Pirelli! da King of da Barbers, da Barber of Kings!

One of our own Wolf Trap Opera alumni comes back to make a guest appearance as Pirelli in Sweeney Todd... We finished preliminary blocking of the entire show this morning! (That is, except for Pirelli’s scenes, as he doesn’t arrive until next week.) ... Load-in began today and the set is arriving from the warehouse... Enjoyed a much-needed day off yesterday after 7 days in a row. Thinking much more clearly now. And it’ll be even better tomorrow after yoga class! (Our very own Mrs. Lovett is a fabulous Kundalini yoga teacher.)

Transcript of audio post

It’s Tuesday, May 31. Able to think a little big more clearly today after a day off. We work pretty much a 6-day week –we get one day off a week, and it sort of rotates through the week. We started last Monday and went 7 days straight, and by yesterday, we were really feeling it.
Having time off helped, and the other thing that helped is that we have achieved Pirelli. It took about a week. We’re bringing back a friend. What happens here is that because we’re a young artist program, you can only come here twice as a performer because we have to keep the revolving door going, making these opportunities available to new singers. So after two seasons maximum ,our singers move on with their careers. Occasionally, though we have a chance to bring an “old” friend back as a guest. One of our tenors who was with is in 2003 & 2004 has just enough time off in his schedule – he’s actually in Europe right now doing a series of auditions in Austria, Germany, and the U.K. A big load off my mind.

We finished blocking this morning, in pretty much 7 days, and that’s really pretty quick. Now we get to start over again at the top, make some more decisions, refine things. Overall in pretty good shape. Load-in (when we bring the scenic elements from the shop to the theatre) and finishing the build.

We rehearse here at the Center for Education, our relatively new facility here on site. Our rehearsal room is within spitting distance of the theatre – incredibly different from when we used to rehearse several miles away. We’re right next door, and it’s simple to borrow pieces of furniture or props when we need them.

So, things are starting to speed up.

We start tomorrow morning with yoga – our Mrs. Lovett is great Kundalini yoga teacher. Not a typical combination – Mrs. Lovett and yoga, that is – and we’re fortunate that she said she wants to keep practicing herself, and she’s happy to give us classes and keep us limber and focused. I’m all for it.

We get to turn the calendar over to June tomrorow - that nice little shot of adrenaline that tells us we’re on our way. One of the great things about being in a business like this – you can only micromanage things for so long. Eventually the curtain has to go up.

Day 6

Meant to start at the very beginning last Monday but was sidelined. Mostly by the need for a last-minute tenor replacement. Never a dull moment! But here we are, in rehearsal for the first show of the 2005 season, Sweeney Todd. Check the audio posts for a brief look backstage every day (or as often as I can possibly get to it!). And we're off!

Transcript of audio post

It’s Day 6. Wolf Trap Opera Company 2005. This is the audio blog that was supposed to start on Day 1, but we got just a little sidelines this week by a couple of thing, the first being tenors, and the second, microphones. But more about that later. First, a little context.

We do lots of different things at WT. We do lots of retro things, we do lots of cutting edge things. And the opera company is probably a little bit of both. Very often pretty old-fashioned, but then again very often about the newest things under the sun. So here we are, blogging our way across the summer season, taking you behind the scenes. We’ll tell you everything that we feel we can get away with. If you’re an opera fan, this might be your chance to see how things get put together. If you’re not, well, we hope you’ll learn that this is a fascinating place to be. We’re all about young professionals. The average age of our singers, our coaches, our stage mangers is mid-late 20’s. It’s an exhilarating place, and it comes together every summer for about three months.

So, I’m going to try to blog every day for a few minutes – it’s hard to find the time, and I’m sure it’s hard for you to find the time to listen. We are in rehearsal, as I said, Day 6. Sweeney Todd – the first thing we start rehearsing. Other things will be layered on later, but Sweeney is our first project. We started on Monday, and it’s now Saturday evening already. Rehearsals are over, and I’m keeping a promise to myself to get this blog started. As I said, it’s surprisingly this week, alittle bit about microphones, andit’s about tenors.

The reason it’s about tenors is that we began rehearsals one tenor shy of a cast. Pirelli has mononucleosis. These things happen. Our erstwhile Pirelli is at home recuperating, and he will join us later in the summer for other projects. Meanwhile, we have precious little time to sort this out. More tomorrow, Day 7.

Vienna, VA

A smooth trip home on a plane full of happy folks on vacation and on their way to visit family for Thanksgiving. I love flying on weekends – sure beats the general weary road-warrior atmosphere of the weekday flights. Happy to be home myself – I think the guys (my husband and teenage son) are tired of “batching it”, and I hope they’re glad to see me (even tho’ it means that the homework nag is back in town). And I get to pick up my daughter from college on Tuesday for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Sometimes when the audition tour is over, the best repertoire and casting for the upcoming season come into focus immediately. This year is going to be different. We heard so many good people in all vocal categories that there seem to be an infinite number of options. Thomas and I started to talk through casting possibilities at the end of the tour, and I told him I think my brain is going to explode.
Thanks for taking this trip with us – wish we could’ve brought you along. Hearing all of these talented and dedicated musicians is inspirational, and having the opportunity to participate in the careers of some of the best and brightest is a real privilege. Hope you can join us in June to see how it all turns out!

Los Angeles

Auditions held on the campus of the University of Southern California in the lovely Schoenberg Institute Recital Hall. Wish we had more time here. The Metropolitan Opera National Council is holding its Western Regional Finals across campus, and several of today’s singers were auditioning in both places.
Also finished our apprentice coach and apprentice director interviews today. Haven’t said much about this aspect of our process, but I don’t want to neglect it. We search for an opera coach and an aspiring opera director to function as junior members of our staff for the summer. (“Coach” is the term for the pianist who plays rehearsals and prepares the singers for roles; both Thomas and I are coaches.) Career-entry opportunities for these professionals are even rarer than opportunities for singers, and we’re happy to be able to participate in the training of these people who are so vital to the future of our business.

Houston

Some of the recent interest in how companies like us select our singers comes from the “American Idol” phenomenon. No surprise that we’re different in a lot of ways…
Getting in the door – In order to be heard on “Idol”, you just have to get in line early and sleep outside the hotel for a couple of nights. In order to be heard in an opera audition, you just have to take voice lessons for about 10 years, get a graduate degree or artist diploma, and become reasonably accomplished in a minimum of three foreign languages.
“Thank you very much” means that your audition is over – The “Idol” panel is notorious for cutting folks off after 30 seconds. In fact, in the musical theatre audition world, 16 bars is considered a generous amount of singing. We’ll very rarely cut you off. As a matter of fact, we have a particularly tolerant policy; almost always two full arias (that is, if the combined singing time is under 8-9 minutes). Even when we’re fairly sure that the auditioner isn’t ready for our program, we feel strongly that one of the things we can do for developing singers is offer them repeated experience with the process of auditioning.
The prize – If you win on “Idol”, you get a recording contract. If you win in our world, you get a chance to spend the next summer at “opera camp”.
The panel – My colleague Thomas is jollier than Randy, I’m not as good-looking as Paul, and neither of us is as nasty as Simon.

The Aria List

Interested in which arias are being offered in our auditions? We’ve compiled lists for each voice type. This year, we’re hearing 148 sopranos, 65 mezzos, 3 countertenors, 49 tenors, 60 baritones, and 20 basses.
Each singer must offer 4 arias for the audition. (For us, the list must include one aria by Mozart or Handel.) It’s incumbent on the applicant to do two things:
1) Choose arias that demonstrate his/her unique strengths
2) Include as wide a range of styles, languages, and characters/roles as possible within the limitations of #1. (Got that?)
We took the four-aria lists for each singer and compiled them to see which pieces were chosen with what frequency. You can find the lists by clicking on the links below. Editorial comments are included; opinions are purely personal and rather subjective. Remember, these lists represent the repertoire offered for audition, not the selections we actually heard.

New York, Day 4

Last day in New York. Back in the acoustical wasteland of the Orchestra Rehearsal Room. Yesterday was spent in Rehearsal Room 1, a much livelier acoustic. What’s interesting is that while the singers prefer Room 1, it’s not always an asset for them. A few kinds of voices benefit, but because we’re aware of the flattering aspects of the reverb, it can have an ultimately negative effect as we try to mentally cancel out the acoustical enhancement. What’s surprising is that a live acoustic actually picks up and magnifies certain troublesome aspects of certain kinds of voices. The drier room is more honest for us, and we actually tend to deliberately overlook some things because we know how naked the sound is.
Random warning to auditioners: Over these last few days we’ve had a couple of less-than-acceptable responses to our choice of a second aria. To recap the process: the singer gets to choose his/her first aria, and then we choose an aria from the remaining ones on that singer’s list. Now, I’m aware that the remaining selections may be ranked in the singer’s mind, from enjoyable to purely functional (a required aria in English, or a required Mozart or Handel selection). And we may not pick the one he/she prefers. But please, practice a pleasant (or at least noncommittal, poker-faced) reaction to whatever our request may be. Disgust doesn’t cut it. I’m not a difficult person to please, but this is a business environment here, and we all have to do our best to be professional.