Opera and Baseball

Opera first. Brian Thorsett and Katie Calcamuggio had their recitals at the Otesaga Hotel yesterday afternoon. These were the two young singers for whom I staged a Britten Canticle. I felt more involved in this rectial than I did for the others because I had such a stake in the staging and presentation. It was kind of fabulous to be so entrenched.

The recitals went very well. I sat in one of the deep, bright windowsills along the back wall and continued to wipe my palms on my pants as they became sweaty through the hour and a half of music. As always, I felt like a mother hen watching and crossing my fingers that everything went well. I was so proud of them at the end. They had a lovely reception with hoots and hollers and an endless receiving line of hugs, photos and cheering outside of the hall - very well deserved. Brian tried to get me to come up and bow with them and I just didn't feel right. I blew them kisses from the back of the house - my contribution seemed small and I was more than happy to give them that moment. My need for fame and recognition has dissipated as I've gotten older. I think it's when it's not even offered that I become sore about it.

The recital was the last big moment I have here. From now until Wednesday it's only two more shows. One has a chorus member missing but we've solved most of the problems surrounding that and so I think it will be minimal maneuvering to make it all work.

Home is looming large and lovely.

Now baseball. Earlier in the day I finally succumbed to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. I've been here two summers and never gone and I'm actually really glad that my roommate suggested it. I forget how much baseball figures into every Midwestern American life. I knew more names than I thought, was fascinated by the history and had many flashbacks of my brother's Little League games, Jim Eisenreich signing baseballs at the Royals field, beer and hotdogs at Wrigley Field and spending an entire summer in Aspen watching Braves games with my bunhead roommate, Maggie.

Particularly fascinating were the Negro League exhibit, the Women in Baseball exhibit and the little pass-through room on Babe Ruth, who is so mythic at this point that he exists for many of the younger generations as a Paul Bunyan-esque creature. And I think that was what was so fascinating about the museum itself. Baseball persists because it is entrenched in myth and "whopper" stories that kids still hear and tell. Whether fans or not, most people have heard of Shoeless Joe, Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig and so many others. Not many other American sports have that kind of cultural spread.

A worthwhile morning.

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..

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.

Box o' Music

I picked up, literally, a box of scores the other day from San Diego Opera. A whole season's worth of music from "Aida" to "Tannhäuser." It was interesting to see them all kind of dumped in a box - heavy and a bit ungainly - as I lugged it out to my car and thought about when I was actually going to start working on these.

Right now I'm working on "Agrippina," the opera I'm staging for Lillian Groag at City Opera in September. I know this piece like the back of my hand but the set I've worked on is different than the set for New York, and so it takes more preparation than if I was walking into the exact same scenario. Most of the concept is the same, but entrances and exits have switched around and there are some gags, etc. that can't be executed with this scenery. It's a slow process of comparison, but I am armed with paperwork and video galore, so it will eventually come together.

Gluck's "Orphée," which I'm actually beginning sooner than the rest of these operas, is the easiest to prepare because it's never been done before. I've done as much on this score as I can at this juncture. I have a relatively detailed scene breakdown, I've highlighted all of the text, I've listened to the opera 4000 times and I've put together a preliminary schedule. Everything else will have to wait until I'm in rehearsals next week. I leave for Cooperstown on Sunday.

There are so many other things I'd like to work on right now, but my opera preparation seems to dominate my time. I have, of course, become somewhat obsessed with Flickr, so that's taken up the rest of my free time, and in the middle we have quality time with John and the cats.

Sunday morning is a backwards dive off of the high dive into a pool I've never seen before. I love that moment and it scares the crap out of me every time. All I can assume is that the pool has water, though I have no idea how deep or what temperature.

Half of Me..

I just boxed up part of my life and entrusted it to UPS for a week. It should arrive in Cooperstown on Tuesday and as soon as I open it up I'll be a little more at home in a foreign land. Every time I send a package off into the ether, I worry that it will never reappear. I track it obsessively.

I think because of my small trip to the UPS Store, I was in a terrible mood the rest of the day. I snapped at John and shuffled around grumbling to myself.

Acutally, now that I think about it, I had other reasons to be in a terrible mood. I woke up and stepped off the side of the bed onto a pair of jeans I'd left on the ground, which is not the bad part. It seems that Lucius didn't quite make it to the litterbox last night. Immediately after, I realized as he climbed onto the couch that he's terrible at hygiene generally...

I love my cat, but he seems to have a knack for making me worry or curse to myself. I try to laugh myself out of it by giving him nicknames like "poo tail" but deep down it immediately puts me on edge about his health.

I'm trying to enjoy my last few days with John before I leave, but nerves and stress seems to keep getting in the way.