The hotel had wireless (yessss!) and I just happened to check my email one last time before packing up lappylaptop for a week and leaving it all by it's lonesome while I cavorted around the Veneto.
(and by cavorting I mean eating gelato, and taking pretty pictures of the view from Ponte Pietro)
And then a curious email. Could I call someone asap about filling in for a leading role in a concert version of my absolute favorite opera in English and dream dream role to perform? Well SURE I could!
Have I performed it before? Not entirely, and never with orchestra. But I had been assigned numerous duets and the famous finale many times throughout the past in summer programs, school, etc.
Can I arrive in ANOTHER COUNTRY on Thursday? SURE--just set it up. I'll leave Venice a day early.
Can I be off book? WHY NOT?!
And so- a lesson in learning an opera in five days (after your music is sent to you via two huge pdf files and you spend 20 Euros printing it out at EZInternet Cafe across from the Munich Hauptbahnhoff at midnight the day before your departure for said vacation)
:
1. Words, words words.
What else could you do on a 5 hour train ride but repeat and write down the text?
Over and over. And then again. I like to write out everything I need to learn in as tiny print as possible on one piece of paper.
I do it looking at the score first, and then to test myself, I write it out again without later on. But until then, I wandered around Verona Day 1 with that piece of paper, testing my memory and referring to just that instead of the full score.
2. Ipod Ilove.
I happened to have the correct version of the show in a recording on my ipod so for the ensemble pieces that I had never really paid attention to before, I could get the tonality in my head.
Luckily I also had my pitch pipe, so at night before going to sleep at the hotel I would blow the first pitch of a piece, and try to very quiety sing through it and see if I end up on the right pitch at the end.
If not, I back up and find out where I went wrong.
Between running the words on every train, walking down via Mazzini, and at Juliet's Balcony on day 1 and 2, I got most of the words down.
The music was harder because since we were always in a public place I couldn't sing out.
EXCEPT that I did give the stagecrew a performance at the Arena di Verona at around 10am on Day2--- but I sang O mio babbino caro to the huge and amazing empty stone structure---it was pretty spectacular... plus, the crew that was setting up for that evening's Aida all stopped what they were doing, listened, and clapped at the end.
By Thursday night I was humming everything without looking at the music anymore, and I could run the words at any time, anywhere.
So I got on the plane, flew an hour, and after three rehearsals on Friday, learning the staging, and falling into bed exhausted, it was performance day on Saturday--and voila- my European Debut.
Feels great.
And now back to regular life.
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