Rehearsals, Work; You Know How It Is

My title describes the situation of my life exactly except that I neglected to include my academic pursuits, for which I have had little time of late, in it. To begin, then, my sister and I went to our first rehearsal for Fiddler on the Roof last evening, and I was ready for these to commence. We have a cast of about 55, which is a considerable decrease from our regular amount of performers in our summer musicals, but this smaller cast almost makes me think that our show will be even better than previous ones have been. Most of the principals in our show are perfect for their parts, but I am not sure about the others since I have never met them. I think our greatest difficulty shall be mastering our Russian accents. Some of our cast members have likened it to having a lazy tongue with a marble in the front of one's mouth (try saying that with a Russian accent), and it seems to be a comparable analogy for those of us with little experience with Russian. I have finally found a language in which I have no degree of proficiency that I must use. Usually, I can discern what I am saying in any of the Romance and many of the Teutonic languages, but Russian and Finnish are alleged to be two of the most difficult languages to grasp in the world; it is good, then, that I am learning the proper accent to use when speaking this lexicon. Perhaps I shall learn Russian in the future.

As for work, I had it pretty easy in the professional realm this week as my employer was on vacation in New York City seeing shows and visiting with friends. However, my parents decided to capitalize on this period of relaxation for me and remodel part of our kitchen while I was at home. For about the space of a week, the wall separating our kitchen from our bathroom was open, so every spare minute of mine has been devoted to manual or mental labor.

You may recall that I said something about my debut as an author in a recent post. I finished the short history of my local community theatre before the thirtieth of the preceding month. I am largely dissatisfied with the finished product, but there is little that can placate me since I discovered how truly little I knew of the history of the venue while I was writing it. Soon, I shall rewrite it after I interview several people who were influential in creating the history of the theatre, and I am confident that when I understand the facts from the sources, I shall write something worthy of our newly redesigned website, which brings me to my next piece of news. I am one of only three people who have actually seen the new design of our website, and, while it is not online yet, you shall have to take my word for it when I say that it is truly an excellent piece of work. It is such a graceful, elegant departure from what we currently have, and it rivals the sites of some of our more professional theatre companies in the state.

As for opera, a subject which is difficult to follow in the summer months, let me say that I wish that I could go and see Dawn Upshaw in recital in Virginia. There was an advertisement for it in the May issue of Opera News, I believe. Her voice is so pure, and her range is almost unbelievable. I wish she would sing in an opera at the Met. The role I would love to hear her sing is Ilia in Mozart's Idomeneo. I would also think that her voice would be ideal for the Handel repertoire. Listen to her in this video on YouTube of her singing With Darkness Deep from Theodora.


One hears and understands every syllable she sings, and usually sopranos have trouble with their diction in English, but Ms. Upshaw clearly does not. She is also an accomplished singer in the realm of Broadway's repertoire. She does not disappoint in this video from Carnegie Hall's Opening Night 2008 in celebration of Leonard Bernstein's 90th birthday. She sings with Christine Ebersole, Thomas Hampson, and (yes, really) conductor Micheal Tilson Thomas. Yo-yo Ma was also there, and he played an amazing cello solo.



I hope you have enjoyed this post, and thank you for reading.
-Tyler.

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