To make a VERY long story short, the place we are subletting was sublet to another person for the first half of the summer. That person didn't find it necessary to take the trash out, clean out the fridge, clean the apt, do the laundry, or for that matter do ANYTHING considerate of someone else moving in shortly after him. So, we arrived here to an apartment that was filthy and filled with dead flies. Everywhere. After the initial shock and immediate call to a cleaning service, I could relax into what would be my first evening rehearsal just 2 hours later.
Fast Forward 24 hrs.
The apartment is CLEAN and live-able, my first staging rehearsal went fine, first musical coaching went fine, now almost the entire "opera" act is staged and that is what is most challenging in terms of blocking. In this production I'm on stage. The. Entire. Time. Thanks, whoever directed this 6 years ago. Thanks a lot. Of course right before my 11 minute aria I have to dance, jump off of a bar into the arms of 4 men and sashay around with a tophat. OF COURSE.
Got good work done in 2 musical rehearsals and have a rehearsals with the Intendant tomorrow- he's our conductor for this production.
Staging is going fine except that we're being 'plugged in' to a previous production. Without the original director there, it's a lot of 'let me refer to my notes which makes no sense, oh wait, let's turn on the dvd and see what they did in 2006'.
So, a LOT of standing around, waiting what to be told to do. No real 'process' you could say.
That doesn't make it any less artistic, I just get fewer choices so in essence, I have to take the choice that's already been made for me and make it work. Commit to it, and find a reason for it to have happened.
So far baby-momma-opera-momma is working out just fine.
The little one is not 3 months old like last time around, where it was on-the-clock feedings every 3 hours or else screaming commenced. No, now I am not as worried about stretching out a feeding for a 4 hour block of time that I'm called to the theater. I'm not pumping either, YET! Got some FREEZER storage for every time I miss 'bed-time' (which, actually, is kind of often, since it's 8pm and rehearsals go until 9). But since we live about 4 minutes walk away from the opera, I'm going to maybe ask our director to have our evening break at a set time: ie, we rehearse from 6-9pm, always break from 7:30-7:50... and that will be enough time to have the little one brought to me for his last meal before bedtime.
Navigating opera-life again is fun. I'm excited to go to rehearsals. I love this music. I love doing what I'm doing. And just as equally, I love coming home to the little one and reading books and playing with airplanes on the floor.
