Campbell Vertesi

I left San Francisco and flew to Chicago directly for an audition weekend.  Merola on Saturday, with a possible Sunday callback.  There was some bouncing around between the houses of my generous friends - no couch sleeping this time, everyone had an extra bed for me - but it was otherwise a nice little trip. 

For Merola, I sang my Verdi aria, Il Lacerato Spirito.  I felt quite good about the whole thing, comfortable throughout.  Hell, why dance around it - I felt like I sang the shit out of that audition.  Unfortunately, no call back there.  I suppose they heard another bass they liked better for Commendatore.  Still, at least I presented myself well.  Hopefully they'll hear me again next year.

I found out that Des Moines Metro Opera was holding auditions int he same building that same afternoon.  Perfect opportunity to crash, right?  I showed up with my resume and headshot, and amazingly they had enough time to hear me.  I sang not so amazingly.

Maybe it was how live the hall was, maybe I was just vocally tired (I've been working particularly hard on my recital rep lately), but that Verdi wasn't as good as it had been a few minutes ago.  And then they called Bartolo's aria... which had been fine for the previous two weeks.  I was excited to show what I could do with it in an audition.

And here I learned a life lesson: it's a bitch to go from Verdi to Mozart in under 30 seconds.  I started out OK in that second aria, but by the time I got to the end, I was dying up there. Really, I don't know if I've ever botched an aria quite that badly.

So despite the fact that I sing it well, I'm taking Bartolo off the package for the rest of the year... or at least until I can sing it well right after singing Verdi.

 Anyways, them's the lumps, right?  Everyone has to sing badly sometimes.  At least mine was for a Young Artist audition.  Could have been much much worse....

My friend and I walked out. 

But first, the positives: the singing was good, though our seats weren't the best aurally (Orchestra Right, 5 rows in.  Perfect if you're a trombone fan, not so great for the overall effect).  I could hear a lot about the voices, though it wasn't as overwhelming a sensation as I normally like. Tamino had wonderful high notes, but his voice was too heavy for my taste in the role.  I like my Mozart tenors easy and lyrical. This guy sounded good, but I really wanted to hear him sing Puccini.  The Papageno was a great vocal match for the part, and had a wonderful sense of comic timing.  I assume it was the director that asked him for so much old-timey mugging; I find comedy much funnier when it comes from a character who takes himself more seriously.  The Queen of the Night was a particular highlight - her O Zittre Nicht was dynamically nuanced, musically exciting, and generally bang on.  I'm always frustrated by the lack of movement traditionally afforded the QoN in this aria, and this show was no exception.  They chose exciting production machinery over exciting character drama as per usual: the Queen descended in a stage-machine moon, and delivered her aria standing a good 15 feet off the stage - and a good 20 feet back from the acoustic sweet spot for the hall.  It really says something about Erika Miklósa that she could dominate the aria so well while being upstaged so badly by the production.

And now the highlight - why we left.  The treatment of Monostatos and his "moors" was just offensive.  For the uninitiated: there's always some issue in the Flute with the treatment of the black slave characters - not to mention the generally misogynistic text - and different productions gloss over it differently.  The fact is, in the 18th century black people were considered less than human, and "blackface" style comedy was cutting edge humor.  Monostatos is written as that kind of character, but there is a lot of room for flexibility if you look for it.  Most productions do, and make the whole thing unoffensive to modern tastes with minimal intervention.

So maybe this was a traditionalist production.  Monostatos and his gang were essentially in blackface, albeit in different colors. Neon spandex, padded to look like an 18th century charicature of a black man, with huge buttocks and haunches, a gut, and parody tribal markings all over their bodies.  Matching face paint.  Their clothing was a loincloth and turban, generally with big lobe-stretching stage earrings and primitive stylized jewellery. The whole crew cavorted about and acted like idiots - this much is certainly traditional, but given the "green-face" costuming, it came off as a racial caricature of the stupid negro tribesmen.  I kept looking for a bucket of fried chicken to appear onstage.

Monostatos from a production photo (too bad you can't see his stance, or his buddies):

 Now, maybe I'm just over sensitive about this sort of thing.  After all,  I live in a city where racial tension is a very serious issue.  In in truth, coming from a part of Canada where racism is a relatively minor issue (relatively), just the fact that I live in a country where lynchings still occur makes me edgy about the whole thing.  Maybe they really wanted to depict tubby aliens with big posteriors, wearing their own tribal markings/loincloths/turbans and diving around like idiots.  This viewer was not convinced however, and even less so by the first act finale, when Monastatos looked like he wanted nothing more than to shout out "massa, massa!".  All you had to do is change the color of the leotard, and voila! Old time blackface comedy.  Don't we all wish THAT made a comeback.  My New York/South American friend felt the same way, and we didn't come back after the intermission.

It's the first time I've ever walked out of an opera.  I appreciate that many people will think I overreacted to a squat green man costume, and that's ok.  But my reaction was shock, then discomfort, then disgust.  I could not stay in good conscience.

I wonder what I would do if I were IN a production that incorporated elements like this?  It gets a lot harder to leave at the intermission when you're paid to stay. :) 

My life is in shambles - or at least the phone that runs my life is. After three years of a hard life, my Treo "Smartphone" has finally given up the ghost. This is the device that I use for everything from contact list to calendar to audition notes. It has my todo lists on there - which is a big deal for me - and everything down to the "movies to see" list.

Of course, this happens while I'm in the middle of a nomadic tour of the country. I'm flying from San Francisco to Chicago today, and I think I have a place to stay... she left me a cryptic message, but guess what: I can't call her back! AUGH!

I can send text messages, which is good. Unfortunately, I can't use the letters I, K or M, and I have no control of caps. A sample message:

Sorry DUDE BUT Y PHONE S COPletelY FUCED. LL HAVE TO CALL YOU FRO SYPE n a oent.

I just sent that to a friend of mine. My writing - usually my dominant mode of expression - is reduced to the incoherent ramblings of a monkey with two fingers and a palsy. I have also engendered a healthy hatret for the letters I K and M. The bastards. They pop up in all sorts of important words, like "I", and "moment".

To make matters worse, my friend in San Francisco with whom I stayed showed me his iPhone. How cruel! It's beautiful, it's wonderful, it's $80 a month and $400 up front, but I want one so badly it stings. Especially caught in my moment of weakness, while my own phone is falling apart...

Long story short, any donations of iphones are welcome.

It's the question everyone's asking me by email. The answer is: great. Really great. Opening night in particular was a huge hit, and everyone sang beautifully.  The audience was great, and I could really relax and engage in some audience banter.   

The only down side: there was no program!  I don't know why, but somewhere between the producer's computer and the printers things got fouled up.  That means that the audience may have enjoyed the show, but they have no idea who we are!  I was actually stopped on the street by the reviewer from the local paper, to ask for names of the cast!  I'm happy I ran into her... otherwise we would have been a bunch of nameless awesome singers in the review.

The Sunday Matinee wasn't as good, from our perspective.  Matinees are always a pain - as our Countess Alex Rafallo put it, "who wants to see opera while the sun is out?"   Hell, who wants to SING opera while the sun is out?  The audience was quiet and slow to get going, and that affected our energy big time.  I wasn't happy with my own aria... I was stupid and had coffee when I shouldn't have, and I got jumpy for the first half of the opera.  In the end it was still a good show and the crowd had a good time, but the overall spectacle wasn't on the same level as the night before. 

Sorry for not posting about this sooner, but there really isn't much internet access in Mendocino. Plus, I've been spending some quality time with my parents, and blogging just doesn't get very high on the priority list next to family.

Today I'm in San Francisco, hanging out with friends and relaxing.  I can't wait... this is really my last day to relax for awhile.  Between auditions, my graduate recital (ugh) and Masters' finals, I've really got to put my nose to the grindstone...

Today is our dark day before the performance weekend.  The show will go just fine... I'm narrating an incredible amount of text, but i guess that's just the way it goes when you want to present Figaro without surtitles!   My aria is fine, but not where I want it to be.  We'll see... they say one performance is worth 10 rehearsals.

Today I got to walk with a cane for the first time, for my Bartolo character.  I've never walked with a cane, or even seriously injured my leg, so it was interesting.  In an effort to try and get some real sense memory for the limp, I stuffed a big ole' pine cone in my shoe.

Was perfect.  Exactly appropriate, I think.  We did it a few weeks after she passed, to give everyone time to grieve... because that way, the memorial could really be a celebration of her life rather than a mourning of her death.  We had speakers who all told funny and poignant stories about her, lots of music, a slideshow, and some poetry.  All of this was just perfect.

Speaking of the music, one of the first things was yours truly, singing Danny Boy.  It was always one of Deedee's favorites for me to sing.  It was probably the hardest performance of my life.  You really have to divorce yourself from the situation, and just get in character.  I managed pretty well, until the second verse, where you sing directly about being dead... and how important it is for your friends to remember you.  I held it together vocally, but I was singing through tears.

"And I shall hear, though soft you tread above me,

And all my grave will warm and sweeter be,

For you will bend and tell me that you love me.

And I shall sleep in peace until you come to me." 

I can't even write it without crying.  Maybe this all seems personal, but writing is a big part of how I deal with things.  My word processer is a great therapist, believe me.  

I will never forget the closing words of one of Deedee's best friends, Jack: "I don't know where Peg is right now, or what she's doing.  But I know one thing: she's having a hell of a good time."

If anyone is interested, the website I built for the memorial is at pegcampbell.com . 

The cast and directors had a little meeting this morning.  It was discussed that although we all had concerns about pulling off a project of this magnitude in the time allotted, we could do a really fantastic job of a more limited production.  Today's rehearsal is a "cutting board" rehearsal (my term, not an industry one).  We sing through the entire show, and decide which recits etc can be cut.  We'll have a limited narration to fill the audience in on the happenings they missed, but it will essentially be a normal cut production of Figaro.  

And I'm relieved.  At the very least, 4 hours of Italian without surtitles is a lot to ask of any audience.  2 hours and a bit is much more reasonable.  

My part is not a large one, but my biggest problem is a common one - how to keep vocally warm in the long break between my scenes!  My first scene, at the beginning of Act I, includes my big aria.  I have to be warmed up for that.  But my next entrance isn't until the Act II finale!  In rehearsal at least, there's about 2 hours in between those scenes, where I'm sitting quietly studying music.  That's a lot of fallow time... and so far, by the time I've come on for the rest of my singing, my voice is cold and even a bit tired.  More on this later...

Today was the second rehearsal, and I have to say I'm starting to look for the panic button.  I'm not ready to push it yet, but I want to know where it is, just in case.  For those who aren't familiar, Figaro is a long opera.  More than 4 hours at full length, and our production has only the barest of cuts.  A lot of it is recitative, which is brute memorization work.  The rest is arias and ensembles, each of which can stand a surprising amount of musical work to get "performance-ready".  Putting on a show like this in 2 weeks is a difficult task, to say the least.

The entire cast has arrived knowing their parts, but I'm learning about the special requirements of Mozart.  This isn't like Boheme, where the parts all interlocked, but the piece keeps moving if someone messes up.  In a Mozart recitative or ensemble, if one person trips up the whole beautiful construct comes crashing down.  And though we all know our parts individually, the moment we put down our scores and try to sing together, it becomes very easy to trip up.  Frighteningly easy.

This would not be such a problem, if we had some more time.  The plan is to stage the entire opera in two days (!), and have a staged concert version ready for performance by a week Friday.  I consider myself an optimistic guy, but this is looking dicey.  The music is good, but it needs a lot more work to be ready... and we're about to add staging?  I just don't know, but I don't like the look of it.

In the end though, this isn't my lookout.  My job is to do the best I can at my (small) part.  If the rest of the production crashes and burns, at least Bartolo will be scintillating, I guess.  To be honest, I'm not sure what do do.  The director is a friend to me as well as a colleague, and at some point I think I have to say something, even just in private.  I just want a plan B, in case this ambitious project proves to be as difficult as I think it is.

Will post about my eventful weekend (art, emergency rooms, and hottubs) when I get to the net cafe.  I promise. :)