The Show Must Go On!

We had our second-to-last show on Saturday night. The weather was unbelievably bad. About an hour before the downbeat we experienced a massive severe thunderstorm. Many of us were standing on the porch to the wardrobe house, watching the lightning get bigger and listening to the growling thunder. In one fell swoop the sky opened up, the wind picked up and we were caught in a deluge. The trees seemed to touch the ground as they were blown this way and that. Later driving home there were branches and full trees all over the roads. It was that bad. You can see in this first picture that the air was a strange color. It's that greenish haze that settles in when the air is ionized. It's tornado weather.

I used to be terrified of storms to the point that I would cause bodily harm to those who attempted to change channels from the Weather Channel if a dark cloud appeared in the sky. I would hide in the corner of the basement and listen to weather reports on repeat until I was satisfied that no danger was in sight. I'm not like that anymore. Myself and the cast and crew stood in the doorway and watched the rain and hail and lightning and thunder with glee. The electricity went off and we squealed with delight in the late-afternoon shadow.

The problem is that the electricity didn't come back on. Oh sure, the theater has emergency generators that kicked in, but it's not enough power to run a show. As we got closer and closer to showtime, the powers-that-be became nervous that we wouldn't be able to perform. No power, no stage lights, no monitors, no calls, no performance.
Eventually a decision was made, unprecedented in my meager experience (and many of the others' as we began to talk) that we would present the opera in a concert version for at least the first act. All of the generator power was channeled to light up the pit and send a few flood lights both onto the stage apron and into the audience for people to see. Everyone was in costume so we would keep it that way, but chairs would be set up on the stage and the chorus would sit in two rows with principals along the side. The principals would have free range of the stage apron while they were singing and the chorus would simply stand when needed and sit quietly when they would normally be off stage.

As soon as the decision was made, everyone kicked into high gear. There was this sense of adrenalin coming from the unknown. We were going to give a concert in veritable darkness, no monitors, no stage lights, barely enough light to get on stage and sit. There was no way to make backstage announcements, so everyone gathered in the green room to wait for the stage manager to tell us what was happening. My two dancers were asking if they even needed to be there. I told them to hang around until intermission because if the electricity came back on, we would do the fully staged version of Act II. (which didn't happen).

This is why I love live theater. It's these crazy moments of improvisation that make my job amazing. Everyone who works in the performing arts has to be so incredibly adaptable because life is uncertainty and theater is risky. I stood in the relative darkness of the backstage area and watched the chorus climb into their seats (the second photo). The nerves were palpable. Several singers had expressed memory nerves because their muscle memory had so closely equated what they were singing with what they were doing. There's that moment of worry that they wouldn't be able to remember the words and order if they weren't handling props or doing the movement they'd executed so many times. They weren't sure what the experience would be to sit on stage for the entire show.
We made it through beautifully. Maestro Wachner indicated to the chorus when they should stand or sit and the principals did a less kinetic version of their staging (sans props and large set pieces). When we got to intermission, Michael McCleod, our artistic director, came on stage to announce that we would continue straight through since there were still no lights and the rain was so heavy that intermission would be difficult to achieve with no shelter out of the theater. That's a photo of him cupping his hands to amplify his voice up to the balcony. The assistant stage managers brought bottles of water out to the chorus since they wouldn't have a chance to leave the stage.

And so we persisted. My Orpheus and Eurydice still did their second death sequence, which was actually pretty spectacular in the low light with the chorus getting broken up behind them. I sat in a box on the right side of the house with the assistant conducter and another young artist. I was nervous and grinning and watching every split second decision made by each principal as they decided how to stage themselves and how far into the blocking they could go with this improper, truncated space.

The ovation was deafening, far outweighing the pouring rainstorm and thunder outside. Our audience went with the changes completely. We gave them everything we had.

I went backstage, thrust into blackness, afterwards to congratulate. Singers were in their blackened dressing rooms trying to change as quickly as possible. The dark air was punctuated by little blue lights held in the teeth of wig and makeup crew as they rapidly pulled hair pins out of wigs and tried to light pathways up and down stairs. It was like a secret society...

The show must go on, truly. With each trial that presents itself in this little world of theater and art, I slowly discover what me and my colleagues are capable of dealing with and achieving.

Three more days until the end of this adventure. Our final show is on Tuesday. Hopefully with full power.

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.

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.

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.

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.