Concert with the Omaha Symphony, and VOTE

So, this is my name on the door of my very own personal dressing room backstage:



This is the first time I've had my name on the door without having to share! It's exciting, people! The occasion for this was our Choral Collaborative Concert with the Omaha Symphony on Sunday night. This is an annual event bringing together the Omaha Symphony and members of the Opera Omaha Chorus with several area high school choirs. The choirs get to work with conductor Ernest Richardson and OO music director J. Gawf during the rehearsal process, and then they get to perform with the Symphony and the Opera Chorus in the Symphony's beautiful new concert hall, the Holland Center. The four Voices in Residence were the soloists for the concert: on the first half, I sang Poulenc's Gloria with four of the choirs, and then on the second half, all four of us sang opera excerpts and solos with the other three choirs.

The concert went extremely well, and the 2000-seat house was full. Chandler, my parents, my aunt, my sister and brother-in-law, Chandler's dad and stepmom, two of their friends, and several of my girlfriends from Des Moines and Pella all came to hear the performance. It was fantastic! And did I mention how well the concert went?

Here I am after the concert with Chandler:


It was an extremely busy weekend, and I didn't get to see any of those friends or much of the family I had visiting, because I had three hours of dress rehearsal on Saturday, then a performance in a Barnes & Noble in the afternoon, and then another four-hour dress rehearsal Sunday afternoon before the performance. Now, this is not ideal, because all that rehearsal can wear out your voice and your body - it's really exhausting before a big performance. But, it was necessary to rehearse all the choirs together with the orchestra, and that was the only time. This is when you have to be really smart about your singing and save as much energy as you can for the performance even while singing enough to check balance with the orchestra in the hall. Poor Sarah had a terrible cold and still had to do everything we had to do - THAT is when your professionalism is really tested, and she rocked it!

Of course, then we went right back into two school programs yesterday - we were a bit tired, but we have today off. I hope you have all voted and realize how blessed we are to have this right! I'm realizing that more strongly than ever today, because I've been disenfranchised: I requested my absentee ballot a month ago, it didn't come, I called about it and the MN Election board said they would send another, but that never came either. I'm lodging a complaint, because THAT is ridiculous. So, yeah, I'm glad I caucused for my candidate and donated to his campaign, but I don't even get to vote today. I think this will really impact the way I feel about the importance of voting for the rest of my life - so, to all of you who CAN, get out the vote today!

Choral Collaborative Concert this weekend!

I've been back for several days now, but the audition went well. Not great, but fairly well. There are so many variables that go into these things - but I'm not going to write about the torture that is the audition process today, because I don't want to bring you all down. Another time! I will say, however, that spending 20 out of 34 consecutive hours in airports and airplanes for a five-minute audition on your day off is saaaaad.

On the upside, I did get to eat a homemade empanada after my audition.

Anyway, for the past couple of days we have been preparing for the Choral Collaborative Concert, in addition to our education outreach schedule. This concert is an annual collaboration between several area high school choirs, the Omaha Symphony, and Opera Omaha. This year, the first half of the concert features four choirs in Poulenc's Gloria, with yours truly as the soprano soloist. I looooooove this piece of music, people - if you don't know it, it's worth looking for a recording. This is the one I own and enjoy.

The second half of the concert features three more choirs and all four of the Voices in Residence in various opera excerpts. There are a couple of things from the current Opera Omaha season (from Pirates and Boheme), as well as several familiar crowd-pleasers (the Hebrew slave chorus from Nabucco, the Pearl Fishers duet, Brindisi from Traviata, and "Sing to Love" from Fledermaus to name a few). I should also mention that twelve Opera Omaha chorus members join the high school choirs in both parts of the concert, so this is a collaboration and educational experience in many ways. The concert concludes with all the choirs and soloists singing the Easter Hymn from Cavalleria Rusticana.

I think I've said it before, but I love working with high school students because teenagers don't know yet what they should or shouldn't be able to do - they try anything, and as a group, they can be pretty fearless. It's amazing to hear how well they know this music. Of course there are things they still need to learn and changes to make during rehearsals, but they do it really quickly and well. This is going to be such a fun show! I'm going to have to keep reminding myself of that throughout the many hours of dress rehearsal on Saturday and Sunday (yes, dress rehearsal on the day of the show = insane). But the product will make it all worthwhile!

Opening night!

Pictures will definitely come tomorrow. I tried to take some at our final dress rehearsal on Monday, but they weren't great. Tonight is the night!

Dress rehearsal went super well, by the way. The whole cast is really at the stage of needing an audience. We did have a small invited audience on Monday, but they didn't seem to feel allowed to clap or laugh or respond, so it felt really flat. Advice to audiences: ALWAYS clap or laugh when you feel you want to. The performers need it, and will continue on even more energized! Tonight will be different, though, because it's opening night, and I'm told it's always very well attended in Omaha. Whee!

Okay, so yesterday was our "day off" for the week. I put that in quotations because it did not feel like a day off AT ALL. But, you all know how that goes in real life - weekends are always full of errands and work parties, right? Right? Yes. Okay, then.

Meanwhile, here is something funny: the music world is full of cheek kisses, which cracks me up, coming from my straight-laced Midwestern small town full of extra straight-laced Dutch people where nobody would ever kiss an acquaintance on the cheek, much less a coworker of three weeks. But EVERY goodbye with these people, particularly the ones who have been in the business for a long time, involves a cheek kiss and a hug. Ah, performers - boundaries disappear quickly. It's nice, actually, because we do spend a lot of hours together in a short span of time.

I'm drinking coffee right now and need to get back to learning some music for the short rehearsal I have with the other Voices in Residence before our call at the theater, so I'll wrap things up with this promise: pictures next time!

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...

More about rehearsal, and a little name-dropping

I'm getting a late start today, so this probably won't be long, but I wanted to write something!

Yesterday was full and BUSY! The four Voices in Residence had to go help rehearse one of the high school choirs for our Choral Collaborative Concert with Omaha Symphony conductor Ernest Richardson. We worked a bit on Poulenc's Gloria, in which I'm singing the soprano solo. We didn't get even halfway through, though, because the class period was too short. The kids worked hard and seemed excited, so I think the next rehearsal will be great. I forget how light adolescent voices are, but how quickly teenagers can learn difficult music. I really do like working with that age group - they don't have that self-doubt about learning that adults can have, probably because that's all they're doing every day in school.

We then had our first rehearsal of music for our education tours, which went surprisingly well (good thing, because we start staging this weekend already!) and then a looooong staging rehearsal for Pirates. This one involved the entire cast, so there was a lot of standing while our director staged - even a short eight measures can take a long time to stage when you have so many people to move around - so my feet were very sad by the end of the evening. Standing all day is one thing; standing half of it in horrible character shoes is another. I cannot understand why character shoes can't be made to be more comfortable!

I also discovered, once again, what a small world it is in the classical music business: our Major-General, the amazing Gene Scheer, knows my friend KrisAnne from a show they both did in Central City. Also, our stage director, Francis Cullinan, and Pirate King, Patrick Ryan Sullivan, know the father of a Dordt College friend of mine (Jim Van Ry, father of Rochelle) from Creede Repertory Theater in Colorado. I really do love those connections!

I really have to get some pictures up here. Soon!

A day off!

Well, it's Monday, and we have finally been given a day off. Our weekend was very busy with lots of work: rehearsals, meetings, costume fittings, and more rehearsal. Tomorrow we will start rehearsing in the theater (the Orpheum, if you know Omaha). So far, our rehearsals have been split between the OO offices and a large space in the Scottish Rite Temple, which is a block or two away.

Our costumes are beautiful! We are wearing brand new costumes for this show, which also means that they were built to our exact measurements. Our wonderful director, Francis Cullinan, decided to move the action forward 20 years from when this show is usually set, so the women will be wearing Gibson Girl type outfits circa 1900. We all have big puffy shoulders and lace and bustles and cameos and big hats and parasols - I'll definitely post some photos once we get into dress rehearsals! The pirates' costumes have lots of gold braid and buttons and burgundy velvet and big hats - basically, what you might imagine for pirates, but probably quite a bit nicer.

So far the rehearsal process has been painless. Our cast is full of wonderful people, and the stage director and conductor get along extremely well (this is definitely not always the case between conductors and stage directors!). I'm totally impressed with the chorus and how quickly they are picking up the very precise staging.

For my day off, I'm trying to be quiet this morning, as yesterday was full of talking and singing. After rehearsal, we had a meet-and-greet with members of the OO board, and then dinner and a little party with the cast. It's been great getting to know all these wonderful people, but I have plenty of other music to learn (and laundry and email and grocery shopping to catch up with!) today. If you're reading this, please leave some comments, or send me an email or message on Facebook! I miss hearing the news from each of your lives!

Internet is finally up!

I've been here for three days already without internet, and it was driving me a little bit crazy. It's amazing how dependent we get on technology! My roommate and I thought it was supposed to be set up yesterday, but we had to wait until first thing this morning. But I'm here now, ready to blog!

I left Minneapolis on Sunday around 10:30 or 11. The other soprano in Opera Omaha's Voices in Residence, Sarah, happens to live in Duluth and picked me up on her way. We arrived in Omaha shortly before 5, in plenty of time for our rehearsal at 6. The tenor, Joe, and the bass-baritone, Darren, flew in Saturday, so they were already settled by the time we got there. Our rehearsal that evening was with the OO (Opera Omaha, got it?) chorus and the music director, J. Although they had only been working on the Pirates music for a little over a week, the chorus sounded fantastic - there are larger opera companies who could learn a thing or two from this small volunteer chorus!

After the chorus rehearsal, J. and Tara, the Community Programs Coordinator, met with the four Voices in Residence about the music we'll be singing on the education tour. There is a LOT of music, people. Seriously, it would have felt like a lot even if we had it in hand before we arrived, but as it is, it feels a bit overwhelming. The schools have a choice of three programs, and although they use much of the same music, the longest one has something like 70 minutes of music. We start staging these at the end of next week already! Additionally, we start rehearsing the music for the Choral Collaborative Concert soon as well - this is the Nov. 2 concert that many of you are attending.

A word about Tara, the Community Programs Coordinator at OO - this is Tara Cowherd, a very good friend of mine from Dordt College. We have known each other for 10 years, since I was a freshman at Dordt and this nice upperclassman started talking to me at a vocal competition. One of Tara's three sisters, Laura, was one of my roommates a couple years later, by which time Tara was already working in the music business at the Omaha Symphony and singing in the OO chorus.

Speaking of singing, it's probably time for me to get back to learning music. While we were very busy on Monday with rehearsals, Sarah and I actually had yesterday off (although the men had a staging rehearsal). I spent much of the day getting myself organized and learning music, as well as nursing a bit of a cold I picked up right before I left Minneapolis. Today I don't have rehearsal until the evening, so it's back to the music scores for now! This is the great thing about living as a singer instead of working a day job while trying to sing - while I have rehearsals in the evening, I can spend my days learning music. I haven't been able to do this since grad school (and then I was doing coursework, too)!