Full steam ahead

Dear friends:

The show’s going well in Dayton. The Figaro is so dreamy, I just can’t stand it! This is the best Figaro EVER and did I mention that the Figaro is really good?!?

Ok, so the above paragraph was dictated by Andrew Garland, my fabulous Figaro here in Dayton. (I’ve been lucky enough to have back-to-back fabulous Figaro’s!) We are all here at “our coffeeshop,” on a break after a very useful rehearsal in which we all ran through our recitatives, working to get the flow going and to get past the “what words and notes am I supposed to sing here?” stage to “let’s communicate and tell a story here!”

I have to say, the hardest part of learning this role in two months has been really getting the language into my head, getting past the long-vowels and double-consonants stage. With Susanna, I carried around those papers with my texts on them for weeks - months, even - until I knew my lines forward and back. It’s been a bit of cram this time around… I finally had to just let go of the thinking and jump to the feeling. Once I put my book or my cheat sheets down, I’m free to really connect with my colleagues on-stage, to find the natural connection of one line to the next, rather than just trying to remember what comes next!

I’m also still building the character - who is Rosina? I’m going to write a post exclusively on this topic to cross post over on the DO blog, but I will say here that it has been a real challenge to get Mozart’s Countess out of my mind. (The Countess in Nozze is Rosina, five years or so after the events of Barber take place…) The way we have the finale of Barber staged, there is even a moment of staging that is a “flash forward” to a moment in Nozze; I find the (unintentional) symmetry beautiful.

Today: an afternoon working session, hitting on some things in Act I that need finesse, and then tonight we “stumble through” the show. A day off tomorrow, then another stumble through on Saturday morning and the Sitz Saturday afternoon. I can not wait to get with the orchestra for this one!

A teaser: by the end of the 08-09 season, I will have repeated a role!! Boy, am I ever looking forward to that experience...