New Year. New Blog.

New Year. New Blog.

Upon my return to the states I jumped right in to rehearsals for Stony Hill Players Cosi Fan Tutte singing my first FIORDILIGI. Now, I confess, I did not think I could do it. But my teacher did. My coaches did and obviously the people who cast me did. I had reservations, but by the end of the run I still had a voice. In fact, it felt GREAT!! The way the role is written just really fit me. All that jumping around from high to low and back again feels amazing! And when does a soprano get to sing that low anyway? I guess it plays to my baser instinct of wishing I were a Mezzo.

Immediately after that, I made my Lincoln Center debut at Avery Fisher Hall! Ridiculous. The piece was beautiful. The Chelsea Symphony played fantastically and Matthew Aubin our conductor was fantastic. Oh, AND I GOT TO SING AT LINCOLN CENTER!!!

See!! It really happened! 

As a change of pace, this soprano spent the summer working as Company Manager at Opera New Jersey. It was defiantly something new, and I am so grateful to the people who made it possible and helped me learn along the way. I can certainly see myself getting into the administrative side of the business at one point in my life, but not at this time. I still have “the bug” which became very clear watching our fabulous Studio Artists sing in the ensemble of HMS Pinafore and thinking to myself “Man, I wish I were doing that right now.” Maybe that was because I had spent the afternoon scurrying around replacing burnt fuses and soliciting donations in kind… but that’s all part of being Company Management. Making people comfortable and happy in a new place, and planning parties which was a lot of fun, very fulfilling and one of the hardest jobs I have ever had. I am so blessed that my hosts were so awesome! Not only did I get to live with one of my closest friends but would come home to be greeted warmly by 2 poodles and a glass of wine provided by my loving hosts. 

Inspired by many other athletic performers, this summer I also competed in my first of many Triathlons because I thought an expensive, time consuming hobby would be just the thing to add to my expensive, time consuming career- lol. The training gave me some very valuable alone time when I was working a job that was technically on call 24-7. I completed the She-Rox Asbury Park Tri and won 2^nd place in my age group in the Delaware Diamond man. I am sure there will be many more of these in my future.

Back to being a Soprano. This fall I had the opportunity to collaborate with Morningside Opera on Vid Gurerro’s new Spanish/English adaptation of Le Nozze di Figaro called ¡Figaro! (90210) 

singing my fist Countess. The adaptation was brilliant. Truly. I hadn’t felt that creatively fulfilled from working on a piece in quite a long time. Just brilliant. I do a lot of singing in translation, and usually the translation goes directly with the original….but it doesn’t always resonate with the audience, but this did. He would take a line like “Dove sono I bei momenti/ Di dolcezza e di piacer?” which literally means “where are they those beautiful moments/ of sweetness and pleasure” and turn it into “Seems like yesterday that dive in west LA/ two young dreamers met and drank and talked till dawn.” BRILLIANT!! That sentence means something to me as an English speaking American, the other… not so much. Or turning Sull' Aria into a Sexting Duet. Or what he did with Porgi Amor. But the true brilliance comes with the character of Cherubino AKA Lill' B man. You just have to watch it. I had never in my life heard an audience react like this to an opera. Please check out their page here: Figaro 90210

Winning: That is me. Playing my Ukulele. On Stage. With the Symphony. Winning. 

I then had the opportunity to make my Knoxville Opera debut as Adele in Die Fledermaus and had a BLAST! The cast and crew were absolutely amazing and I am so excited to be returning in April for Cenerentola AND something else in 2014!! Which sounds like a fake year to me, but I am just so thrilled to have upcoming work!!!! Not bad for an unmanaged Soprano… but that is the next thing on the to-do list: Find a manager. More on that later…

Not the real poster, but just too funny NOT to share!

Next up: Learning all those Rossini notes, the Dvorak Requiem, a cabaret program planning a wedding and moving to Boston, all in the next 4 months!!! I am sure hilarity will ensue. This time, I promise to write about it. 

It's been a busy and successful 2012 and I can't wait to see what the future holds!!