Two Down...

Yesterday was the second performance of the operas. My folks came up for the matinee, and it was really wonderful to have them in the audience. The rest of the crowd was pretty dead, so I was thrilled to hear my parents laughing out loud at the comedy. To be fair, I had primed them in advance. ("This is a comedy. It's okay to laugh and to laugh loudly. In fact, it's encouraged.") I think that sometimes audiences, especially for classical music, are a little hesitant to be vocal with laughter. They think it's not proper or something. But for comedies in particular, laughter is a gift to the performers. It tells them they are doing something right. It offers them energy and creates a virtuous cycle that lifts the whole performance to a higher level. And when the laughter is not there, we all feel like we're not doing enough or we're missing the mark.

The audiences for both shows have felt a little tame. Partly this is the demographic - a mostly older crowd for the first show and a matinee (young families+older crowd) for the second. Both feel like they should be polite, and there's a kind of reserve there. But something else has felt off beyond that. I didn't realize just what it was until I had a conversation with my voice teacher today.

She mentioned that many people feel uncomfortable being so close to the stage. We're performing in a black box theatre with about 60 seats. It's extremely intimate. The performers can look each person in the eye. Folks in the front row are often just a couple feet from us. As singing actors, we've been instructed to make eye contact and "sing directly to people". So we do. But this makes some audience members really antsy. I've had some people look away while I sing to them, deliberately avoiding eye contact. Others maintain eye contact with me but give me a rather "deer in headlights" vibe. A few actually grin and seem pleased that I'm singing to them. In every case, it's a different feeling, and it just feels odd. I didn't realize until today that part of what bothers me is the sense that I'm making people uncomfortable. It's a missed connection or a rather warped one - things don't quite meet up the way they are supposed to. In rehearsal, this didn't happen because everyone in the audience was a singer or a student - all of whom are perfectly fine with people singing to them. After all, they do that themselves.

I'm hoping that now that I know this, it will make the final performance (on Thursday) a bit easier. We'll see.

On a positive note, my voice teacher commented that she's "always astounded at how quickly you all get used to singing right to people in such a small space." Hopefully that will make my recital performance a lot easier come May. That hall is significantly bigger. I just need to make sure my characters for each piece in that recital are just as well-defined as Silberklang. It is so much simpler to sing right to people when you are somebody else onstage. It's like it offers a cloak or costume, a shield that enables you to take the risk and express without fear of truly personal reprisals or consequences.

On a lighter note, Buff, the character who plays opposite me during my aria, had some mustache issues yesterday. He's onstage for nearly the entire show, entering shortly after curtain rise and staying through the end. Right after we started, the right half of his mustache came unglued and started flapping as he breathed. He tried all kinds of subtle gestures and posturing and finally nipped off during the final number to get it re-glued.

The best part? He apologized to me for being "off" during my aria. I guess his mustache was completely flapping at that point. But the kicker is that I didn't even notice. I am so focused during that piece on running the circus that is opera that I didn't even look at his facial hair. When I look at him, I am staring right into his eyes. The rest of the times, I'm thinking about emoting the words (which are in German), breathing properly, opening my mouth in key places, opening and closing the fan in rhythm, making sure the fan stays on my wrist, watching my dress to make sure I don't trap it under the chair that I move, staying upright as I kneel and rise again, moving to the right marks on the stage, running the coloratura while gesturing to him on certain specific notes and smiling flirtatiously, keeping my eyes engaged, reminding myself about certain diction spots (a few tricky umlauts), and getting the body language right.

With all of that, who has time to look at a mustache?

:)

~Hope