Campbell Vertesi

I arrived in California today, and met the rest of the Figaro cast at our residence. It's one big house, apparently usually used as a Christian retreat. Just imagine the Real World, Opera style. The cast is great, the house... well it needed some work.

I guess you can call it a teambuilding exercise: we all pulled together, and cleaned the place from top to bottom. When we got there, the kitchen was sticky, the walls and ceilings were cobwebbed, and the laundry room was inaccessible. By the end of the night, the place was clean enough to walk barefoot, the laundry machines were great, and even the hot tub was filled, warming up and filtering as it should. I can't say we weren't a little miffed at having to do basic cleaning and maintenance first thing when we got there, but in the end the house should be just great.

The cast, as I mentioned, is very cool. I don't know anyone's last name yet, so I'll have to write about them later... but trust me, all very nice, friendly people who will be fun to work with. Tomorrow, we have our first rehearsal...

Interesting tidbit - it bothers a lot of singers that whenever a Mozart bass sings in an ensemble, he doesn't get to sing the bass line. Rather, he often sings above the baritone parts! In fact, in modern productions it's customary to switch the bass roles' part with one of the baritones, so each voice can sing in their more comfortable register.

A perfect example is in Nozze di Figaro, with Dr. Bartolo. In the first big ensemble number (the Act II finale) the original score has the bass Bartolo singing the entire time in the upper fifth of his range. Meanwhile, the baritone Count sings an octave below, keeping the bassline. In authoritative scores, the parts are written this way, and it gave me a heart attack when I tried to learn the part. But ask a working bass-baritone if he's ever sung that part. Everyone switches the Count and Bartolo's lines. It's so common that in the Schirmer score, they do it for you as an editorial decision.

Why would Mozart, who knew the voice so well, make such a mistake? Is it a problem with the originals? A publisher's messup from the first printing run?

My friend (baritone) Mike Krzankowski enlightened me on the subject yesterday. Apparently the bass who premiered so many of these roles, Bussani, had a lot to do with it. It turns out that he sang these roles as an older singer, when his low range had lost a lot of its lustre. He was much more comfortable in his high voice, and the parts were written accordingly.

And he ruined it for the rest of us.

Saturday evening was my first audition of the season - Sarasota Opera, hearing singers in Chicago.

For a first audition, I felt good about it.  At the last minute I quailed and took La Vendetta off my package.  It's just not quite at the point I want for an audition aria... I like my audition pieces to be roll-out-of-bed-and-sing confident, and this is just not there yet. I'm leaving it on for the rest of the season though: I'm about to spend two weeks working on that role.  I expect it to pass that line of comfort by the time the shows are done.

Anyways, this audition was in a room I hadn't seen or sung in before.  It was an odd, long hall with a boomy quality to it... though pleasant for the performer, to get to hear oneself so well. The committee was friendly and nice to sing for (as far as committees go), and I felt good about my singing.  There were a couple of notes that were a bit out of control - pitchy or not quite in full resonance.  Still, I think I sold the arias just fine. 

I ended up making some stupid decisions about my focal points, which I regret.  In an aria you always have to focus somewhere in the room - usually it's a mimed character you're singing "to" - and you generally want to place that focus just above the committee's heads.  This way they get the "full blast" of the acting, without feeling assaulted by you.  Me, I got stupid and placed my key focus somewhere in audience right.  I guess something about the odd dimensions of the room got me confused.  Not that it destroyed the performance or anything, but it wasn't optimal.  Oh well - a lesson to remember for the rest of the season.

 I found a bit of an obstacle in the cold I've been working through.  My throat is fine, so I haven't really mentioned it here.  But my right ear is stuffed up completely... I can't hear out of it at all.  This has some consequence for how I hear myself sing, but that isn't so critical.  (You have to learn to ignore your own perception of your sound, since it will change so dramatically depending on the space you're singing in) A larger problem was the fact that the pianist was to my right.  Which means that while I think she played very well, I really just had to take that on faith most of the time.  I tried to get in front of the piano a bit, so my left ear could pick up the slack. 

Tomorrow I leave for Mendocino California, to sing my first ever Nozze di Figaro!  Stay tuned... 

Today was my last day off before I leave for Figaro in California.  I met with my good friend Todd, and we spent quality time in the museum of contemporary art, where they were doing an exhibit on the connection between popular music and visual art.  It was very interesting - I had never thought of the connection there before, but of course some really fantastic and interesting art has been done for record albums, and rock was the nexus for that in the West.    Very cool and interesting, and a great way to spend my day off.

When I returned to my friend Allison's apartment (where I was staying in Chicago) however, things were not as great.  Allison had had a bad fall in a soccer game that day, and was now treating an unexplained allergic reaction.  She tried antihistamines on the recommendation of her insurance hotline, but at around 10pm it was apparent that it wasn't helping.  By the time her roommate and I got Allison to the hospital, she was inflating like a red Verucha Salt, and starting to have trouble breathing.

The hospital was great, and they took perfect care of my friend.  Her roommate and I stayed up with her until she was released (around 3am).  By then it was too late for me to really sleep - my flight left at 6:30am, so I had to be at the airport at 5 - so I had a little nap and headed off to the airport.  Good thing we weren't rehearsing on the first day!

The itinerary is finally settling down for this month.  This Saturday I leave Cincinnati in the morning, carpooling with two goood friends.  We drive to Chicago, sing auditions for Sarasota Opera, and then settle in for a good famly dinner. 

On Monday I fly from Chicago to San Francisco, where my ride to Mendocino awaits.  I can't wait to sing Bartolo!  My time in Mendo is bisected by a trip home for my grandmother's memorial service. I'll fly back to cali the following Monday to sing in the preview concert, with the full performances on the following weekend.

Then I fly back to Chicago, where I'll (hopefully) audition for the Merola program at San Francisco Opera.  Then it's back to Cincinnati by bus, where I'll be preparing for my Master's recital!

And amid all of that I'm still working remotely, preparing recital rep, and trying to grow my Bartolo character, who has been sadly neglected through all this moving in mess.

Just looking at that schedule makes my head spin!  I'l be taking this one step at a time... what a great job to have, though. 

This week we finally took posession oof our semi-permanent digs in Oxford OH.  Semi-permanent is the best we get... we'll be there for the year, and then off to parts unknown!  Such is the life of a pair of itinerant singers.

 That's good news for my psyche: an actual home apartment, with my own plates and furniture and bathtub is a big deal to me psychologically.  But it's bad news for my back and arms, because it's moving time!  

Regular readers may remember (or may not, I don't know if I wrote about it here or not) that for the last three moves, I've been conveniently out of town while Bryn did all the grunt work.  Well, this time it's my turn.  Bryn strained her wrist doing handstands (don't ask) the other day, so I'm the only one physically capable of moving boxes.  And sweet jesus are there boxes.  

 So far I've made four carloads and one vanload from our friends' house, where we are fortunate to be storing our stuff.  That's a lot of lifting!  We have boxes and boxes of records and books, which feel like they're made of lead.  We have appalling numbers of CDs and DVDs, musical instruments and kitchen stuff.  And the clothes!  

We've resolved to cut our posessions down by half for the next time we move.  My sanity demands it.  Plus, our bank accounts could use with any boost from eBay we can get. 

Today I started working on the physical life of Bartolo.  Unfortunately, without a cane in Cincinnati I'll have to wait until I get to California to work on the "walk."  But there is much more than just a walk to a character!  My favorite is figuring out the nervous tic.

Most people have a nervous habit they do, something they do when they get emotional, or angry.  If this action is consistent throughout your character's physical and emotional life, it will help make the image of this person appear real in the audiences eyes.  Unfortunately, it's easy to go overboard with this.  If you're always doing your nervous "thing", it becomes pretty transparent and fake.  The balance is a careful one.  (think about Indiana Jones' little smirk, or any of Chris Farley's character's nervous physicalizations.  These bring some color to the character, and an easy physical cue for the audience of his state of mind)

I decided that Bartolo's nervous tic will be with a pencil, or a pen perhaps.  A little twirl, or some funny trick he does almost without thinking.  I like this idea because not only does it give me a very personal prop to work with, not only does it give me a physical action that can keep me occupied while Bartolo thinks, but it's a very distinctive sort of action too.  Plus, the possibility exists of Bartolo getting particularly worked up and breaking the pencil - that's good for effect, depending on how you play it.

 Some other examples... my Colline folds the lapels of his coat obsessively, and I've always wanted to learn a few knife twirling tricks for Sparafucile.

Anyways, I'm spending quality time at pentrix.com - a very good place to waste an afternoon if you want to learn tricks with a pencil. :) 

...is generally quite a difficult thing to do.  The other day I took a break from the rollercoaster of emotions, wiped away some tears and sat down to work on Bartolo a bit.  Not so good.  Turns out that when you've been crying and under a lot of stress, your chords don't respond quite right.  Or maybe you don't respond quite right.

Either way, it sucked.  So badly that even my parents, now conditioned to tune out musical practice around the house, said something.  "Boy, that sure sounds high for you."  Yes. It is high, but not that high.  I was just full of suck, and without the emotional or physical energy to sing the part.

So now I'm sad about all the death in my universe recently, stressed about applications and missing so much school, and I'm starting to worry about my upcoming role because hey - maybe I can't sing it after all.

(If the director of the Nozze or any of my colleagues from there are reading this: don't worry, I'm sure it's temporary singer madness.  I've sung it through several times very well, and I feel pretty comfortable with the whole thing.  Really.)

And my first audition is coming up in a week - the first time I'll use La Vendetta in an audition setting!  There is so much character work and musical coaching left to cram into one week... ah well.  Not much of a choice this year. :)

I'm in Vancouver now, to support my family through the death of my grandmother.  Today I heard that one of my old friends in Vancouver passed away on Tuesday. 

I would like to write more on the subject, but I'm not sure if the family has announced anything yet.   Out of respect for them, I will wait until I find an obituary to post about this.

In the meantime, this is one distraught opera singer. 

So, it was decided yesterday that I should go home to Vancouver for awhile to support my family.  My flight leaves tonight at 6:30 - you can imagine the scramble I've been doing for the last 24 hours.  Applications have to be finished and sent early, recitals have to be scheduled, and classes have to be negotiated.  Here I am, second day of classes for me and I'm already telling profs that I won't be there. 

On top of it all, Bryn and I are finally moving into an apartment this weekend... so I have to leave with everything packed up around our sublet, and return in time to help with the move.

So, my apologies, but a long and detailed blog post doesn't make the priority list today.  I have some good topics on my mind though, so we'll see for tomorrow.