audition..and what the..

I sang for home-land opera today- Zerbie, Durchz(v.1) and doll(v.2).
There were 2 other singers there who only sang 2 full pieces each. The bass-bari sounded good, and, of course, was studying in America, and the other sop. began with the Queen's first aria which was REALLY under tempo and really shaky. I mean-- if you can't hit that last F except for a little squeak that you hope comes out, WHY would you start with this piece? Or sing it at all?
Very interesting.

This 2nd singer, actually, is a girl that I sang with in a program 5 years ago. I recognized her, said hello, and we caught up in the few minutes before the audition.
She lives in Berlin, along with many other singers from here, and is trying to get by. Not sure she has jobs all the time, or anything like that- we didn't get to talking about that, but we all try to come back "home" and see if the hometeam will consider us, hire us, so that we can be with our family in the place that we love.

So. The singing went fine even though I'm most certainly NOT over Jetlag. I fell asleep at 11, woke up at 1, parched, fell asleep at 2, woke up at 5, and stayed up pretty much until I got out of bed at 9:30 to get ready for the day.
Also (the ...and what the... section of the title) I'm weirdly sick again with the same thing from 2 weeks ago. I had a fever last night, my throat is itchy, I can't even describe what I'm coughing up, and through it all- I can still sing fine.
It doesn't FEEL so good after I'm finished (which is why I'm resting in bed right now instead of at the beach), but the singing is still there, the high G's are still popping out, and the low E's are fine as well.
Hope nothing's really wrong because I'm not about to go see a Dr. on my vacay.

Oh, about the audition...I had a pianist who would absolutely not take my tempi. I mean, I asked him in the 5 min. rehearsal to take the Zerbie a bit faster than he was playing it, and he said he'd follow me. So I keep singing again, and he's still stuck. I speed up, and he doesn't go along and then I'm ahead.
UGH. So I had to do everything a bit slower today, INCLUDING DurchZ (how can I do my cool 'one breath' thing when it's so slow? I CAN"T!), and the Doll (LORD if those cadenzas in the 2nd verse weren't so easy for me to do because I'm used to being on roller skates or tethered in a gold outfit doing some craziness--I don't know how I would have gotten through with that tempo).

But again, it all went fine--because I knew he wouldn't speed up, I didn't freak, and I just went with it- with as much energy and support as possible.
And it was really good.

The Zerbie in particular is what I love beginning with now. From So War--otherwise it's too long.
But I can really get into it even though it's in the middle of the piece.
The only problem with it is that 3 times now I've been asked to sing DurchZ afterwards, and it's two octaves lower singing! And that is not the easiest.
The line of Mozart comes out great after the Strauss, it's just that dropping down that much after hanging out on high E's is a bit tricky. I am getting more used to it and preparing that way- warming up really high and then sustaining low E's and seeing how it feels.
It's "fine", but probably not as good as if Durch Z were my starter. But then they'd NEVER ask for Zerbie.
Sad.

Oh, and it's official. An "agented" long distance audition has landed me an AWESOME gig next year in a "cool" place :)