Final stretch for Pirates!

Well, I've been busy for the last couple of days with music rehearsals for the Voices in Residence, to get ready for our first staging rehearsal tomorrow, but we are also in the final couple of days of rehearsal for Pirates before we open on Wednesday the 15th. That's soon! I can't believe how quickly this show has been put together - the pace in a professional company is so much faster than the pace of a grad school production! We spent months putting together a show when I was in school, but this we will have done in under three weeks! To be fair, not all shows can be done in that amount of time (this one is under two hours long), but it's still pretty fast.

We have been rehearsing in the Orpheum theater on the finished set since Tuesday. It's a bit of a luxury to be in so early! Last night we had the first work-through of the entire show, and then tomorrow night is our first dress rehearsal. That one will be with piano, while Sunday and Monday nights we do the whole thing over again with orchestra. Then Tuesday is off, and we open Wednesday!

Tonight we have the Sitzprobe, which is our first sing-through the show with orchestra. Sitzprobe literally means "seat-rehearse" in German. We won't actually be sitting, though, because our Maestro, Joe Illick, thinks we would be better served making tonight a Wandelprobe. That translates as "change-rehearse" - we will be walking through our staging (changing or shifting, you could say) as we sing, so that the Maestro can make sure everything sounds as it should from the location the singer happens to be in during a specific musical moment.

I love the Sitzprobe (or Wandelprobe, as the case may be!), because it's the first chance to sing the show with orchestra instead of piano. You finally get to hear all the colors of the instrumentation in the theater, which is exciting after rehearsing for these eleven or twelve days with piano.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting here blogging from the theater after my wig-fitting. Wouldn't you know it, the wig I'm wearing is exactly the color of my actual hair? But the wig will be styled and ready to go every day without me having to sit in a chair for an hour having it done (and can you imagine how that would work with two makeup/hair people for fourteen women?).

Ooh! One more thing for today: The Omaha Opera Guild runs a little canteen backstage in the dressing room area during the times we rehearse in the theater. It's really pretty great: they have sandwiches, drinks, frozen fruit cups, carrot sticks, cake and bars, and even deviled eggs. Seriously - the deviled eggs cost a quarter, and the sandwiches are only two bucks. They even let you run a tab! (Mine is up to seventy-five cents right now, in case you wondered.) I hate to use this word one more time, but it's super cute, and actually really handy. Speaking of which, I hope they show up soon...