Country Mouse In New York, Vol. I: Oh Fuck, Which Fork Do I Use?

For an audition for a summer program, I went to New York last weekend.  I’d never been to NYC before, so I was excited.  It was a good excuse to figure out the NY subway system, see Manhattan, and enjoy the opportunity to be an adult in a big city.

I ended up taking the train because it was cheaper than flying.  Unfortunately, it also took like 12 hours longer.  Don’t get me wrong, I loved that the train went through beautiful Pennsylvania countryside and adorable little towns.  But by the end of it I was tired, frazzled and probably didn’t smell very good, and I had a terrible headache.  The only huge points I can give it is that though it was a train ride, we did not encounter dementors.  Well done, Amtrak.

Marriage of Figaro, Volume III: It Finally Ends. And We Survive. Mostly.

Le Nozze di Figaro was a scathing reproof of the hypocritical, hedonistic nobility that ran Europe in Mozart’s day.  It was meant to shock the audience and make them uncomfortable, as it was written to entertain the very people it sought to criticize.  It was based, of course, on the revolutionary plays by Beaumarchais.  It’s a very political story, one that fired up the revolutionaries in the late 18th century.
 

In a small Midwestern town, this drama is somewhat lost on us today.  But The Nose Of Figaro is pretty epic.  The music is LURVE.  The overture is badass.  Happily, since I played for act 1, I was sitting onstage draped in cheap blue cotton and moldy lace when it started, I could watch the orchestra sex through the entire thing.  SO DAMN GOOD.

(The overture is famous.  Yes, you've heard it.  It goes noodle-oodle-oo, noodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle noodle-oodle-oo, noodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle, noodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oodle-oo (wagga-wagga-wagga) doooooo, doo doo-doo-doo-doo dooooooo, doo doo-doo-doo-doo BAHHHHHHHHHHHH, DAHHHHHHHHHHH, DAH-DAH, BAH DAHHHH DAH-DAH, BAH DAHHHH DAH-DAH, DAH, DAH, DAH, DAH.  And so on.)

Shirtless Opera Singers & Barihunks: I Support These.

Two places to check for musical mancandy.

Shirtless Opera Singers:  Exactly what it sounds like.  Pretty, non-shirt-wearing men to look at.  And at least one instance of (gasp!) nudity.

Barihunks:  Hot baritones.  Also includes their info and sometimes where/when you can see them be sexy perform.

Marriage of Figaro, Volume II: Oh God, It Continues

This entire opera was a study in just how poorly something could be run and still somehow work.  Dr. Jerome’s a wonderful singer, and I’m sure he’s had a wonderful career.  But dear God in holy heaven, the man is incompetent.  He almost never ran the music in rehearsal.  He dragged endlessly, inefficiently through staging rehearsals till I wanted to scream.  And I am Irish and German, so imagine how much patience is encoded into my genes to begin with.

In a more problematic sense, he let musical stuff slide.  Singers were making up recitative lines and he wasn’t catching it.  Rhythms were sloppy and he didn’t catch them.  I had to correct some of them myself.  And the biggest problem here is that he wasn’t the musical director.  Dr. Beauregard was.  Dr. Jerome was the stage director.  So letting Dr. J. run the music in his sloppy way was not a good segue into Dr. B, the paragon of precision and accuracy.  Not good bedfellows (obviously, because Dr. B and I are bedfellows.  Duh).

Big rehearsals together were fascinating.  Dr. Jerome acted like he was in charge sometimes…again, false; the Maestro is completely in charge in opera…and one night, it actually almost exploded.

Marriage of Figaro, Volume I: It Begins

Senior year, spring opera = Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro.  Yum.  Mozart FTW.

I was already on deck as rehearsal accompanist (at our school, the orchestra plays the opera every other year, and this was an orchestra year).  I wheedled Dr. Jerome into letting me play harpsichord for it, completely disregarding the fact that I don’t actually play the harpsichord.  Minor detail.  He didn’t need to know.  And he wanted to put the harpsichord onstage, which ROCKED.  WIN.

The costume was the first hurdle.  Dr. Jerome had initially talked about putting me in a male costume for the show, like the girl who played Cherubino.  I didn’t want to dress like a boy (come on, it’s my first opera “role.”  I want boobs).  So I asked him if I could dress as a girl.  He said OK.  I went to be fitted for my costume, explained the whole thing to the costume woman (she is a scary little crone), who said OK, whatever, and measured me.  A few weeks later, when we went to try on costumes, I popped in the dressing room and she started to pull out kneebreeches and a vest.  I was all Fuck What?  And had to explain AGAIN that I was to be dressed as a girl.  She looked dumbfounded.   Apparently my talking to both her and the artistic director had had absolutely no effect.  How foolish of me to expect it would.