Singing and Snow Day

It is coming down out there.  A poor pigeon just landed on the railing that lines the shaftway outside the 2nd story of my Starbucks only to sink into three inches of piled snow.  I went first thing this morning to Macy's to buy boots, and found out that I was a day late-- apparently all of NY went to Macy's YESTERDAY and plundered the store.  I still managed to find a pair of stylish black-rubber-with-flannel-lining-Sperry's, and while I was considering the purchase, a saleswoman slapped a 50% off sticker on them.  I love a deal.  Sold.

I lived the life of a singer yesterday.  I woke up, warmed up, then met up with Diane, a woman who spent 15 years as an opera singer in Germany and Austria, and then spent the last 15 years at the Met.  We walked around St. John the Divine's up on the Upper West Side (beautiful, and may I say, far more lovely on the inside than National Cathedral).  Then we went to this funky Hungarian Bakery across the street-- delish.   We finished up, I raced back (if you can call any form of travel that uses a bus as racing) to my apartment, grabbed my music and went back to the West Side, this time to the Metropolitan Opera. Yes, that Mecca of All Things Opera.

I had an appointment with Lydia, an accompanist at the Met, who is friends with the woman I'm subletting from.  I was to meet her at the stage door to go to the rehearsal rooms, but she was late and I got to sit and silently observe the comings and goings of the many characters that make up that huge operation.  Carmen was going up in about an hour, and friends of the cast were coming by to pick up their comp tickets.  Singers who were rehearsing the other productions that go up later in the week were popping in and out.  No one went in or out without a key card or a visitor's pass, and all of this was overseen by a large man up on a podium, who stared down all comers and orchestrated this intricate dance of entrances and exits.  I wanted to ask him if he got sick of the half-door that would slam after every person went by, but thought the better of it-- he didn't seem like he had a sense of humor.

Lydia finally came to fetch me, and we wound our way back into the catacombs.  I saw, briefly, the stage entrance, and then hopped on an elevator up to the 2nd floor.  The practice room she had secured was full of costumes for Shostakovich's The Nose.  I mildly joked that if an alarm went off, I'd have no idea how to leave the building.  She said that this was one of the less tricky places to get to!

I sang for her, and it went about as I expected-- she said I need a French diction class -no argument there.  It's different to sing French than to speak it, and I have spent ZERO time on words anyway.  She was also confused about what rep I should be preparing.  I wasn't surprised by her confusion since my voice teacher still won't classify my voice ('When you sing the mezzo stuff, you sound like a mezzo!  When you sing the soprano stuff you sound like a soprano!').  She gave me an amazing compliment, though.  She basically said, 'the voice is right' and 'your voice is big enough to sing this stuff HERE'.  Hallelujah.  Upshot-- you're sloppy, but that's some voice, girl.