LML: For the love of Opera and Castles!!

July 13, 2011

I am hopelessly head over heels in love. Don’t worry, Lance, I think you would agree with me on this one. I am in love…with acting. J I haven’t done it since high school, really, but there is a great deal of acting in Opera, go fig, and I ADORE it. Working my scene on Thursday was like stepping into a dream…well, as close to a dream as three people nearly tearing out each other’s hair and screaming back and forth can be.  The point is, I can finally say I’m having a BLAST. 

I have finally gotten a peak into what it is like to perform opera. It is completely like and unlike anything else I have ever done, if that makes any sense.  The approach is different from that of Choral music, no matter if the piece is for a soloist or full chorus. It’s difficult to describe, but you look at the piece through the eyes of intent more so than notes and rhythms…sure, those things are important but you sing the notes in rhythms as a direct expression of the intent—you sing the note because it makes sense to sing it, not because it’s what’s written on the page. Again, I am struggling to find the words to describe what I mean. 

After scenes, I took a short break for lunch and memorizing, and then it was off to our first full run-through of Don Bucefalo and my final solo concert. I sang In Van Preghi, the more depressing of my two Tosti pieces, and I can happily say that I am finally becoming able to incorporate the new techniques I have been learning in voice lessons on stage. As I am finding, you can’t just begin learning a technique and automatically apply it to a performance—nerves and atmosphere often make it difficult to remember and implement the techniques. It takes lots of repetition—what, a musician needing practice? That’s unheard of!—until the techniques are ingrained in muscle memory. I still have a lot of practicing to do, but I’m starting to make some progress and that is heartening.

After the concert, “the gang” grabbed some dinner then went to the Café Grand Italia, our usual haunt (I write about it a lot but have realized I haven’t actually told you all its name.) The café is on the far side of the piazza, adjacent to the really old chapel and between my house and the school. Most nights you can find the LML students crowding around the patio tables, the girls doing their damnedest to catch the eye of the young Italian men, the young Italian men all too eager for the fresh meat.

I sit with the adults.

Not that I look down upon the incessant binge drinking and flirting, I just don’t understand it. I never really have, I guess, and it makes me uncomfortable. I am happier to sit apart from my peers and observe or to mingle with those intellectuals that I can learn something from. I’m a weird kid, I guess haha. 

It was fortuitous that I did choose to sit apart from my peers this night, as Dr. Breault came and sat with us. I had a very insightful and enjoyable discussion with him about photography, his hobby, and then talked a bit about music and things I can work on. He is honest, and I learned a great deal about technique, potential teachers, and opera in general in the hour or so we chatted. It was exactly what I needed to finish a wonderful day.

The next two days were filled with run-throughs which went…well, I guess. Sometimes you have to have a train wreck to figure out you need to fix the tracks haha. Friday was the final concert for the more advanced program, and although I enjoyed the pieces and the singers, it was a very long, very hot concert that was followed by a short rehearsal for a flashmob we were doing on Monday. By the end I was exhausted and starving. 

Saturday was another day of rehearsing followed by our final dress rehearsal Sunday morning. After that point it was a fairly easygoing day that ended with the opening of Cenerentola, the opera Gretchen has a lead in. She was not singing that night, so I sat with her and the rest o’ the gang in a box on the third level—GOD was it warm!! It is amazing to me that I was able to follow the story so well despite the opera being in Italian. Yes, the story of Cinderella is one most people know, but Cenerentola is actually quite different in many ways and is more similar, I’d say, to EverAfter. There is no fairy godmother or magic, Cinderella has a stepfather, gives the prince a bracelet to remember her by (none of this woops there goes my shoe junk.), and the prince pretends to not be royalty for half the opera. It’s a delightful show and I’m excited to see Gretchen as Cenerentola in Cesena (ch-eh-zain-a) next week.

 Deciding that I needed to get over my phobia of mingling with people my age, I finally took part in some ritual mingling with my peers:  AKA drinking and games. I started out with just one glass of wine with the usual group who were slowly replaced (due to fatigue) by more and more of my peers. We chatted, played games, and drank (thanks, Justin and Irina!)until I made my way home around 3am. It was not something I would like to repeat a great deal, but it was a good change for me, and I think I made some good friends out of it. Perhaps its not so bad after all haha.

The next day, I met up with Justin and Irina and went to San Leo, a castle/town built into the cliffs of a lone mountain about 20 a 20 minute drive from Novafeltria. Ever the lover of castles, I had a blast. The complex is kind of squarish in shape, flanked by two towers which contained museums documenting the rulers who lived there and their efforts in the unification of Italy. One of these towers housed two pianos complete with pianists who played the most exquisite double piano rep the entire time we were there. I was intrigued by the old paintings and weaponry in the towers, and was most interested in the Italian unification flag which depicted an eagle holding a bundle amidst masonic images…sound familiar? Speaking of the masonry, the museum was packed with memorabilia. The masons played a large part here. 

Inside the main complex was a maze of small corridors and unadorned rooms that would randomly open out onto small cobblestone courtyards and didn’t seem to connect with one another easily. Therefore, it is no surprise that the castle had been used as a prison for many years—and if the torture chamber was any indication, a brutal one. 

After traversing the entire castle, Justin, Irina and I made our way down a very steep (and beautiful!) trail to the town below and toured the town while we waited for the restaurants to open for dinner. The town has two ancient churches and a pre-Christian sacrificial altar, however they were closed at that hour and we only got to see things from the outside. Therefore, we spent the rest of our waiting time playing with the friendliest (and potentially blind) kitty up one of the streets. The locals must have thought us mad. Dinner was at a lovely little restaurant that was a little expensive but tasty and beautiful. Altogether, it was a wonderful trip. 

Don Bucefalo opened on the 12th in Montegredalfo, a tiny castle about an hour away from Novafeltria. We performed in a little restaurant with slippery tile floors and other than one of our cast falling flat on her butt during the first scene, it went fairly smoothly. All my worries melted away the moment I walked onto stage, and everything fell into place. It was a great start and I am very excited for the next three.