Professional Eyeball

That's what I am right now, an observer. All of my practical work is done. I've gone through all of my final rehearsals, given my last notes, done my last brush-up.

Tonight I will put on a suit, get a ride to the new Cherry Valley High School, and sit in the auditorium to watch the short and sweet Scenes Program with bits and pieces from the current operas, next years operas and some recital superlatives.

Thursday afternoon I will put on a suit, get a ride to the Otesaga Hotel, and watch Brian and Katie give their recitals. I coached Brian and staged a piece for Katie and Brian together - Britten's Canticle #2, a gorgeous narrative of Abraham and Isaac's journey to the sacrafice. The picture is of my two singers working musically through the piece at Grace Episcopal Church in Cherry Valley. All of our rehearsals sat early in the process, so my work is done. It's all about the two of them and Leesa, their pianist, now.

After that I have a Saturday night "Orphee" to watch and a closing matinee the following Tuesday. I won't watch the last show. I never do. I sit backstage and watch the action behind the scenes. I like to watch it wrap up from the inside.

The good part of being finished with my practical work is that I have time to work on other upcoming projects. I feel like I've put a lot of things aside while working on scenes and recitals. Finally I can take a week to catch up and prepare myself for the deluge ahead.

Out of Context

I rehearsed scenes today for a program that the Young Artists do to wrap up the summer. All of the staff directors get a little chunk of scenes to direct in a madcap amount of time and then they are placed on a spare stage as a veritable smorgasbord of operatic morsels. The program we're doing this summer contains scenes from the operas we're doing this season, scenes from the operas Glimmerglass is doing next season, and a few things thrown into the mix for good measure.

The interesting thing about scenes programs is that each scene is presented as its own little mini-narrative. Very rarely is there a through-line between scenes and if there is it's generally contrived at best. Like monologues in an audition process, scenes can be presented in two ways. The first is to do it very true-to-form, taking for granted that the audience knows the opera from which the scene has emerged and will understand what's come before and what will come after. The second way is to come into the scene understanding the opera and characters in full but seeing the scene itself as its own little whole. In other words, giving the scene its own distinct beginning, middle and end so that it easily stands on its own regardless of backstory or looming foreshadow.

I much prefer the latter version of scene work because I think it allows me and the singers more creative freedom as we try to figure out these character's motivations in their own private scene hell (appropriate because I'm working only on chunks of Orpheus operas). For example, the scene I'm doing with my Gluck/Berlioz covers is a duet between Orpheus and Eurydice immediately before he looks at her and she drops dead a second time. The duet begins with him urging her to follow him and ends with her screaming one last murderous epitaph in his direction. We are given no set-up or backstory. If we didn't already know the story we would have no idea that they were clamoring out of the Underworld and that he couldn't look at her. We are also not graced with a typical ending to anything Orpheus-related. For all intents and purposes, Eurydice leaves and Orpheus never gets the chance to turn around and kill her.

So I've used this in our retelling of this scene from the opera. I've kept the staging nearly the same but given them intent to play from. When you look at the text of this duet, this could be any horrid middle-of-the-night argument between lovers. He's woken her up from a deep sleep in some sort of distress, she wants to know what the problem is, he refuses to tell her, she blows her top and eventually leaves. We can all see and understand these motivations and in that my two singers can create a complete story out of a truncated tidbit of a larger work.

I actually kind of like the exercise of pulling these pieces out of their construct. It forces you to see the timelessness of the words and the full story inside each beat of the opera.

My second duet is a love duet between Orpheus and Eurydice from Haydn's "L'Anima Del Filosofo." This piece is being performed this season but in a concert version so there are no preconceived notions of staging. I had a lot of trouble with this piece when I first began to look at it because, while it is a lovely duet, it's ten minutes of "I love you, you're my treasure, oh darling we shall never be separated," and I started my work on this at a complete loss as to how to make it interesting as a stand-alone.

The answer, as is so often the case, was in the question (I hope). I've pulled the piece apart for these two singers and given it meaning beyond its operatic storyline. We've messed with time a little, played with the notion of love beyond death, and given a physicality to the music that portrays a story far beyond the lyrics (apropos to but not dependent on the Orpheus myth as well). We worked for two hours today on this 10-minute piece and I think we've got something juicy enough to play. It was wonderful to allow two singers to discover work and worth inside a piece that, generally, is all about two people simply staring into each other's eyes.

For all of my frustrations and sometimes hatred towards the freelance gypsy lifestyle that I lead, I love my job.

Don't get me wrong...I'm terrified of my job. I throw myself into huge nervous frenzies about getting my point across, crossing over into the land of the trite and presenting something that is truly, truly worth seeing, but I think that's okay. It's part of adoring the art form that means I always want to do it justice with my contribution.

It's accepting that My output won't always be aces that proves to be the most difficult thing. It's all learning: the triumphs and the failures. You have to learn to love both.

Two More Weeks

I've begun a countdown. That's not a good sign.

Or maybe it is. It means I haven't come to like this place so much that I prefer it to my home and husband and cats.

I'm actually working a lot. I've coached several young artists on thier recital material and am staging a couple of them in some various scenes. It's good to have some sort of creative work to look forward to every day.

In the rest of my time I'm uploading countless photos to Flickr. I've taken nearly 3000 pictures with my birthday camera. It's truly become a hobby outside of my stage work. I've been trying to discover everything I can about this camera - using the macro feature, playing inside the manual mode, testing how clear the digital zoom is... John says that once I've mastered my G7 then I'll be ready to move on to a single lens reflex. So much of my free time (and sometimes my work time) consists of me looking around to find good things to photograph. I've begun to notice the light more, to look at detail on flowers and furniture, and to see framing in my mind wherever I am. It's not an obsession. Yet.

I've also subscribed to the podcast "Opera Now!" and am catching up by listening to some of their past shows. It's a few singers out of Chicago and their banter is quite entertaining. Smart too. Their last show featured a conversation about both Monteverdi and Regietheater (or what is commonly called "Eurotrash") stagings of traditional works. Everything about opera seems relevant to me right now, but I think it's because I am so entrenched in the art form by being out here for three months.

I had a matinee this afternoon and then ran off, on a complete whim, to Glimmerglass State Park. I don't know what made my car turn right instead of left at Highway 20. Perhaps it was the impeccable weather or some sort of headspace that I wasn't conscious of. Perhaps it was the realization that I am losing my mobility on Monday. Whatever it was, I found myself turning into the park 15 minutes later and shelling over a bit of cash to park near the lake. I found a picnic table under a tree that was lazily swaying out over the lake, sat down and wrote in my journal for a while.

Sometimes solitude is magnificent.

Endless Possibilities

We opened. I know I mentioned this in the last post, but it's such a great feeling. Read a really nice review of our little show here. Lillian and I enjoyed champagne on the lawn in the middle of the afternoon. It was a matinee opening, which I find a little strange. The only other place I've ever opened a show in the afternoon was at NYCO, and I found that a little weird as well. Opening nights should be exactly that. . . nights. As exciting as it was to get the Gluck open, there was something a little anticlimactic about opening the show as the sun leaked through the windows and under the doors. This is not to mention the fact that Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld," which had many of our chorus members in it (including Juliet Petrus, the young artist who went on in place of a sick Jill Gardner as the leading role), opened the night before. Our chorus was tired but still riding on the adrenalin of a great season opener, so they rallied to put on a beautiful show.

I understand the reasoning behind an evening opener followed by a matinee opener the next day. Cooperstown is a little weekender resort town for people from the city. Tickets sales are much stronger when people can take in two shows over the weekend and still be back in the city by Sunday night. It's always lovely to drive into the theater lot and see tons of couples and families having picnics on the lawn. Sometimes it makes me wish I was only an audience member.

A word about Juliet Petrus. She went on at the last minute as Eurydice in "Orpheus in the Underworld." She was pulled out of a Monteverdi rehearsal at noon to go into emergency rehearsals and wig/costume fittings. Her advantage was that she'd done the role before, though not in this translation. But she knew the music and understood the intent. This is the reason that good covers are so important. Covers going on in place of principals is certainly not the norm, but it's not completely unusual. It's a wonderful opportunity for the young singer who jumps in to save the day, but is not all fun and games. I can't imagine the nerves that took hold as she left her rehearsal that afternoon and started cramming for a test (a sweaty, critic-filled, completely public test). It's the potential big break that everyone wants to be extremely prepared for but no one really wants.

I wasn't going to go to the opening since I'd seen the final dress, but as soon as I heard the news about Juliet I wanted to be there to support her. It was great to be in an opening night audience as it was...and the whole company came out to cheer her on to get her through her nerves. She looked terrific. I was so proud of her. She's not the first young singer I've seen go on as a cover for an opening (Ellie Dehn jumping in as the Countess in "Figaro" at Opera Pacific comes to mind), but the nerves and possibility is always overwhelming and puts me in a very maternal place about the singers I work with every day.


Speaking of covers, I had my own cover run for the Gluck/Berlioz on Monday. I was a nervous wreck for them (and myself, having staged them into the piece in a relatively short amount of time), and tried to steel myself by taking a few moments of silence and breath. It was my last bit of business besides minding the show for about a month. They (my covers) were spectacular. Katie Calcamuggio, my Orpheus cover, stopped the show after her bravura aria, "Amour Viens." People were screaming and stomping and I imagined her shaking behind the upstage wall the same way I was shaking and tearing up in the corner of the audience. I was living vicariously. I woke up on Tuesday morning and looked at my calendar, realizing the endless possibilites that lay before me. My husband is coming in next week, there are so many things I want to see and I have the time to actually finish books I've been reading, work on projects I've set aside and perhaps even be a little domestic. It's rare to look ahead to nothing. I think it almost makes me more uptight because I start trying to cram in too much.



So, for the time being I'm trying to take each day as it comes, trying not to push too much into each day, and trying to take in the country and experiences around me. For instance, I went and saw the midnight premiere of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" in Oneonta with a bunch of Glimmerglass-ites last night. It was packed and full of sweaty, noisy teenagers shoving in popcorn and junior mints, and I had a fabulous time. This morning I woke up without an alarm, listened to a spectaular lecture by Arun Ghandi on NPR about his grandfather's teachings, did a little housework and drove to the theater to pick up the scenes I'm doing next month. On the way I saw the little gal above, chomping away at the grass in that field. I took the time to stop and watch her, say hello when she lifted her head.

I have two more glorious days like this before our next show.

Free At Last!

No writing for a while. We've been in production week. It's unbelievable how busy I get when we're about to open a show...if I'm not working, then I'm thinking about working or preparing to work. We opened yesterday afternoon to a very appreciative house and we had a cover run for our three amazing covers at Richfield Springs Central School this evening. It was my last responsibility beyond maintaining the show for several weeks.

It's amazing to look ahead and see free time. Free time to visit with my husband who arrives next week. Free time to work on the other irons I have sitting in the coals. Free time to relax and regroup for the next deluge which will come in the form of a Scenes program at the end of the Festival season. Right now I'm exhausted and crashing pretty hard, as I usually do once we open. It's time to sleep.

The picture is of our intrepid coach and accompanist, Leesa Dahl, who just played the entire opera straight through for our cover run this evening. I've snapped several shots of her throughout this rehearsal period and she always jokes with me, saying, "Oh great. That's going to end up on your blog tomorrow isn't it?" So the answer for this shot, Leesa peeking out from the pit like Kilroy during a scene shift rehearsal, is "Yep!" This is for you Leesa.

To bed...

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.

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.

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.