| Nov. 24th, 2007 @ 10:50 pm Having a life sure is tiring, part 2 |
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Sooo, back in September, maybe it was still late August, Mom points out to me an add in Swerve, a (monthly?) magazine suplement in the Calgary Herald. The Calgary Opera Chorus needs Tenors. Eventually, I overcome my fear of telephones enough to actually call and ask to audition. Just in time, since the auditions are, I learn, two days away.
I don't take voice lessons, as many of the other members of the chorus do. So I had nothing in particular prepared. Also, my other choirs break over the summer, so I hadn't sung for four months. As you can imagine, Best Audition Ever!
Not.
I havn't sung any Opera music in about 8 years, so I don't know any arias. I looked through my other music to see what i have and know that is remotely suitable, and settle on Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, since it's in a foreign language and classical. As it turned out, something that's not all p to mp would proabably have been better in this case, but I don't know these things.
Anyway, two days later, I get a call, and I'm told they don't think my voice has enough power. Which, considering my audition, was a reasonable assesment. And they suggest I start taking voice lessons and tryout again next year. Which is fine by me, hey, I'll just stick to two choirs, working part time, studying part time, and being my chill self. Then two days after that, I get another call, someone else dropped out, am I still interested? "No!" Screams sensible inner voice, "Save Yourself!" But I've just spent a boring summer playing World of Warcraft all the time, so what I say is "Absolutely!".
That's when my schedule turns into singing four days a week. Here's a side note, singing Opera is to singing normal choral music in an amateur choir as Governor Schwartzeneger's workout is to my situps and bicep curls, the later of which I no longer had time to do. Rigoletto is a great one to be in the chorus in, though. First, it has an all male chorus. Second, it's Verdi, so the music is really good. Third, the chorus gets some great songs and bits. Finally, I came to realise that Italian really is a wonderful language. A c is a "ch" as in "chair". A ch is a "K" as in "Kirk". Everything else is pronounced exactly as it is written. Always. Every vowel is always the same vowel sound: to make other sounds, vowels are just strung together. So easy, once you get that.
Even with two or sometimes three rehersals a week, it was still a challenge to get all the music memorized before staging rehersals started, but somehow we all managed. What's that? Cue cards with the lyrics on them? I don't know what you're talking about. Next question!
At this point, I started to get very excited about the production, because the ideas for the staging, costuming, concept etcetera were very creative and interesting. I also started being very slightly nervous after about two weeks of staging when we hadn't actually finished act one yet. As staging went on, I also started becoming tired of Wendies and Subway, and forgetting what my family looks like. And at some point in there, I had a day where I only ate about 300 calories, from which my stomach has only just now fully recovered. I EM SMART! S-M-R-T! Rehersals were usually from 7-10pm, so I was also getting less sleep than usual. It all came together, but when the dress rehersal finally came around, I was puting base makeup over the dark circles around my eyes so the makeup artists could paint dark circles over it. Fortunately, the performances were all a few days apart, so I did get to rest up.
Well, this is already pretty long, so I think I'll make a part three. |
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