Jinky

Jinky is short for Jinkooya which means thank you. I remember hearing my friend Georgia use the word Jinky when she came back from Poland the first time and thinking that it was a word she made up, but in fact, it's real. When I heard someone use it for the first time I thought, "wait - that's Georgia's pretend word!!"

I haven't been very good at keeping up with my "two new polish words a day" rule. The first week, the tenor and I promised that as a team we would learn two polish words a day and practice them on each other, but he left for all of last week to go sing a concert elsewhere and without the buddy system, I completely gave up. Plus, I ended up spending so much time speaking italian last week that I kept trying to speak italian to the polish people and wondering why they didn't understand me. It's funny how your brain works that way - it thinks: foreign country, foreign language, and for a split second you forget you can't communicate in this country in this language. I will have these moments where I will be about to walk up to a counter of some kind with the idea in my head that I'm going to be able to ask for something, only to realize at the last moment that the sentence I was just absentmindedly constructing in my head was in italian, and polish people don't speak italian. But almost everyone under 35 in poland seems to speak english, so I'm usually okay.

This weekend we had 4 days free and I wondered what the hell I was gonna do with that many free days. Luckily, the day before all the days off I struck up a conversation with one of the assistant directors who happens to be italian, and discovered that he would also be here all weekend with not much to do. So he and I ended up spending about 8 hours a day together walking around warsaw (even though ALL THE STORES were closed from saturday at 4PM until this morning!!! ARUGH!!!!) and chatting in about 70% italian and 30% english. It's really easy to spend a lot of time with someone who is about as good as you are in their language in your language because both of you get to practice the other language, but when you get tired of thinking too hard you can just switch to your own language. Plus it comes in really handy sometimes to be able to communicate in more than one language - usually if we speak english other people in poland can understand us so it's better to speak italian, but one night we had dinner in this sort of touristy restaurant where for some reason there were tons of italian tourists, so we switched to english so we could talk about private stuff and not be understood. Every time I speak italian however, I am reminded of far I need to go before I can really just blab away and understand absolutely everything, and it makes me long for the day when I will again get paid to spend months at a time in Italy.

Having a lot of time off, whether it be between rehearsals, performances, or entire gigs, makes me remember how much I really love the part of this job that is rehearsing. I really enjoy rehearsing so much! It makes me so happy to make music and drama and work and change things in a pressure-less environment, and to be around other people and laugh and make jokes and make music. It sounds so cheesy but I really do enjoy both the creative parts and the collaborative parts so much, that when I have too many days off I miss rehearsing terribly. Luckily today we got back at it, the full cast has now arrived, and we're off and running. And all I will tell you about this production for now is that there is some public urination that happens, and I am involved in it. I don't want to give away any director secrets, so if you want to know more you'll just have to come to warsaw and check it out (don't worry, I'll give you the full details after the show opens. Maybe I'll even get a photo!!) JINKY!

Warsaw continues

Yes, I've been really bad about writing blog entries. But here's a run down of the last week or so.

We finished our week of what I felt were quite successful and fulfilling musical rehearsals, I had a day free, and then I had to travel out of town for an audition in another country. I'll write more about that at a later time if anything pans out from it. I came back tuesday evening to begin staging rehearsals on wednesday morning. Except that because of various scheduling issues with cast / staff, they had in fact already staged a great deal of the opera about two weeks before I arrived with many of the principals, so my job was to watch what had been done and then jump up and do it myself. It can be kind of challenging to jump into a staging rehearsal without first "walking and talking it" or without watching it several times, especially with a new role, but I was so eager to get on my feet and start running around like a boy, that I didn't mind. The very first thing we worked on was the duet between my character and the tenor, which is a gay love duet in this production, so I immediately had to practice making loving gestures that were masculine. It's not easy because we're kind of spooning at one point, and my tendency is to get all girly, but I have to work at keeping myself butch. The director gave me some good advice, which was to be more solid when I grab a body part instead of all "caressy" and it helped. Then, in the next two days, we did all of the parts of the opera that I'm in, so now I know what all my staging looks like. I also got a look at the drawings of the sets, which look incredibly cool, and was excited to come across this advertisement on the side of a building when I was walking back from a lunch with some colleagues:

I am really enjoying Warsaw as a City quite a lot. It's not so big, so I can really walk the whole thing (at least the main parts) it is very clean and easy to navigate (except crossing the street which I haven't exactly figured out the rules for yet). The young people are very stylish and well dressed, and I like watching them walk down the street from sidewalk cafes, where I've been able to sit often since the weather has been ridiculously nice. The other night some polish colleagues took me to eat real polish food because I'd been really wanting to eat a good pierogi, and when they asked me if I had ever tried fat on bread, I thought they were getting confused with language. But as it turns out, "fat" that you spread on bread is a real thing, and it's delicious. I guess it's some kind of rendered animal fat, but before you gag, listen to me when I tell you it tastes like the best butter you ever ate. I have no idea what's in it exactly or how it is created, but it tastes like, well, if you took bacon and melted in down into a creamy spread. This is what it looks like (it's on the left - the other spread is a kind of yogurty chive thing - also delicious)

Because of the easter weekend, we now have 4 DAYS completely free. Normally I would be happy with the free time, but since pretty much everyone is leaving to go home, the thought of having no human contact for that long is daunting. I'm okay spending a day or two on my own, but by about day 3 I start to feel like a crazy person. In fact, I was just reading this article in the New Yorker about how prisoners in solitary confinement almost always go completely crazy, so I'm not the only one who doesn't get into the whole being alone thing. But I will survive and try to explore the parts of Warsaw I haven't seen, and maybe even make a trip to Krakow, which is supposed to be an amazing city. Or maybe I'll just sit in my hotel room all weekend and watch movies and eat fat on bread. Both possibilities have their charms.

and then

I haven't felt as compelled to blog here in Warsaw as I thought I would. First of all because nothing particularly hilarious has happened to me after the first day I was here. I don't know whether I am just more accustomed to being in a foreign country so I'm not making as many dumb mistakes as I have in previous trips, or whether it's something about Warsaw that doesn't seem as "foreign" as other places. One of my polish colleagues told me that Poles definitely like "american stuffs" so maybe it's easy for me to get around because of that. Also, I now have 6 words of Polish in my vocabulary, which isn't enough to even try to communicate past the most basic requirements, so I'm not suggesting that "there are too many condoms in the food" the way I did once in an error filled conversation in italian. Regardless, I'm enjoying myself, and enjoying this opera immensely. The singers are all excellent and we've had the luxury of having a week of purely musical rehearsals, which really gives you the opportunity to figure out what you're doing vocally before throwing in all that running around. I've been trying to avoid spending my entire fee just on eating out, but it gets difficult when you're in a hotel room with no kitchen for a month. Some of my tricks have included taking as much fruit as I can carry from the free breakfast in the hotel and eating it for lunch, and buying pre-made sandwiches from a place called coffee heaven that was highly recommended to me by my friend Georgia who has worked in Warsaw often. I've already had quite a bit of time to explore the main parts of the city, and the weather has actually been gorgeous and springy. I've learned that the signs for the bathrooms here are an upside down triangle for the men's room and a circle for the ladies room, so I haven't had any more accidental encounters with in-use urinals. I've only gotten lost in the theater about 3 or 4 times since the first day, but I've always been able to find my way back to wherever my rehearsal was, and I was even able to show one of the polish singers where the bathrooms were on the floor where we were rehearsing that she didn't know about! Maybe I'm actually getting used to this traveling to foreign countries and singing thing.

Day One: at the Teatr

I woke up early this morning for my 10 AM rehearsal at the theater. I decided that since I had no idea where the theater was located, I had better take a taxi, and thought the hotel taxis would be the safest bet. Everyone had told me that it was basically a straight shot from the hotel to the theater, so I was confused about why the taxi driver seemed to be going on a bunch of different side streets. I discovered later that ride shouldn't have cost me more than 10 Zloti, and since he charged me 35, I figured out that I got the "scenic route" reserved for tourists who can't argue in Polish. Nice.

When I arrived at the theater I discovered that there were about 56 different entrances, so I picked the first one called door number 1. Sounded promising. I walked up to the desk and tried speaking to them in english and explaining that I was a singer and had rehearsal. They just stared at me blankly until I said "I'm a singer. Aaaaaahhhh!." Yes, I sang a note. But it worked, they got somebody to come get me and someone from the company who speaks english met me and walked me to the rehearsal room. It was incredibly complicated - we had to take an elevator to the 5th floor, walk through a maze of random corridors which finally led us to a staircase, which led us to the rehearsal room. We rehearsed some music, and the sweet stage manager explained that I needed to go for costumes. I cannot pronounce his name which is something like Alzcnfh.

He brought me to another floor through a bunch more dark hallways to the costume shop, told them who I was, and bid me adieu. They began measuring me, and when they were finished, they explained to me via hand motions (there was no one who spoke any english) that they needed to know my height. They wrote down the number 168, which lead me to realize they wanted to know my height in meters. It's probably something I should know, but being from the only country that shuns the metric system, I had no idea. I wrote down on the same paper 5'9" which they just looked at blankly and pointed to the 168. I was saying "Yeah, we don't have that in America - we use feet and inches.." but they did NOT understand me. Eventually, somebody just motioned for me to get up near a wall, and they measured me from head to foot. It turns out I'm 173 (is that centimeters? I don't even know what the unit of measurement actually is) and the head lady led me to another room where they measured my head, and then another room where they measured my foot. After the measuring was done, the shoe man cheerfully said "Jinkooya" which means thank you, and that was my cue that I was dismissed.

Except I had absolutely no idea where I was in the theater, how to get out, or how to get back to rehearsal. I decided to try retracing my steps, and I was sort of just wandering around the hallways looking lost. I passed a woman at some point who could see I was lost, so she said (I assume) something in polish like what are you looking for? I knew my rehearsal was on the 6th floor, so I said 6, held up 6 fingers and pointed upwards saying "I need to get up one floor." She looked at me quizzically, and I kid you not, she sort of did that thing where you kind of push the air forward with two hands when you want to communicate "you're crazy!" and she walked away from me. I thought - hmm - maybe there is no 6th floor and I'm just confused, but eventually by trial and error, I found my way back up there.

On the way however, I decided to try to find a restroom (why am I so often lost in theaters looking for a bathroom?) and found two little bathrooms I had passed before. They were both little rooms with separate little rooms with toilets in them. One was occupied, so I delicately opened the door to the other one, and lucky I did it delicately because there was a man peeing at a urinal in the one I opened. I'm telling you, the door was slightly ajar and there were no words on the door, so unless I'm missing something, it's not really my fault I walked in on him. But I jumped out quickly and ran the other way. I suddenly didn't need to pee at all.

The rehearsals went well, the other singers (mostly all polish) are all great and really well prepared and exited about making music and talking about characters. OH - and I found out that in this production, my character and the tenor are lovers, which is exciting for me since I'm playing a man! I've been a woman in love with men and a man in love with women, but I've never been a man in love with another man! It totally makes sense with the libretto and with the original Hugo play, and it gives me a whole set of new things to think about. Am I the alpha male in this relationship or is he? I think it will be awesome if we're both really butch but we have a big kiss or something. It will be shocking to opera audiences maybe, but hey, in our duet we're singing about how we're united til death, and how we're two flowers on the same stem (direct translation), so it really shouldn't be too shocking that we're like, so totally into each other. Actually I'm totally into him, but he's kind of obsessed with his mother, and his father is also his grandfather. Yeah, solve that riddle. And if you do, can you also tell me which is the men's room and which is the women's room in the Teatr Wielki?

Warsawa

I woke up yesterday morning and I almost tried to change my ticket to come later. I have been battling with this cold/ sinus infection for a couple of weeks now, and I thought it was gone, and then suddenly it came back. And I thought I was getting better, but I woke up Sunday morning and was so congested that I thought I couldn't possibly get on an airplane. But after taking enough sudafed and afrin to fill a medicine chest, I was feeling like I could manage. I also started a course of antibiotics, which makes you feel awful and sleepy, but is a necessary evil sometimes. And so I was off.

When I got to JFK I was so excited - people always ask me "Are you excited about your trip?" and I never am, until I arrive at the airport. Then the possibilities of all the adventures I'm about to have suddenly seem very real and I get a surge of adrenaline. The flight was probably about 90 % Polish people, and they were a lively bunch. Everybody was moving around, chatting with their neighbors, roaming the aisles. Everybody broke out into applause when we landed even though it wasn't a particularly turbulent flight or anything - must be a Polish tradition that I don't know about.

When I exited the plane, I just couldn't quite believe I was in Warsaw. I mean, yesterday I was having soup at the Metro Diner and now I'm in Poland. I guess I'm used to traveling and it doesn't phase me to come to a foreign city and figure stuff out, but I often get struck with amazement that it's actually happening and that this is my life. Then some babushka practically knocks me over trying to get her luggage off the conveyer belt and I'm jolted back into reality.

As I rode in the taxi to the hotel, I was thinking about how when I was in Italy, I always felt a little pressure and nerves about communicating in italian, although I loved doing it. But being in Poland, I simply know that I cannot communicate and I don't even try. It's liberating and disappointing all at once. I would certainly prefer to be able to communicate, although knowing I can't even say hello keeps me from having to make decisions about whether or not to engage in conversations with people. You should have seen me in the grocery store trying to explain to the woman that I wanted still water, not sparkling. I saw that the word "gazowana" was on a lot of the bottles so I was saying "nyet gazowana" although I think that might be Russian and not Polish. It worked though, my water is bubble free. I was unsuccessful in trying to locate a pre-paid sim card, but maybe tomorrow near the theater I'll have more luck. Now all I have to do is find the theater for my 10 AM (that'll be 4 AM for me) rehearsal tomorrow, and hopefully sleep a lot between now and then.

Alice in wonderland

Today was my dress rehearsal for tomorrow's concert with ASO in Avery Fisher Hall. I have performed once before in Avery Fisher, but I didn't really get the lay of the land during that concert for some reason, and today I got really lost. I knew how to get from the stage door to the stage itself, but I arrived rather early and wanted to go sit in the house and watch some of the rehearsal. The orchestra was completely filling up the entire stage, so I asked the stage manager if there was a way I could get to the house from backstage, and she told me that if I went up one flight of stairs, I would be able to enter a box and then could come down to the orchestra level through the lobby.

I figured that part out okay, and was sitting in the audience enjoying the rehearsal when I realized I had drunk a ton of water today and that I really had to find the bathroom. I tried going out in the lobby to use the restroom out there, but the doors to the outside lobby where the bathrooms are were locked, so if I went out there I wouldn't be able to get back in. I figured I could find some restrooms backstage, so I went back up to the level in the lobby to go through the box into the backstage, and I I swear to you, the door was no longer there. That's when I started to feel like Alice in Wonderland - I was standing in the box staring at the wall where there should have been a door, and I was totally dumbfounded. I went back outside the box to see if it was somewhere else, but there was no connection to the backstage. I went into the lobby on that level and saw that there were some restrooms I could access but they were locked too. I was seriously scratching my head.

I went back down and sat in the orchestra section again, but my bladder was really starting to be angry with me, so after fidgeting in my seat for a minute, I decided to try again. I went back up one flight and looked around for more doors, and when I couldn't find any, I decided to try going up one more flight just to see what happened. Well guess what? That's where the magic door was. I just didn't remember how many flights I had come down to enter the orchestra section. What a blonde! When I got through the magic door, I was backstage on the level above the stage where all the dressing rooms are. I figured there must be a public restroom somewhere on the floor so I walked to and fro several times but couldn't find any such thing. There was one dressing room that looked really fancy - like maybe the star or the conductor dressing room - and the door was wide open and I could see that there was a bathroom in there. I didn't want to go in there though, because I just imagined coming out of the bathroom with the sound of the toilet flushing behind me just as the conductor was trying to come in and have his quiet time during the break. I walked around a little more and couldn't find anything, and the situation was becoming more desperate. I checked the monitor to see that they were still rehearsing on stage, and I figured even if they finished I could make it in and out of there before anyone made it upstairs. 30 seconds later, I was quickly exiting and glancing from side to side to make sure no one had seen me.

I went down one flight to the stage level and found the orchestra administrator who is in charge of wrangling me. I made some silly joke to him about how I was getting lost in the building looking for the restrooms, and he said "Oh, no one has taken you to your dressing room yet?" "Nope," I replied. So he had me follow him. We walked up the stairs and down the hall, and he motioned around the corner. It was the dressing room where I had just used the bathroom in such a hurry and made sure no one saw me. I had been sneaking into my own dressing room. I'm pretty sure these sort of things only happen to me.

thwarted by a cold

I had such big plans for this week. In addition to the concert on Sunday with ASO of the Varese pieces, I really wanted to get a lot of work done on memorizing Lucrezia Borgia and getting the sucker into my voice. It lies low and heavy and is a great opportunity for me to liberally throw around my chest voice - something I rarely do in Mozart or even Rossini. The only problem is that the low heavy tessitura of the Donizetti lies in complete opposition to the high floaty tessitura of the Varese pieces, and I don't think it would be a good idea to practice all that heavy singing every day and then expect myself to float high b flats on Sunday afternoon (and at the rehearsals before). Add to this the fact that I woke up yesterday with a sore throat and am just waiting to see if this little illness turns into a full blown cold / upper respiratory infection or wanders away without making my life a living hell. So now I have to figure out how to learn this score just by looking at it.

Every singer has different methods of learning and memorizing music. I worked with someone recently who can just look at a score for several days without singing a note, and have it memorized before they even make a peep. I hate that person. I have no such photographic memory skills, although I am a pretty quick learner. Usually I teach myself the notes as fast as possible (the old fashioned way - by playing them on the piano and singing them lightly until my muscles/brain remember the order of the intervals). I like to get with a coach and sing it with them because I can memorize the music really quickly if I record my coachings and listen to them a few times. It's funny, I can't just listen to a recording of someone else singing my role and memorize it quickly, but something about listening to myself sing it gets it into my brain rather speedily. I'm sure there's some scientific brain study in the making about why that is - paging Oliver Sachs (he writes a lot about music and the brain). I was supposed to have a coaching on Lucrezia today to run through all of it and get it onto my ipod so I could listen to it a few times and not have to belt it out all week, but still get the whole thing in my memory. But I had to cancel the coaching because I didn't want to risk singing for an hour on a sore throat and getting laryngitis or something (which happened to me recently). So I just have to sit here and look at the score like my photographic memory friend and try to keep my brain from wandering and thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner later. Maybe I DO have a photographic memory, but it's just plagued with a lot of ADD. Yep, that's my excuse. Hmmm - what AM I gonna make for dinner? NO NO: Donizetti Donizetti DONIZETTI .....Spaghetti, linguini, rigatoni..? Ack. Never study when you're hungry.

Opera Campaign

This is a funny advertisement produced for Piedmont Opera's production of Marriage of Figaro. I have never sung with this company, but this youtube video was forwarded to me by a friend and I laughed out loud at it. And I just figured out how to embed youtube videos on my blog!! Hooray! Enjoy:

Welcome to Warsaw

I was kind of waiting to talk about this on my blog until I had signed the contract, but I noticed today that I'm already on the Teatr Wielki website, so I'm thinking it's okay. I got a call last week asking if I was free to go to Warsaw to sing Orsini in Lucrezia Borgia in April and May, and I was, so I'm going. The mezzo who was supposed to sing Orsini had to cancel, and the conductor, Will Crutchfield, suggested me for a replacement. Of course, it means I have to leave very soon and I have never sung the role, but I am more than up for the challenge. And I LOVE the music of Lucrezia Borgia - especially the tenor/mezzo duet which I first heard a million years ago when I was a student at Music Academy of the West, and the tenor was fellow student Juan Diego Florez. I still hear his voice when I hear that duet. But I digress. I'm going to Warsaw in two and a half weeks!!

Besides being really excited about singing a fantastic pants role in a new theater with a conductor I really like and admire, the arrival of this job solved one of my problems: I really wanted to go to Europe to sing some auditions, but I wasn't 100% sure how I was going to finance such a trip with the wacky economy and paying my taxes and paying off my credit cards etc. But this gig gets me over to europe (only a few hours by train to Berlin), and I still have 17 days after the last performance before I have to come back to the States for my best friend's wedding. I'm thinking it was meant to be. :) Now I just have to learn the role, get it into my voice, do my taxes, find a subletter, perform those Crazy Varese pieces, learn a couple of new audition arias, figure out how to pack as light as possible for a 7 week trip, and maybe learn a few words of Polish. Before March 29th. Oh, and my piano is broken (two broken strings, and most of the keys are 1/2 step flat, and piano tuner said it's unsalvageable) so I'm learning all this music on my 32 key mini casio keyboard. Wish me luck!

boys in dresses

Last night I had a lovely experience singing a program of all Mozart music with the Ridgefield Symphony in Connecticut. The newly appointed music director Jerry Steichen is a friend of mine from City Opera, and he asked me and a soprano to come perform with the orchestra, and I was free so I agreed. Knowing I would get to work with Jerry and sing Mozart (my faaaaavorite) was enough to lure me in.

The concert went very well, despite a few wardrobe malfunctions. The program for me consisted of three arias and three duets, and of the six pieces, I was playing a boy in four of them. I debated on whether to just wear pants, but I couldn't really find anything that felt fancy enough to wear with the soprano's formal gown, so I decided to just wear a dress. Of course, wearing a dress while you're singing Cherubino and Sesto is a little funky, especially for me, who has a very specific physicalization of those particular pants roles. However, flowing gown and all, I went for it with gusto during Non So Piu, and I was so boyish that one of my earrings went sailing out of my ear and off the stage. Some nice gentleman in the front row picked it up and handed it to me when I was finished singing, and I made a comment to Jerry during the applause that I guess maybe I shouldn't have dressed so girly for these pants parts - my girly clothes were revolting and literally leaping off my body. During the second half of the concert, just before I was about to go onstage and sing Parto Parto, my big showstoppah, the stage manager said, "can I see your dress?" I had gone to the bathroom in between my last aria and that moment, and had inadvertently tucked my dress up into my nylons so that my butt was completely exposed, and hadn't noticed. Were it not for that alert stage manager, it would have been REALLY obvious to the audience that I was a girl.

After the concert there was a reception held at the bank which was the main sponsor of that particular concert, and the people were incredibly nice and genuinely so happy to have us there singing for them. Sometimes as singers, we get so caught up in wanting to sing with only the BEST orchestras in the MOST IMPORTANT places, and we forget how special and rewarding it is to bring a certain type of music to a community that wouldn't otherwise have it. These lovely people were so grateful and thrilled that we had "graced them with our presence" and frankly, that was probably a more rewarding feeling than singing with the Vienna Philharmonic in some ways. It wasn't the same musical experience I would have had with the Vienna Philharmonic, but it was special and important and rewarding to me in its own way. The players were generous and musical, and they genuinely wanted to collaborate. The audience was enthusiastic and happy and warm. And they didn't even mind that I spent most of the concert acting like there was something between my legs while wearing a formal gown. Who could ask for more acceptance and appreciation than that, really?

I just can't get you outta my head

I'll admit it, I'm in a music learning frenzy.

I've actually been really lucky in that I'm usually just learning one role at a time, or maybe learning one role while I'm performing another. Plus, with 4 cherubinos, 6 Rosinas and 6 Cenerentolas, I've had a lot of repeats. But right now I'm in a kind of obsessed state of learning a million and one things, and I kind of like it.

In addition to the Varese pieces which I talked about in the previous post, I am making sure I'm all learned and memorized for a concert of all Mozart music with an orchestra this weekend (3 arias and 3 duets), I've begun learning a new role which I may have to go do in about a month, I have two songs which are the beginning of a song cycle a composer friend of mine has begun writing for me and which we want to get a recording of asap, and I have a couple of new audition arias that I want to bring with me on my upcoming audition trip to europe. Going from Varese to Mozart to bel canto to modern American and back to Varese in one day makes my brain swim, but it also really inspires me. One second I'm practicing floating high B flats and the next I'm practicing belting a middle C in full chest voice. I usually prefer the part of this job where I'm around other people, whether it's working with the conductor on the music or just rehearsing the staging with the cast, but this self imposed solitude with constant learning is actually really making me happy. I've often only been leaving my apartment once a day, to go to the gym (okay, I've only been doing that this week, but I'm DOING it) and otherwise I just sequester myself. When my brain gets full I stop and do something else like catch up on my emails, but then my newly insatiable appetite for learning reasserts itself, and I'm back gazing at sheet music.

I'm usually a horrible procrastinator, but if this keeps up, I might learn the Mozart role I'm singing in France in 2010 by the end of the week.

difficulties

There are two different types of difficulties that go along with being an opera singer: the logistical difficulties (for example singing notes and rhythms - at the same time - in a foreign language, while standing on your head) and the emotional difficulties (why god whyeeeeeee didn't I get that job, or whyeeeeee did that person write that terrible review of me or whyeeeee do I have to spend so much time away from my loved ones?). Now, these challenges seem large, but they are far outweighed by the benefits, which Is why I keep on keeping on. But that doesn't mean I don't ever get to whine and complain a tiny bit, just for fun.

Tonight, let's talk about the logistical difficulties. Right now I'm studying a piece by Edgard Varese for singer and orchestra called Offrandes. I'm performing it at Avery Fisher Hall with the American Symphony Orchestra on March 22nd. It is two songs totaling about 8 minutes of music and it is HARD. The tessitura is kinda cray cray - I mean super high and super low at different times, and the music is not exactly tonal. Plus the orchestra is playing all kinds of stuff, but nothing that gives you a good sense of what beat you're on or even what tempo you're in, and they certainly aren't playing any of the notes that I'm singing. And after I've been practicing it for awhile, my throat sorta feels like hamburger meat from half singing half marking crazy high notes repeatedly. That being said, the piece is also REALLY cool because it transports you to an ethereal, impressionist, yummy french place. Plus, actually learning a challenging piece like that is a really satisfying feeling. But it ain't easy to float a high B flat out of nowhere, especially when the orchestra is playing a bunch of A naturals.

What I've been up to

So, for the past week or so, I have sequestered myself at my parent's house upstate to work on recreating my website completely. I created the new website with the help of an existing template (that is to say, I didn't hire a web designer to create it for me) and the work was often painstaking and it took FOREVER, but I am pleased with the result. Check out this link if you would like to see all my blood sweat and tears: www.jenniferrivera.com

Because I've been getting this website up and ready to go, I've been walking down memory lane as I finally collected many of the production photos from the past few years. I hadn't looked through the production photos at City Opera since they were still on slides, so that should give you an idea of how long it's been since I ordered anything from them. It was funny returning to City Opera after this, my longest absence from the company since I began there while I was still crossing the plaza from my Juilliard classes to attend my first City Opera reheaersals. My last performance with the company was in fall of their last season before they closed for renovations, and I haven't had too many opportunities to visit the place since. I was happy that the security guards at the stage door still remembered me, and one of them quipped, "You still singin'?" I replied, "Yep - even though the place is closed I'm still singing - can you believe it?" Of course we were joking, but City Opera was my home away from home for 8 seasons - and some of my greatest artistic achievements and bestest friendships have come out of that place. It's very quiet right now, but everybody I ran into was hopeful and excited about George Steel, and they are all ready to climb the steep mountain and bring the place back. I saw this sign posted - it was a copy of that blue and red toned photo of Barack Obama that says "HOPE", except Obama's image had been replaced with Mr. Steel's. Not only was the suggestion that if Barack can become president, anything's possible, but also, even in the bleakest financial times, with an inspirational leader, we can all have hope that the future will be better. That scrappy company isn't gonna stay down for long, I can feel it.

Of all the photos I collected, one of my favorites has to be this action shot from Agrippina (taken by Carol Rosegg). Singing Nerone in that production of Agrippina has to be one of my favorite things I've ever done at City Opera (although choosing a favorite at NYCO is like Sophie's choice to me because there have been a lot of goodies). In this particular production, Nero is a chain smoking, coke snorting, drunk, sex crazed teenager. The opera starts with him waking up in bed with his mother, and goes downhill from there. In the first scene, I was playing a game of russian roulette that forced me to put a gun to my head and pull the trigger. It freaked me out every single time, even though the gun was fake and there were obviously no bullets inside, putting a gun to your head and even pretending to shoot yourself is totally alarming - but it certainly had the desired effect dramatically:

But my favorite scene in the opera had to be in the second act, when I entered Poppea's bedroom in a drunk, stoned haze and tried to seduce her by yanking off my pants and singing a lot of crazy coloratura. I got to shake my pants right down during a particularly fast lick of coloratura after leaping onto the bed, and that's what's going on here:

And finally I got to sing one of the coolest arias ever written, "Come nube che fugge dal vento" which happens at the end of the opera when Nero really starts to have a psychotic break. I do look pretty psycho in these photos:

After that lovely stroll down memory lane, I'm back to real life and have to go study some crazy 20th century french music. Wish me luck.

Not curing cancer

As soon as I got back into town I was off and running, with three auditions in three days. I was grateful for the distraction since coming off gigs can be a little difficult for me emotionally unless I have something else to focus my attentions on. Two out of the three auditions went quite well, but on the second day, I decided to throw caution to the wind and start with an aria I’d never really sung in public before just to see what happened. I didn’t crash and burn, but I certainly hadn’t ironed out all the kinks, so I don’t feel like I knocked their socks off. Auditions are such a crapshoot anyway, I figured I might as well take a risk and see if this new aria was a better starter than the one I’ve been starting with for years. Turns out it’s not. Good to know. The best news about the auditions was that I was employing my new relaxed shoulders and upper body high note technique, and it totally worked every time. I actually wanted the panel to ask for my arias with the high notes in them!

I have this funny habit of trying to crack jokes and make conversations with the panelists. I know I’m not the only one who does this because my friend Georgia has told me a lot of funny things she’s said to panelists before – I kind of feel like doing a little stand up comedy routine before I sing to lighten to mood. Also, the panel has always been hearing singers non-stop for hours, which can cloud anyone’s brain, so I feel compelled in this tourettes sort of way to say weird things. My standard cracks usually have to do with the fact that I shouldn’t have worn a dress to sing all these boy parts, or “wow – I got to play two women in a row – how unusual!” Yeah, not funny at all, I know. But this is why I’m an opera singer and not a comedian. Once I jokingly offered to tap dance when they couldn’t decide on a second aria. Wow – I’m really not funny. How embarrassing for me.

On the second day of auditions, somebody remarked to my agent that he was dressed casually, and he replied, “well, it’s just an audition – it’s not like I’m curing cancer or something.” Fast forward to the next day, when I was warming up for my daily audition. I was staying with a friend for a few days while I waited for my subletters to clear out, and the friend I stayed with happens to be an oncologist who works at Sloan Kettering Hospital. She was working from home that day, and while I was singing “La la la la la la” she was fielding calls and emails about blood clots and hemoglobin and stuff. I thought of my agent’s remark from the previous day, and noted that she WAS in fact curing cancer while I was….singing arpeggios. I shared this with her, and she insisted, “what you do is just as important for people’s souls as what I do for their bodies.” I hope she’s right, because I think the two of us might have gone to school for the same number of years. Now she’s a doctor of medicine and I’m a wannabe comedian.

Hot weather lessons learned by Cindy(rella)

I finished my last performance of La Cenerentola last night in Fort Lauderdale (where Florida Grand performs their final shows) and I have to say, I had a great night. Few things are more satisfying for a singer than figuring out how to solve a vocal problem and finally nailing what has been difficult up to that point. Sometimes certain aspects of your voice will give you problems, but you will occasionally do those things well by accident, and not really know what you did. However, last night I was actually able to solve a problem I’ve been having with a certain note, and I’m certain that it was not an accident, but that it came from hard work, good advice, and staying calm under pressure. And I thought they were going to have to tie me down after the performance so I wouldn’t float away from sheer joy.

As I have chronicled on this blog, I have found the final note of both Non piu mesta, Cenerentola’s final aria, and Una voce, Rosina’s entrance aria, challenging. I used to be a soprano, and when I first switched to mezzo, I had high notes for days. However, as my voice matured and I learned to sing with my true sound (and not just the tiny part of my voice I had been using as a soprano) I had to learn how to sing high notes in a completely new and integrated way, and gradually my voice has become one sound from top to bottom. Except those pesky high b naturals at the end of those two arias, which for some reason, although I could always sing them in practice sessions and in my dressing room before a performance, remained inconsistent in performances and I could not figure out why. The problem was that when I would sing them on my own I wouldn’t know what to fix, because they would be fine. So I had an idea.

After the third performance of Cenerentola, I just wasn’t happy with the final note. It wasn’t terrible, but I knew I could sing it much better. But again, I had sung 64 beautfiul perfect high b’s in my dressing room at intermission that night and was in great voice, so I had no idea what was going on. But there was someone who had watched me sing every rehearsal and performance from a mere few feet away, and who happens to sing a lot of great high notes himself every night – the tenor singing the Prince, Frederic. So I decided just to ask him to tell me what he observed while standing beside me every night while I sang my aria, and he kindly agreed to talk to me about it. He said that as I sang the first of the three high b’s (there are two lead ups before the final climactic note) he noticed that my shoulders were coming up almost to my chin, and that they kept coming up there for the rest of the high notes. He noticed that my body looked tense. Why didn’t I try a different physical gesture other than lifting my arms and shoulders?

Oh my god, I realized, this is my answer. What is different between the dressing room and the actual performance? I get so excited and hyper while singing that my shoulders come up, I hold a lot of tension in my upper body, including my neck, which is almost certainly constricting my larynx, and making the high notes tight and squeezed. Could this really be it? Could this be the key to years of frustration with this note?

Later in the week we had a brush up rehearsal, and I decided to try this new theory while singing the aria. When the aria gets fast and full of lots of coloratura, I focused on keeping myself relaxed and not using my upper body as any kind of a crutch. When the two first b’s came around, I forced myself to keep my shoulders down. It was a little scary – I was accustomed to bringing them up, but I kept them firmly down and the notes came out anyway. Then when I tacet for a couple of bars while the chorus sings, I walked around in a small circle (which is something the director had said I should do anyway – to regard everyone onstage with me in a final moment of joy), which relaxed my body even further. I turned around and sang a slightly different run up into the high note, kept my shoulders out of it, and BAM it was THERE in spades!!! It definitely didn’t feel like a mistake, I felt like I knew what I was doing – but – things are always different in a rehearsal and in a performance, so still had to find out whether I really had solved this problem.

Fast forward to last night, and I did exactly the same things I did in rehearsal, although understandably, I had a bit more adrenaline and excitement. However, when I did the runs up to the high note and started singing it, even I was surprised by how easy and free it was. I held it for what felt like a long time, and when I finally finished singing, I can tell you that in the final moments of the opera, there was no need for me to act – the joy Cenerentola was feeling at having become the princess was nothing compared to the joy Jenny was feeling at having sung a fantastic high note. “GREAT B!” the tenor whispered to me as the lights went out. “GREAT ADVICE!!!” I practically screamed at him as I all but skipped offstage for my bow. I think I might have even done a victory dance.

Am I crazy for being so happy about a good high note? Absolutely. But striving to improve is one thing that makes every person happy, and the journey is what connects all of us. And maybe relaxing my shoulders can be a metaphor for solving all my problems in life. Or maybe just this one - but that would be enough for now.

Lows and Highs

Right around the time of performances is often when I experience the biggest emotional roller coaster that comes with being a performer. There is the excitement, nerves and energy of the lead up to the opening, followed by ecstasy if I'm happy with the way it went or horrible depression if it didn't go well. Then, after the show opens, suddenly I have a ton of free time on my hands because I only work for 3 hours or so once every few days. The free time can either be really fun or really shocking, depending on the situation. If the gig is full of people I've loved hanging out with and we continue to spend tons of time playing around, the free time is super fun, followed by the depression of having the gig be over and having to leave all these wonderful new friends and go somewhere else. Or, if everyone's significant others, parents, family, and friends descend into town for the performances and we all go our separate ways, I get bored and lonely after all the playing around we did in rehearsals, and start to feel low. But then maybe one day my agent calls to tell me about a great gig I've landed in the future. Yipee!!!! High high high!! Then I find out about another gig I really really really wanted that went to someone else. Low low low. Then I read a great review of the performance. High, but tinged with the knowledge that if I believe the good ones I have to believe the bad ones. Then I read a mean comment posted by a random person on a blog saying awful things about me and my singing. Loooooooooow low low. Then the gig is finally over and I get to go home and sleep in my own bed and see all my friends in New York. Hiiiiiigh!!! Then I wake up the next day and really miss the new friends I made on the gig and realize that I have no idea when I'll see any of them again. Looooow. Then I get out of bed, repack my suitcases and get in line for another ride on the roller coaster. After all, what's the point of life if you can't experience it from different altitudes.

mundane to extraordinary

I'm sitting here doing my laundry and getting ready for tonight's third performance of Cenerentola, and thinking about day of performance rituals. Some singers are really specific about what they need to do on a day of a performance - exercise at a certain hour, eat at a certain hour, nap at a certain hour etc. I used to be impossible to be around on performance days (just ask my parents about those fun years) because I would be so nervous and anxious that I just felt miserable. I also used to be really specific about what I ate and when I ate it, when I could eat anything at all because a nervous stomach is not a hungry stomach. Things have changed considerably since those days, and I've actually made a specific effort NOT to have specific things I do, so that if I ever have to do things differently because of circumstances beyond my control, I won't freak out.

Today, for example, I woke up and ate some breakfast and checked my email. Then I went and bought a cheap pair of sunglasses and a beach towel for my dad, who is visiting. Then I took my dad to South Beach so he could swim a little in the ocean. I was a little specific about needing to sit in the shade and not going in the ocean myself because I didn't want to get too hot or tired before singing. Then I took my dad to a bookstore I really like with a cafe, and we had lunch. And now I'm doing my laundry. It's hard to imagine that in only a few hours, I will be onstage singing for thousands of people and assuming an entirely different persona for 3 hours.

My dad told me something interesting today. He said that when I was a kid, my first voice teacher Thelma, who was a retired opera singer herself, gave me the advice that I should never develop any specific performance day routines, nor should I ever have any good luck charms or rituals. She said it's just too dangerous - that having specificity is like having a crutch, and if you have it taken away, you have big trouble. I have no recollection of her telling me this (I was only 9 when I started studying with her) but it's funny that all these years later I am in fact taking her advice. The more normal and relaxed I feel, the better I sing, and the easier it is to communicate something while onstage. So if doing my laundry a few hours before I'm onstage makes me a better Cenerentola, bring on the Tide. But only sometimes!

Writing your own review

So, I just deleted the original post I wrote about my opening performance of Cenerentola in Miami. (I want everyone who commented on that particular post to know I appreciate their thoughts, and I saved them all in a file on my computer). In the post, I talk about the fact that while the performance went incredibly well, there was one note that wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be. Not only have I realized in the last day or so how much I was overreacting about that one note, but a friend and fellow singer and blogger reminded me that writing your own bad review and publishing it on the internet is not exactly conducive to furthering one's career, nor is it fair to one's public who may have loved your performance and doesn't want or need to know about your picky little perfectionist problems with it. Writing my blog is cathartic and a way for me to work out how I'm feeling about things, but it's not my job to tell other people how I sang in a performance - it's only my job to sing the performance.

But I am happy to talk about how I felt during the performance. I was relaxed and centered, and even able to enjoy myself and try new things. My voice did what I wanted it to do, which allowed me to act with abandon and communicate in the fullest way possible. Are there things I would like to do differently and even better? Always. Can I be content with how far I feel I've come both vocally and dramatically with this repertoire, and about the fact that I seem to have completely overcome my issues with nerves? Absolutely.

I just hope the woman who does my makeup for tomorrow's show isn't mad that my nose is a little sunburned from spending all day today at the beach. Yes, I swam in the ocean. Yes, you can hate me for it if you need to. But just remember that I return to the 18 degree weather and dirty snow banks in just over a week, and knowing that is punishment enough.

The Caste System, part two

I wrote a post about the first cast / second cast business back when I was in Italy, and I was singing second cast, which meant in that situation sitting on my butt and not rehearsing at all and then getting up and performing. Here in Miami, the only role double cast is Cenerentola, and even though I am technically singing the opening, there isn't really a first cast / second cast situation - we are just both singing 4 performances each, and we have been splitting the rehearsals evenly. Frankly, I guess I'm more used to either being first cast, where I never end up watching or having anything to do with the other cast, or being the full-on underdog second cast, where I have to do my best in difficult circumstances, and if I do succeed, everyone can say "wow - she managed!!" At first, I thought that this sharing of the role would be no issue for me, but I find that I'm actually more comfortable in the underdog position because then there is far less pressure, and if you're fantastic, people are pleasantly surprised. If you're in any way associated with the first cast, there is no space for error - you'd better be freaking amazing or risk disappointing everyone. No wonder famous singers act crazy from time to time - I imagine the pressure on them would be pretty overwhelming.

I've been thinking a lot lately about comparisons between singers. I've had a bunch of conversations with friends recently about that very subject and it has caused me to think seriously about my own feelings on the matter. I tend to think of myself as a relatively centered person who doesn't get too caught up in professional jealousies (I count as very good friends several mezzos who I could consider my "competition" if I chose to look at it that way), but like everyone, I certainly have my days of utter insecurity where I wonder why so-and-so has a certain job I would have liked, and days when I get horribly jealous of someone else's career. I've had some very interesting conversations with other singers lately where they wonder if people of the same voice type can really be friends, and whether singers can have successful romantic relationships with other singers without being jealous when one's career is going better than the other. My initial reaction is always to pooh-pooh such talk as small minded and insecure, but as soon as I do that, I'll have a day where I'll be crying because I find out somebody has better jobs than me and I'll find myself wailing "WHY GOD - WHYYYYYYYYYYY NOT MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE????"

When I manage to pull myself together from the pity party, I realize something very important: Comparisons kill art. As singers, we are subject to constant comparisons - we enter competitions where we are ranked and and awarded prizes for the "best", we audition for schools and then jobs, where the "best" is awarded the position. There is the famous 'arc of a singer's career' joke: "1. Who is Jenny Rivera, 2. Get me Jenny Rivera 3. Get me somebody like Jenny Rivera. 4. Get me a young Jenny Rivera 5. Who is Jenny Rivera?" Comparisons are inevitable by the people who cast and hire us, but among artists themselves, they are terribly dangerous. Because what makes a great artist is their uniqueness - and thank god, every artist is unique, and there is no real way to compare two singers because it is always like comparing apples and oranges. We aren't stockbrokers, with a dollar sign to show for our success - we have only each individual performance and whether it was able to affect somebody and create something special and...UNIQUE. And spending time comparing ourselves to other artists only ruins the "in the moment" qualities necessary for creating the best performance we are capable of.

I have to keep reminding myself of this - not just when I'm double cast with someone, or when I have a cover, or when I am a cover, but in each day of my life as both a singer and as a person. In life I'm often trying to fit myself into a comparison - am I prettier or uglier, skinnier or fatter, smarter or dumber, richer or poorer, more or less successful than person X? But those comparisons only remove me from living in the moment of just being me. Being the best artist and person both require living one moment at a time, and making that moment the most important. The game of comparison is just iceberg lettuce for the brain - requires chewing but has no nutritional value.

Cinderella, Miami style

Wow - sorry for how long it's been since I've written an entry. I've been in Miami to do a production of La Cenerentola with Florida Grand Opera since January 1st, and I'm just now getting around to writing a post about it. But I have a few excuses for my lack of posts!

First of all, FGO is one of the companies that require each artist to find his or her own housing arrangement, and since my friend Scott, who directed the production of Barber I did at Opera Pacific a few months back was also directing this production, we decided to save a few clams and get a two bedroom apartment together. It's actually really fun living with somebody while on the road, because usually I spend A LOT of alone time - more than I really would like to - and this way, when we get home from rehearsal at night, I actually have somebody to talk to about the fact that I didn't like the way I sang that scene today, or wasn't it funny when so-and-so made that joke today, etc. But this also means that I'm never really alone, and when I'm alone and pensive is when I tend to come up with ideas for what to write about on my blog. Add to that the fact that this cast is particularly social and friendly, and that I've been spending a lot of time with the other singers, and this job has been anything but solitary. Which is great for me - but bad for the blogging.

So let me fill you in. I arrived January 1st with no voice whatsoever. I sang a concert on New Year's Eve, but it made me completely lose my voice because I was already battling with laryngitis. I arrived to the first musical rehearsal and couldn't even really speak, so I sat and listened while the other Cenerentola (thank goodness there are two of us) sang the musical rehearsal. I both loved and hated not being able to sing for that first rehearsal. I loved just listening to this EXCELLENT cast (it really is one of the best groups I've had the pleasure of singing with in awhile) knowing that I would get to sing with them all eventually. But I also hated not being able to make the music myself and "show my stuff." Luckily after only a few days, my voice returned and I was able to start singing in the rehearsals.

The rehearsal process has been mostly fun, although a tiny bit stressful at times because only the Cenerentolas are double cast, so if we both want to rehearse, everybody else has to do everything twice. I'm one of those people who loves rehearsing -it's definitely one of my favorite parts of the job. I love making the music and exploring the drama with absolutely no pressure to be perfect (as in a performance) and repeating the scenes many times to find the endless dramatic and musical possibilities. With two Cinderellas, I find I don't quite make it to that point of comfortable exploration as often as I would like. But the positive is that I actually get to see what things look like from the outside, and I happen to be double cast with a brilliant and musical singer who I can learn things from by listening and watching. And since this is my sixth Cenerentola, I should probably be able to do the performances on no rehearsals and blindfolded.

Oh, and it would be really ridiculous if I didn't mention the fact that I'm in Florida in January and it's EIGHTY DEGREES AND SUNNY outside! There are three singers from Montreal in the cast, and we keep pulling out my iphone and opening the weather application, just to look at the fact that it's 16 degrees in Montreal, 26 in New York, and 78 here - all in the same time zone! I was swimming in the blue-green ocean with one of the singers, and we both looked at each other at the same time and said "Can you believe we're here for work?"

Besides being an amazing tenor, Frédéric Antoun (my Prince Ramiro) is a great photographer, and he took this photo of Scott and I standing on his balcony on our first day off. I wouldn't recommend looking at this photo if you are about to go outside and slip and fall on a patch of ice, or if you have your feet in a bucket of warm water because it's so frigging cold outside. This is right before we all headed down to the beach to soak up the sun for several hours. I'm sorry!!! I really am!! Don't hate me!!