Staging begins today!

Musical rehearsals are finished! The past week has been so much fun. I'm already exhausted from the energy it takes to be focused, and 'performing' the music for a 3+ hour opera. I have learned a lot in this past week about my own process of preparation and adapting to the demands of the maestro!

This is how the process worked. I met with Maestro Effron on Tuesday last week to work on the aria my character sings. I was pretty nervous, but I knew I was well prepared musically. And that is basically what he said to me. He challenged me to use more colors in my voice to show the different emotions my character feels throughout the aria and show the progression of my character by the end of the aria. This is something I have heard before from directors. They want to see that the character has changed and the progression of that change from the beginning to the end of the aria. Maestro Effron also changed the places I took breaths and the phrasing that I had chosen. This was one of the hardest things to accommodate and he wasn't easy on me either. When your body is used to taking a breath in a certain place, it is very hard to retrain it. He wanted me to do what he wanted and I did my best to give him that. I left the coaching feeling good about the progress I had made through the coaching and I knew the Maestro was happy with it, too.

Rehearsals with the entire cast started in the next two days. We went through the entire opera, stopping to get notes or practice a tempo change. Our diction coach was also there to give us notes on our pronunciation. We have sung through the opera about five times now, and each one gets better. The Maestro is pleased and the cast is excited about putting the production aspects together with the music. I have loved this process, mainly because it is my first time and I've been absorbing every hint and moment. Here are a few things I've learned:

1. "I will tell you 50,000 different things to do in this opera, and you have to remember all of them. The next time you do this opera the conductor will tell you 50,000 more things and you have to do those, too." Maestro Effron
2. "Don't beat yourself up! That's my job!" Maestro Effron
3. When in musical rehearsals, don't forget about the dramatic motivations of your character. Those motivations help you sing the music.
4. Don't strive for 'perfect,' strive for memorable.

As we start staging rehearsals, we've been told we'll likely forget everything we worked on musically this past week. This is the normal process of staging. But we will remember after we get the staging into our bodies. I am very excited for this part of the process to begin!