I this afternoon and finish up in the evening.

This afternoon may prove to be difficult simply because we are teching a major wig/makeup/costume change for all 21 of our chorus members. Everyone has galloped through the previous stagings in most of their costume, but this is the first time they will be dealing with makeup - a huge change especially because the Furies are such a drastic move away from the basic townsperson look they will be quick-changing out of. Just as I foresaw issue with our huge, beautiful effigies at our first tech, I foresee issues in this change.

As Harry Silverstein, the director who got me into opera, always says, "That's why we call it REhearsal and not simply HEARSAL." (And of course Lillian all reminded us one day, when we were repeating one little section for the 13th time, that the word for "rehearsal" in French is "Repetition").

So here I am, sitting in the Stage Management office in the Wardrobe House on the Glimmerglass campus. One of the few rooms with a/c, I'll be here until we begin, personalizing chorus notes and making sure I have a complete list of fixes before we step out on stage and start the freight train running...

In related news, I found the Glimmerglass Blog today. Check it out. It's a log of all four of the operas and their progress through the season. Everything begins in a week and a half.

Day Off

I had the day off today. Everyone at Glimmerglass did. I may have the day off on Tuesday also if things go well in rehearsals tomorrow. I relish in time to myself.

I took a long bike ride today on my roommate's bicycle. I rode all through Richfield Springs, past numerous churches and people out for Sunday strolls, then cut out of the village on Lake Street and rode up the hill until I found a beautiful cemetary. Graveyards fascinate me in their history, their statuary and their quiet (or disquiet as the case may be). Old cemetaries are especially interesting. You can tell a lot about a town by the graves that nestle into its outskirts.

The ones that particularly catch at me are children's headstones. Cemetaries in Ireland are full of children's graves and there's a cemetary in Charleston, Illinois, where a woman lost six babies, all under the age of 5. What incredible heartbreak that must have been. I think the death of a child, however tragic, was more commonplace in the century before...lack of modern medicine, more home births, etc..

So that put me into a calm as I donned the bicycle once again and turned back towards home. The rest of the day was laundry, work (neverending) on my score, cleaning the kitchen...more perfunctory chores, and yet I still was constantly thinking of coming upon this cemetary out of the blue.

Funny how sometimes the most spontaneous, beautiful, raw moments in life can still lead us back to thoughts of death.

Stuck Inside

It's an unexpected day off but it's been raining all morning, that slow, sad drizzle that takes all the life out of morning energy and promise. The edge of the horizon is ringed with black so I see no end in site. Alas no bike ride, no stroll to the laundromat, no neighborhood saunter with camera in hand...

Instead I'm going back through my many obsessive projects and taking stock. I started Daniel Mark Epstein's biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed" this morning. Being in Upstate New York, it seemed the perfect time and place to dive back into my consistently thwarted ESt.VM project. I was reading Nancy Milford's beautifully penned biography last year and so it seems we've come full circle.

My mother has also made progress on some research about my grandfather, another outside source of interest for my own writing and creative work, so I may dive into that a bit as well.
Even as I child I was never capable of getting bored.

I think I may make myself a juicy caprese salad and read a bit more....

Unexpected Respite

A nice surprise to the end of my work day as Lillian gave all six hours of tomorrow's rehearsal to Maestro Wachner for music work. This means a day off for me tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I plan to spend several hours working on my woefully scribbled up score and I'm hoping to finish my critical chorus document before our final room run on Saturday afternoon, but I won't have to get out of my pajamas until I'm good and ready and I may even have a chance to take a long bike ride, which I've wanted to do since I saw my roommate's Schwinn, filled with potential energy in our garage.

The other thing the unexpected news allowed me to do was spend this evening relaxing and spending some time NOT thinking about Gluck/Berlioz, Agrippina or any other upcoming projects. I sat on my Federalist front porch and read my book as a huge storm came up and thundered, poured and hailed all around me. There was very little wind, so I didn't get wet as I sat in the middle of the din of rain drops and grumbling from the sky. The photo is from the midst of the hail storm from my vantage point all curled up in the rocking chair. I played with macro and my telephoto lens to capture plants as they dealt with the deluge. It was a great afternoon.

We did some great detail work in rehearsals today. We're ready for this room run and for our final (and complete) move to the Alice Bush Theater. Our little shadow sat on the bleachers behind us for five straight hours, entranced. We even got her up working in the morning. As we worked through an aria that really needed the chorus to play off of, we asked her to get on stage and stand in for some chorus members. She was delighted and sat in her designated spot with prim posture and a wide-eyed grin. She's become our little mascot.

My roommate is at the theater tonight. All of the stage managers attend each other's first piano stagings to lend support to the one on the hot seat. That first night in the theater is stressful solely because of the locale change. Tonight the Offenbach team is in there and I am in my sweats in my giant living room playing on line and relishing in the fact that I have no set agenda for nearly 36 hours.

My Shadow

Inside all of the stress, changes and issues that come with the territory of putting up an opera, a really wonderful thing has been taking shape. The Gluck/Berlioz rehearses at Richfield Springs Central School. As we put together our little piece in the wrestling gym at the very back of the imposing campus, the rest of the school is still bustling with year-ending activity. School children from kindergarten to 12th grade attend school here, so we see all ages every time we walk down the hall to the bathroom.

One little girl, about thirteen, started last week sneaking into our rehearsals and sitting quietly at the door for an hour (sometimes two) watching us stage aria after aria with rapt attention. After a couple of days, Lillian finally asked her to come sit behind us. She's become my shadow.
Slowly we've learned more about her and shared our experiences in our own little world of opera-making as she's become more open with the questions. We found out she reads music and so we've handed her a score to follow. We found out she's on stage a lot herself and so we discuss staging choices and why things happen where they happen. She's been there for every change, every note, every discovery.

Her intense attention span reminds me of myself at her age. I was ripe with passion about stage work in any form and could watch professionals create endlessly. I was the only girl at DanceAspen who would sneak down to the company rehearsals to watch Hubbard Street or BalletMet prepare a show. Process fascinated me even then.
We've been in the theater for preliminary tech rehearsals this past Monday and Tuesday. Last night my little shadow showed up with her mother to watch. Lillian had given her our on stage schedule. She sat in the house entranced. I caught up with her on a break and asked how she was enjoying the rehearsal and she was ecstatic with her words and images. I felt like I was aiding in the creation of an artist by being there for her to talk to.

She's coming to a performance. She'd been saving up for a ticket and was ten or so dollars short so our stage manager whipped out some money the other day to help her meet her goal. We've all jumped on this nurturing bandwagon. Her spirit inspires all of us to give her the knowledge to back it up.

What a rare treat for this girl, and an amazing gift for all of us to have her energy from which to play.

Off

My confidence was totally shaken today.

I'm not sure why. I think I woke up this way: a little shaky, tired and emotionally under the weather. I didn't sleep well the night before, then sat in my little wooden chair in the wrestling gymnasium at Richfield Springs Central School, watching the singers work their butts off and I started to feel relatively useless.

It's funny how you can work and work and focus and work, spouting out the ideas, jumping on placement requests and noticing every little things, and then you have one day in a fog and suddenly all of your work feels null.... I couldn't seem to wrap my head around anything that was going on. I felt like I was a step behind everyone else and was at a loss when asked my opinion.

I was opinion-less, which really isn't like me at all.

It's days like these when I feel like an absolute fraud in everything I do. We had a lunch meeting today and I sat through it fidgeting, wishing I could go home, get in my bed, sleep, and wake up again to start over at the moment I folded back my orange corduroy comforter and sat up in this fog of second-guessing .

I'm blaming everything on lack of sleep.

Went out to dinner with my roommate and took a walk around Cooperstown, which was a welcome respite from thinking about work and life away from home entirely too much. Things will be better in the morning..

Don't Look Back

Since mentioning it in my blog, a couple people have asked me about the Orpheus myth. I have to say, it surprises me a little. I've known about Orpheus as long as I can remember. New York City Ballet's symbol was Orpheus' lyre for a long time, and I loved pictures of various dancers in the strange bulbous costumes, telling the story of the tragic musician.

So, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, following is my rendition of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

Orpheus was the son of a mortal and the muse, Calliope. He was a gifted musician who was given a lyre by the god, Apollo, and he enchanted people with his incredible singing and playing. He rode with the Argonauts as a musician so that his soothing music would calm the sirens while they were at sea. He was that good..

Orpheus fell in love with a woman named Eurydice. On the day of the their marriage, she was walking with her bridemaids and was bit on the foot by a viper, killing her instantly. Orpheus was grief-stricken and felt like he couldn't go on without her. He pleaded with the gods of the Underworld to let him into hell so that he could bring back his wife.

By playing his lyre and singing beautifully, the Furies let him past the gates of hell and he implored to Pluto to let Eurydice live. Pluto, like everyone else, was enchanted by Orpheus' exceptional musicianship and agreed to let him have Eurydice again - on one condition. He must walk in front of Eurydice as they climb the path out of hell and MUST NOT look at her until they are back on earth or she will again fall dead, never to be returned.

Orpheus agreed and he and Eurydice began their path back to earth. About half way along the path, Orpheus doubted his faith, scared that Eurydice, who was painfully quiet, was no longer behind him. He turned to make sure she was there and the moment he laid eyes on her, she fell dead before him, never to return to earth.

Terrifying.

Now, Gluck's version (of which we are doing the Berlioz version, rewritten in the 1800's for a French audience), has a happy ending, which is common in the age which it was written (the Age of Enlightenment). In this version, written through a Christian lens, the god of love sees Orpheus weeping after he kills Eurydice a second time, and the god is so touched that he brings Eurydice back to life for Orpheus, feeling that he'd suffered enough.

Personally, I like the sad ending. It packs more of a moral punch and gives us more to think about in the midst of our shock and weeping.

And that's the end of my story for now.

One Week Down...

I just finished my sixth day of rehearsals at Glimmerglass Opera for the Gluck/Berlioz "Orphee," directed by Lillian Groag and conducted by Julian Wachner. We've staged approximately half of the opera at this point and I'm looking forward to a day without Gluck tomorrow.

Not a day without opera, mind you. Lillian and I are also doing "Agrippina" together at New York City Opera in September, and so we are spending the day in planning mode tomorrow followed by a big dinner which we shopped for after rehearsals today. Hard work is no problem at all as long as it's compensated with good food and better conversation.

The picture is me in the rehearsal hall at Richfield Springs Central School after a long day. My director, choreographer, stage manager and ASMs are in the back discussing the process.

The process is often the best part.

Passages

Rehearsals started today for the Gluck/Berlioz "Orphee" in Richfield Springs, New York. I've had incredible housing luck here this year. I am exactly two blocks away from the rehearsal hall. So, while many people have to drive upwards of half an hour to get to staging rehearsals, I left my house at 9:25 to get there by 9:30.

We're rehearsing in a school that is still in session. We're sequestered to a gym in the back of the behemoth of a building. It's a little echo-y, a little stuffy and has some noisy fans and loud, jarring tones that sound through the p.a. system every 40 or so minutes to announce the end of a period, but it's a sunny room with plenty of room for all of us as well as a few set pieces and a giant table of props, so I'm not complaining.

This is a small show in comparison to most that I've worked on. We have three principal characters and one soloist plus two dancers and 22 chorus members. The run time is not even two hours and the set is relatively simple in its changes and footprint. Despite, it's got some tough ideas rolling around inside of it and we began exploring those today.

Lillian, the director, was talking today about the fact that the Orpheus myth is about how we deal with death (untimely death especially) and the ideas of resurrection and redemption, as well as a play between the ideas that art conquers all (even death) and art is futile. These aren't little ideas, especially that realization of our mortality. Yesterday she gave a terrific speech to the cast and crew about the big ideas behind this show. When we got to the Gates of Hades, she described the feeling behind the Furies as "that moment at 4 in the morning when you wake up in terror because you realize you're going to die." She asked, rhetorically, if anyone had ever woken up with that realization and felt the terror that goes along with it. You could see faces in the crowd that knew; I recognized them as my own.

It's those moments when I wake up in the night, fearful of my fate, when I understand why people embrace religion. It's that moment of waking up, sweaty and shaking, out of a nightmare when you understand how the Orpheus myth has persisted for so long. Wouldn't we all like to be able to pull lost loved ones out of the abyss just by performing beautifully. The sadness is that we all have at least one flaw that makes us human enough to disallow passage to wherever souls end up...terrifying thoughts.

Death scares the hell out of me. Not all the time, mind you. I spend my days trying to continually make my life worth living. To me it's the only way to make it all okay. This doesn't stop me from lying awake sometimes and wondering where it all goes. How all of the hard work, sweat, laughter, sex, crying, triumph, chatter and tension could just disappear into the ether at the whims of the universe.

I have a feeling that an entire summer of being surrounded by retellings of the Orpheus myth, the ultimate story of death, mourning and afterlife, is going to keep this issue in the open. What a strange three months this will be.

Back in the Sticks

This was me this afternoon on the floor of the Delta Terminal at JFK International Airport. My Balducci's dinner as people stepped over me to crowd into their numerous commuter flights all leaving out of the same gate.

I've never seen so much mayhem. Thank god I had a good book and my Pom Blackberry Tea and a little Caprese...

Though it did get worse. I was on the smallest prop plane in the history of commercial prop planes, and after landing in Albany, I found out that they removed one of my bags from the hold for weight restrictions. As of right now at 11:32 in the evening, they cannot find said bag and I have no underwear, one pair of pants a few t-shirts and some flip flops to wear to my first day on the job (no deoderant, no toothpaste...) Delta airlines was all very nonchalant about the whole thing as if this happens all the time. They told me that bags get removed all the time without the customer being told and it would probably show up on the next flight from JFK in five hours . . . "we'll bring it to you."

Cold comfort when I have nothing to change into and no tennis shoes (and no underwear for god sakes). Ah well, it's the price you pay for air travel. This isn't the first time my bags have been lost to the black hole of checked luggage. Wanna take bets on how long it will take to recover?

So, the picture above is where I was yesterday. With my husband on Coronado Island, enjoying a birthday dinner at Peohe's. This pic was taken with my brand new camera - a gift from John. It was the most perfect day; a great way to end a month together. I see him again in six weeks.

Okay. Bed. More on my crazy old-fashioned house and life in Richfield Springs soon. (This year I have high speed internet in my HOUSE and can WALK to a convenience store!!!)