No Suor Angelica. :-/ For a variety of reasons beyond anyone's control, not least of which is the necessity of Artistic-Director-of-Many-Hats going to Montreal to be with her dying dad.

At least I have my Thursday nights and my first couple weeks of June back. *sigh*

Or mostly, anyway. There's still a little puffiness around my jaw, but I only notice it because I know my face. Also, hooray for being able to open my mouth all the way! Should make it a heckuva lot easier to have a voice lesson tomorrow. Also means I can see where the wisdom teeth came out from, and man was I right about there not being enough room in my jaw! I don't know where the heck four more teeth were anchored! Am both apprehensive and excited about seeing an orthodontist once it's all healed. I've had this traffic jam in my mouth for so long, it's going to be strange not to have them so crowded that I slice through dental floss at least three times before I get them all.

Meanwhile, I have a completely irrational craving for a chili cheese dog. *facepalm*

Curiously, hurting more today than it has the last couple. Mostly stitches pulling, I think. Which makes me very glad the Vicodin doesn't loop me out to speak of, because I have stuff to get done, darnit. Have been itching to sing, and planning to give it a shot for a while tonight. The poor voice is like "Okay, cold and then sinus infection and then wisdom teeth... Are we DONE with all this stuff now? Can we get on with business plzkthx?" I really wanted to be in solid vocal shape before we started Suor Angelica, darnit, but that just wasn't in the cards. Ah, well.

Also need to start sketching for Shrew. And must go over to Chicago Actors Studio and get registered early next week. But those are for after BigBabyBrother's wedding this weekend, which, yay!

Next week. *deep breath * Next week will be NORMAL craziness. ;-D

...are at least not snowy days. But still Mondays.

I've been meaning to hit the Midwest Independent Film Festival some first Tuesday or other. Networking yay! Was too sick last month, but am totally going to haul my finally-getting-better butt into the city tomorrow night. (Yay, Zithromax! Yay, sinuses no longer attempting to secede through the front of my skull!) The offering scheduled happens to be one that others might also be interested in, a docu about women's body image called America the Beautiful. Tickets are $10. Chicago peeps, if you end up planning to go, let me know!

In opera news, apparently we're doing Tosca next year. Went to Solange's bel canto recital yesterday afternoon, and she did "Vissi d'arte" (of all things...fach shift much?) as her encore and mentioned that. First I've heard. And actually, this time last year she was talking about The Merry Widow, which ended up morphing into Elisir, so we'll see. I did a bit of a doubletake at the public mention, tho.

Also, now that the former Café Magdalena is officially launched as the newest location of Villa Verone, our cabaret nights there are coming back! Looks like they will now be Sunday nights, and early word is that they'll be Sundays in May and July. I'll keep you posted as details become available.

1) Pow! Tanith Belbin crush back full force. *gorpy grin* OMGcutehaircut!

2) Lionel Luthor is listening to the slowest damn "Der Hölle Rache" I have ever heard in my life. I think maybe they actually slowed it down to lower the pitch. In which case, possibly they should have picked something else? I'm totally picturing Pamina going "Yeah, sure, Mom, whatever." Because, um, so not scary this way.

(Yes, I'm watching Smallville for the first time in at least three years, on account of Gina guest starring. I seem to be at the mercy of my girlcrushes this evening. *g* Oh, hey, Gina gets to look like a grownup. Yay!)

Elgin OPERA's second annual Voice Competition is geared for young singers, with three age divisions up to age 26. Prizes of up to $500 are awarded, to be applied toward training and development.

The finalists will be invited to participate on a scholarship with the Elgin Opera Training Ensemble. This includes various programs throughout the year including performing with the chorus in our Main Stage production at the Hemmens Cultural Center in the Spring of 2009.

Application deadline is April 7, 2008. Fee is $30.

Preliminary round: Saturday, April 12, 2008
Semi-finals: Sunday April 20, 2008
Finals/Dinner Event: Friday April 25, 2008

Full details and entry form in PDF format

Chicagoland peeps of the singing persuasion, please come out and sing for us, and/or pass on the information to your friends/students!

Nothing makes you reconsider a self-judgment of All Better (Or Close Enough As Makes No Difference) like trying to sing for the first time in two weeks.

And starting with Puccini. Not that it's not where my voice is happy living these days, because it is. (I'm even used to that at this point, and no longer have a phantom pipsqueak coloratura living in my head.) But the support muscles are all like "Huh? What? We've been working overtime coughing and now you want us to hold that??"

Last night's lesson was ugh. Tonight's preliminary rehearsal for Suor Angelica was ugh-er. Hopefully I'll be a little closer to 100% by next Thursday, when parts will actually be assigned.

Not that Solange isn't well aware of my all-too-recent bout with The Crud, and assessing accordingly (and she's got it now, poor thing), but I would still like it GONE NOW PLEASE. I hate the getting-over-it-and-getting-back-in-shape phase almost more than the actual full-on sick. The panic phase where I start to forget what the voice is actually supposed to feel like. :-P

Off to bed to give the GONE all the help it can get. As soon as I watch the last third of the Project Runway finale...

Very Conveniently Local Horror Project just emailed to say they're set for cast, and cancelled next weekend's additional auditions. Apparently they heard back from someone they had already been talking to. So, no firearms handling for the reel. *shrug*

I think if I were going to get a callback from the Dust people, it probably would have happened by now. :-/ The thing with the dominatrix, they said they'd be contacting sometime this week, and sounded like they might let us know either way, which is always nice.

The Secret Garden at Summer Place will conflict all to hell with EO's Suor Angelica. For which the original plan to hire in principals and fill out the evening with other Puccini excerpts has now been scrapped for funding reasons. Which is kind of a bummer, but does mean that the principals will be pulled from the Training Ensemble instead. Right now my money is on a decent role in that, and not getting either Lily or Rose at SP. I haven't seen yet who's directing or music directing that, or I'd tell you how much money I'd put on it. *wry g*

Wow, there are a lot of moms on the breakdowns this week. O.o WUWT?

New Divababble blog post here.

Great Big Ball of Operatic Fluff opens TONIGHT.

And there's a bubblebath calling my name.

Happy Saturday, all!

Oh, no, you don't.

Three days. This opera is done in three days. You WILL wait.

*determined glare*

No, seriously. It is. But fun fluff, with lots of gorgeous singing, in our shiny new venue at the Hemmens Cultural Center. Chicagoland folks should all come check it out!

See our pretty poster!

( Read the exciting details! )

This will be the last time. Really and truly. But I just have to state my decided opinion that you put WAY TOO MANY SYLLABLES on one very short note in way too many instances in this opera.

Yes, I know you only had two weeks to write it. That is no excuse. Neither is the fact that there aren't very many consonants in the way.

I swear I'm going to sprain my tongue before this ball of fluff is done. In Italian. Which is just NOT A HARD LANGUAGE. At anything resembling a human rate of speed, that is.

Yours wearily,
Val

In all seriousness, it's actually going quite well, although the above is making memorization a bit trickier than I'm used to. We had all the principals today, which rocked. Giannetta is freakin' adorable. And Dulcamara was our Yamadori in Butterfly, and besides having a helluva voice, he's a good actor, a nice guy, and a comics geek. (So was our Bonze. We had some backstage conversations that confused the snot out of people.) Nemorino and Belcore I haven't really met, but both sound great and seem cool. Solange is Adina, and she's, well, Solange. Which is generally a good thing if her head isn't exploding from trying to keep track of too many things. (It amuses the heck out of me that I actually got away with dedicating "This Place Is Mine" to her at the holiday party, and managed to spin it into a plug for volunteering while I was at it. "We don't want her to end up like this!")

Staging rehearsals, here we come!

Elgin OPERA holiday party was a rousing success. Magdalena is so much less stressful for everyone with a buffet!

I didn't take the recorder off pause when I thought I had, so no "This Place Is Mine," which is unfortunate because it went really well. I do, however, have...

Your Daddy's Son (mp3, 1.4 MB) - a bit more audience-ready than last time

My True Love (mp3, 1.1 MB) - last recorded at studio recital in June.

Due to uneven attrition, we no longer have Way Too Bloody Many Sopranos in the Elisir chorus. Which means, after a quick conference with Solange this afternoon, that I can stop banging my under-rehearsed brain against the mezzo line. The relief is palpable. There's that little part of me that's still all stubborn and wanting to prove that I can learn it (in defiance of a soprano stereotype I don't think I've actually heard anyone subscribe to since college), but oh, merciful heavens, my life in this opera just got So Much Easier. And really, when this is the story you're telling? Maestro can say "Opera is not about comfort" all he wants (and yes, today he did -- it was sort of a joke...), but I am nonetheless going to happily sing my comfortable normal part now!

In other Ridiculous Relief news, I am currently sitting at my computer in jeans instead of at Office of Doom's holiday party because I made the executive decision that I didn't want to drive to the darn thing in the snow AGAIN. Every. Single. Gorram. Year. I kid you not. We should warn the appropriate authorities as soon as the date is set.

Two three-hour rehearsals this weekend, first ones with the (quite rightly very particular) conductor. For which I so don't know this music well enough yet.

I totally agree that the once-a-week-until-staging chorus rehearsal thing is easier on most people. Too bad it also means that I couldn't be in a show in October without throwing a monkey wrench into my ability to learn this opera for February. That really is kinda nuts. I had grand plans of learning it on my own, until the reality of five shows a week for HA really sank in.

I know I'll get it, and in plenty of time for performances. But I'm not going to have much fun this weekend. Maestro can pick out who's screwing up at twenty paces, I swear.

Also, I would really, really, like the last stubborn vestiges of this cold to go AWAY and give me back my normal energy level. *grump*

Actually, I have a couple, but I've set a strict rule for myself against going into them. The purpose of this exercise is to throw stuff up on my LJ just as it was heard in public, flaws and all, and work on fixing said flaws for next time instead of stopping to explain them.

(With Magdalena nights, of course, it's also restaurant noise and all, and last night's crowd provided plenty of that. Just so you're aware, if you choose to click.)

Your Daddy's Son (mp3, 1.5 MB)

I did "My True Love" first but forgot to record it. Really should do that one of these days, as it's improved quite a bit since June.

It's that time again! Magdalena Music Festival is back the next three Saturdays (December 8, 15, and 22). Café Magdalena, 13 Douglas Ave, Elgin, IL, 6 to 9 p.m. Fun, intimate cabaret setting with artists of Elgin OPERA. The music is free, the food is reasonable and yummy, the chocolate-covered strawberries are to DIE. Come on out! (With any luck, my upper respiratory system will no longer consist entirely of mucus by then.)

Rehearsals for Elisir d'Amore will be ramping up soon, so expect much babbling about too many notes and too many consonants. Italian is really not that tongue-twisty a language. Except when it is. And oh, dear gods, the FLUFF. Don't get me wrong, I loves me some über-cute now and again. But I'll be ready to switch over to Puccini for the summer program. The Hemmens auditorium is going to float clean off its foundation on a bubble of silliness and schmoop. Hopefully I'll have a webpage to link you to soon; performances are February 9 and 10.

Of course, the Puccini program conflicts with Summer Place's The Secret Garden, because Fate hates me. Not that they'll give me Lily anyway, and I'm going to stick to my resolution not to do chorus for them anymore. Naperville is just too far to do chorus and not get paid, especially with gas prices what they are. But I gotta go out for it anyway, and if I do get either Lily or Rose, that'll be where you find me in June.

Divactivity update: ESO afterglow Saturday night is cancelled. Don't know why, but since I woke up this morning with an upper respiratory system full of concrete, don't much care just now. :-P

NightBlue has an unerring talent for doing their "Fireside Theater" open reading nights when I, say, have performances or need to pick up brainiacfive from the airport. The latter is the case this week, but is happening early enough that I might go anyway. I thought it was Hamlet from glancing at the email they sent me, but now that I look at the page it's I Hate Hamlet. In which I already played Deirdre about five seven (whoa!) years back, but it's a fun play, and I keep meaning to go to these things as much for networking as anything else. Wonder why they've moved it out to the burbs? I know the company is based in Lemont, but if they want off-Loop types to show up, where they were having it before is pretty much ideal. Most Chicago actors I know don't believe there's life west of Ashland.

Saturday night will likely find me singing at Magdalena sooner than expected -- we'll be back there for the regular "Magdalena Music Festival" gigs in December, but this week we're doing afterglow for Elgin Symphony at 10 pm. I'm not sure if that's a private event or what; I'll ask at Elisir rehearsal tomorrow night, in case anyone is interested.

Speaking of which, I really need to cram on that music -- I missed five chorus rehearsals during HA, and my schedule didn't have any real room for learning it on my own either. Lots of notes, in Italian, and we're short on mezzos so I'm one of several sopranos Solange has asked to switch for this one. The notes aren't physically difficult or anything, but fitting myself into chords somewhere other than where my brain is accustomed to takes some serious concentration.

Meanwhile, wanna go to havocthecat's belly dance performance tonight, and figure out a plan for meeting up with shadowmaat while she's in town...

Last evening of Magdalena Music Festival until December! I have four numbers on tap, and heard some Good Stuff at last night's rehearsal.

Café Magdalena, 13 Douglas Ave, Elgin, IL, 6 to 9 p.m. Fun, intimate cabaret setting with the artists of Elgin OPERA. The music is free, the food is reasonable and yummy, the chocolate-covered strawberries are to DIE. Come on out!

Magdalena Music Festival redux, Saturdays in September! I'll be singing tonight and probably the 28th.

Café Magdalena, 13 Douglas Ave, Elgin, IL, 6 to 9 p.m. Fun, intimate cabaret setting with the artists of Elgin OPERA. The music is free, the food is reasonable and yummy, the chocolate-covered strawberries are to DIE. Come on out!