Discretion Is Advised

As we enter the most public portion of our annual cycle, I refer you to a post of a few months ago on Arts Addict: Losing My Anonymity. Jason is a working orchestral musician with a highly successful blog, and he discusses the challenges of balancing transparency with discretion.

I've been blogging for over 3 years, and every few months the landscape changes. During my first season in the blogosphere, I was extremely cautious. Never used names, always asked permission before discussing almost anything or posting a photo of anyone. I still err on the side of discretion, but the dividing line has shifted.

Many bloggers have only found out that they've overstepped that line after the damage has been done. There are no rules except common sense and courtesy, and everyone has a different frame of reference. I've never been "anonymous" in any way, but the people I work with all summer and those I hear in audition every fall have every right to their privacy. Yet the success of blogs like this one depends on honesty and transparency.

So, if you're an artist about to spend your summer at the Trap, or if you have a friend or loved one who will be here this season, what can you expect? If you're an opera fan who checks out this space for inside scoop, will you really get it? Well, it's an overstatement to say that I have guidelines for these things, but here's a bit of the logic behind it:

Opt Out: Most of our artists and staff know about the blog. We make sure everyone understands that I'm posting regularly through the season, and I give folks a chance to opt out of any mention in this forum.

Photos: Performance and/or dress rehearsal photos are fair game. Other rehearsal photos and candids are case-by-case. If it's not the least bit controversial and it's flattering, I'll probably just go ahead and use it. It it's sensitive or personal in any way, and/or if it makes anyone look bad, I ditch it. If I'm not sure, I ask. (I'm the most camera-phobic person I know, and I'm sympathetic. It's probably why I prefer being on this side of the lens.)

Anecdotes: Humorous stories that don't put anyone in a compromising position are gold. Even so, I almost never use real names, and sometimes change a few details to protect the innocent.

Verboten: Unfortunately, some of the most illuminating events are emotionally charged and fraught with anxiety. Occasionally there's a way to address the substance of these events later, and in a context that protects anonymity. But many of those stories, no matter how compelling, will always remain private.

Ready Or Not

I didn't intend to take a blog mini-vacation recently, but I've been remiss. I was waylaid by a host of impending season-related non-blog-worthy tasks, a big volunteer project at my son's school, and taking care of some family business before I go underground for 4 months. But I'll be back next week (the official start of rehearsals!!) with entries every few days throughout the summer.

Postscript: Practice Makes Perfect

One of the most difficult things to get across to an aspiring performing artist is the importance of rehearsal. Not just quantity, but quality. It's not enough to think about practicing, and it's not much better to do it without energy, context and intention. The only way to perform well and consistently under pressure is to prepare for it thoughtfully and creatively.

So, I will take my own advice for once. I hereby practice.

"No."

"Sorry, but I can't."

"No, thanks."

"Wish I could help, but I can't."

"No."

"Thanks for asking - hope you can find someone else."

"No."

"Uh... no."

OK, maybe the next time I have to perform under pressure, I will have some rehearsal on my side. And I won't be in the same sorry state I ended up in this spring.

Amidst the spring chaos, City of Angels was rewarding, exhausting, and memorable. Thanks for holding it together on several fronts at once, Ben. :)

Verde

I've been stalled, trying to distill a post inspired by Earth Day. So many fragments of ideas have been floating in and out of my mind, and I thought that if I just gave it a few more days, a coherent whole would emerge.

Well, it hasn't, but that never stopped me from writing before. :)

The Wolf Trap Foundation has been making important contributions to the discussion on the arts and the environment for quite a while now. It's not my intention to detail all of it here, but you really should take a look at Go Green with Wolf Trap. It's an issue about which Terre Jones, Wolf Trap CEO, cares deeply. And the Foundation's partnership with Wolf Trap National Park positions us as an ideal leader in this movement.

True Confessions

Background: I don't consider myself an activist, but I've been making small efforts for years. We seem to have hit an earth-friendly peak in the late '80's, growing our own vegetables in the back yard, using hemp grocery bags (still in my car) and washing literally thousands of cloth diapers. So I'm completely sympathetic to the causes of environmental awareness and conservation.

Conflict: I've had a tough time getting up a full head of steam to cheerlead for my own organization's Green Initiative. Of course it's important, on so many different levels. And I'm proud to be part of an organization for which this is a priority. So why the conflict? Simply, there is absolutely no time or energy left in my work psyche for anything else. I have a job, it needs to be done as well as possible, and it taps out any reserves I have. This very important issue feels like a very large fly buzzing around my head, trying to tell me something I can't make time to hear.

Resolution?

Clearly, there's a lesson here. It's beginning to nibble at my brain, but I haven't absorbed it yet.

The benefits of immersing oneself in music, art, theatre or dance are clearly harmonious with the mindset that we all need to cultivate in order to live long and well on this earth. The essence of humanity lies in the heart of all the arts, and that same core is the part of us that will find a way to use all of our resources wisely and not squander our natural gifts.

There's a parallel here that starts inside us and has nothing to do with compact fluorescents or reusable bags. We need to learn to operate happily within the limitations of our own bodies and minds. We ignore these limits at our peril. I am extraordinarily blessed to have a large store of mental energy and good health, but I regularly abuse both by not respecting those resources. Learning to work with instead of against my own personal resources could give me a mindset that can take the next step and consider the stewardship of my larger environment.

It's not such a leap to bring this all back around to the opera company. (Oh right... this is an opera blog...) Our home at The Barns is beautiful, personal and unique. But there are clear parameters - limitations of design and space. When we embrace these parameters and work within them, the results are rewarding and illuminating. When we fight them or ignore them, we struggle mightily and sometimes fail.

I told you this isn't conclusive, so all you get are these fitfully formed thoughts. But perhaps part of the lesson comes in embracing the ambiguity.

Earth Week in the Garden

My brother taught me that rainy days make for great outdoor photography. Something about the color saturation. This morning's foray in the gardens reminded me of the people from whom most of us are descended - people who would have little trouble with conservation. My grandmother's water pump and my husband's grandfather's wagon wheel conjure up the image of generations who wasted little.

The Finale Zone

It's just me and my workstation. And it could be far worse.

The last several weeks have been far more fragmented than I was equipped to handle. My hopeless addictions to multi-tasking and over-commitment may be unbreakable. And so I'm surprised when I'm capable of even brief episode of single-minded focus.

The woodwind and brass parts for Verdi's Un giorno di regno are unreadable. It's naive to expect much else of an opera that has probably only been produced a few dozen times since the 27-year-old Giuseppe wrote it. We're staring at messy sheets of music that look like 10th-generation xeroxes of the original music from the 19th century. If we hand these parts to the wind players, the orchestra rehearsals will be inefficient (read: chaotic), and the only way out will be to add rehearsal time and blow out the budget.

What's the alternative? Spending 3-4 hours a day this month with my computer, Finale software, and digital piano. By the end of the month, we'll have brand new wind parts for the Giorno orchestra. I'll be behind on a host of other issues, but at least I'll have something to show for it.

It felt like a harsh sentence, but I'm surprised how comfortable it feels to go into the zone. I'll tire of it before it's done, but for now, it's oddly comforting to focus on one thing at a time for hours at a time.

Is It Crowded in Here?

Remember Sybil? I guess she made an impression on me because I was in thrall of a music therapy career at that time, fascinated by all manner of personality disorders. (Plus, my own very sheltered childhood included a Sally Field fixation.)

There have been far too few hours in these recent days. The combination of the abrupt frequent changes of gears and the lack of sleep has made it seem as though a temporary (purely recreational) dissociative identity disorder might be just the ticket.


Thelma, Mild-Mannered Arts Administrator

Thelma has been dogged by guilt this week, for she has let many things slip through the cracks. Ready or not, opera will be happening in just 6 weeks, and she is ill prepared. Verdi orchestra parts must be created, Handel cut lists must be finalized, and Candide roles must be assigned.

Web page content needs to be fleshed out, program copy begs to be written and supertitles cry out for attention. Guests artists and teachers must be booked for seminars. (She's thinking that a website development session might be helpful - not the nuts and bolts, but how to find a designer and what to expect.) And Thelma knows that there's no time for any of this nonsense once artists arrive. On your mark... set... administrate!


Ella Mae, Fearless Accompanist

If Ella Mae were of a younger generation, she'd call herself a Collaborative Pianist. But old habits die hard.

She had far too good a time playing a concert last week. Crazy transpositions and lead sheets and all. The day of the performance, just in the nick of time, she remembered an important lesson. Rehearsing with singers gives a pianist a good amount of inadvertent practice, but only on the "sung" portion of the rep. But what about those preludes, interludes and postludes... when no one is singing? That's when the audience listens to the pianist. Oops... those are the parts Ella Mae always forgets to practice. But she generally found her way to that magic place between accuracy and fakery, and she made some pretty good music.

Singers for this program were former Wolf Trappers, and it was such a joy to make music with them. Being a mentor is wonderful, but it's refreshing to shed the coach/teacher mantle and just be a colleague.


Priscilla, Inspirational Opera Lecturer

Remember the Inside Opera class that began March 24? Imagine Priscilla's surprise when she realized that it was really happening the same week as the aforementioned rehearsals. Teaching this class seemed like such a good idea a few months ago...

Priscilla managed to pull off Session 1, and the response was gratifying. She had a great time with the Florentine Camerata, Monteverdi, Handel, deux ex machina and Farinelli. By tomorrow evening she'll figure out how to jam Mozart, bel canto, librettists, supertitles, baritones, and commedia dell-arte into 90 minutes.


Mazie, Crazy Jazz Pianist

Overlaid on all of this opera are crazy fun rehearsals for Cy Coleman's City of Angels. Mazie is having the best time with all these cool half-diminished and major-minor-ninth chords. Yum. She did a production of On the Twentieth Century a lifetime ago and has been waiting 25 years to get back to Cy.


Harriet, the Happy Housewife

Well, Harriet hasn't been to the grocery store for 3 weeks, so she's not going to win any awards. But she did do laundry today, and she swept up the worst of the dirt on the floor. She made a quick shopping trip to look for a new sofa, but got into a fight with Mazie, who quickly established dominance and blew the sofa budget on a cool new Yamaha S90ES. I guess Harriet can sit on the floor a little longer.

Mixing, Fading, Slicing and Dicing

Remember the Volpone recording from last summer? Just for yucks, I revisited blog posts from that period and relived briefly that sickening roller coaster we rode last June. I see that I promised to chronicle the whole messy road to those recording sessions. I never followed through, and now I'm doubtful I will. In truth, I had already forgotten exactly how painful it all was, and I'm reluctant to dredge it up.

No matter, for it's the first day of spring and I'm in Boston (where to all appearances, it is still cold, grey winter...). We're doing the final master of Volpone, and having a better time of it than we should.

Credit goes to the performers who gave us some really fine material with which to work. Also to Soundmirror, who deftly mixed professionalism with understanding for our peculiar limitations. To the Musto/Campbell team for giving us such wonderful material. And to John Musto for always knowing the precise location of the intersection of high standards and the real world.

Anyway, I am a recording studio virgin, with precious little confidence that I can make any contribution to this project. But John says that I hear things only dogs should be able to hear, so I guess that's good?

He says we're gunning for a Grammy Nomination for Best Recording of a Guy Who Feigns an Illness for Money. Vote for us.

Verdi, Handel, Strauss, Bernstein...

Wolf Trap's 2008 season has had its official unveiling, so this summer's opera schedule is now public!

Start here.

Links for details on individual shows:

• Verdi's Un giorno di regno [The Barns - June 13, 15(m), 17]


• Handel's Alcina [The Barns - July 11, 13(m), 15]


• Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos [The Barns - August 15, 17(m), 19]


• Bernstein's Candide in concert with the National Symphony Orchestra [Filene Center - July 6]


• WTOC & Steven Blier at The Barns in Happy Birthday to Two: Celebrating Bernstein & Bolcom [May 31] and Tales from the Vienna Woods [July 19]


• Instant Opera! at the Children's Theatre-in-the-Woods [July 15-19]

Tickets available starting March 29.

More detail and backstory on each project in the weeks to come.

I'm on "vacation" in Blacksburg VA today, starting the wind-up pitch that will land my younger child in college next fall :) I'll post again later this week from the recording studio, where we're mastering Volpone!

"My spirit these days is lost in a maze..."

I have always steered clear of reporting on (or any pretense of "reviewing") performances that I've seen. And this one won't be any different. But because I was at Carnegie's Weill Hall last night for the New York Festival of Song's Bastianello and Lucrezia, I can't let the occasion pass without comment.

If you don't know it already, I do not come to this as unbiased. I've long been an admirer of William Bolcom's music, and for the last 6 years I've had the pleasure of becoming an eye witness to John Musto & Mark Campbell's wizardry. They wrote Volpone - a truly funny opera (not because I say so, but because people laughed and laughed and laughed) for 12 singers and 28 instrumentalists. Then they wrote Later the Same Evening - a piece that touched me deeply when I saw it "cold" (John sent me a score but my life was traveling at warp speed and I never opened it...) last fall. In the intervening time, John busied himself by doing things like writing and performing piano concerti, and Mark spun out a one-man wonder called Songs from an Unmade Bed.

OK, so you get it. I'm a fan.

So it's not really useful for me to wax rhapsodic about what a satisfying evening at the theatre I had yesterday. I could barely contain my pride at the former Wolf Trappers on the stage, I wondered at how something like this is created from whole cloth, I laughed (actually I snorted a few times... sorry to my seatmates...), and I cried. (Not just metaphorically. Actually. And I'm kind of repressed.)

Rather, I spent the train ride home firmly in the left brain camp, re-examining and asking questions. None (I hope) rhetorical.


Comedy

Comedy. Hard. That's why no one tries it (in the opera biz) these days. It's dangerous stuff.

When it's good, why is it so very very good? Timing is almost everything. Mark's rhymes are unparalleled (who else can rhyme "blurry" with "chimichurri" and get away with it?), but the deft ways in which the composers delivered the verses were key. An audience knows when it's being manipulated, and if it's done skillfully, we begin to trust the stage. We stop second-guessing, commenting, and assessing, and relax.


Juxtaposition

And once we've relaxed, and begun to experience the music and the story in real time, literally riding along with the performers, we become vulnerable. At, at that moment in Bastianello, something simple and poignant happens. Had this very human moment in the story happened without the benefit of the laughter before, we probably would've still be on our guard. Taking note of the voices we liked, wondering about the structure of the piece, obsessing about the diction or the lighting or the staging. But my guard had been let down, my inner critic silenced. And I cried. Context is everything.


Opera? Music Theatre?

Yes, an old and very tired topic. But having heard Mark's rhymes set by theatre composers, it strikes me how not-different this is from off-Broadway. (Notice I didn't say Broadway, but that's a whole different rant.)

It is opera, for these singers don't need microphones, and the composers have tapped into their marvelous wide-ranging instruments. The harmonies, melodies and rhythms are intricate and sometimes happily unexpected (read: non-formulaic). But it has surprisingly little in common with what's happening at the Met (or on any other large stage in the country).


The Bigger Picture

New, creative, compelling art is being created like this in many places. This one is within my orbit, so it's the one I know. But I'm sure that in small theatre companies, concert halls and galleries all over, there are evenings like these. In this particular case, there are only 3 performances in the "run." Then hopes that someone else will perform them again someday.

Now this isn't one of those diatribes against world premieres not getting second productions. Well, it is, but with a markedly different slant. When we bemoan the disappearances of new works after their premieres, our disappointment is focused on the amount of effort and skill that went into creating and producing the premiere, and what a shame that it doesn't pay off over a larger period of time. Not a purely mercenary scenario, but let's just call it a practical one.

I get stuck on a different dilemma. My brain freezes up when I try to figure out why the effect of something so clearly satisfying comfortably stops at these several hundred people. What is wrong with us (me) that these kinds of performances can sustain me for weeks and make me go on and on about them? (If you're still reading, you can attest.) And why - no matter how evangelical I might be to my nonbelieving friends - can't I get anyone to believe me? Opera doesn't intend to be elite these days, but we're lying if we say it hasn't ended up that way by default. Why can't we get anyone else to care?

Ooh, now I'm really whining. Very unattractive. A sign that I've run out of ways to shed any light on this.

And since I can't close with some music, I'll give you a snippet of Bastianello's first monologue. I'm sure Mark wouldn't mind.

"My spirit these days

Is lost in a maze

Of scholarly thought

And well-worded rot.

Of theories of art

And Hobbes and Decartes

The murky morass

Of hours spent in class.

No wonder when there

I long for the air...

Up here,

Close to the sky,

Among the branches,

Above the world.

Up here,

Where the view is clear

And goes on forever."

(I took a cast photo to post, but it includes A Very Famous Person - a colleague of Steve Blier's - of whom I probably shouldn't post a picture without permission.)