Opening and Closing Night

Tonight was opening night for the Opera Gala. It was also the last time I'll sing on this particular stage in this particular hall. I perform again on Sunday, but I only do my little speaking role - the Maid in Manon.

Everything went really well tonight. People sounded amazing. There were a few minor glitches here and there - there always are - but, by and large, I consider the evening a success. The audience was warm and responsive (although I think they were a little confused by Ariadne), and we all felt really good about things.

My own experience was so much fun. I was really keyed up from the beginning but with the good kind of energy, not debilitating nerves. I stepped onstage and just took the opportunity to have fun, to really move with the music and the nymph character. We were all in ballet shoes, and the costumes were fantastic, so I just tried to "ooze" as much as possible. (I played a water nymph - the Naiad. It's usually the highest part in the nymph trio that you hear in the opera.)

We had one minor costume glitch. Each nymph had a series of things decorating her costume that represented her world. Echo, the nymph of the air, had feathers and a cape (very subtle and tastefully done.) Dryad, the wood nymph, had a monarch butterfly in her hair and, draped across her back, branches with rosy pearls that looked like flower buds. As the Naiad, the water nymph, I had a starfish and pearls in my hair and fishnet and more pearls draped across my front. Unfortunately, this was the first night the Dryad had her additional drapery, and we discovered during a dressing room picture that her pearls and my fishnet could get caught together pretty easily.

Despite our best efforts onstage, there was one point when we got snagged -- in the middle of Ariadne's dramatic comments about herself and Theseus. There, the nymphs clump together in a sympathetic background group. We have to move within a minute or so, and Dryad and I both noticed we were snagged - my front to her back. I tried to untangle us surreptitiously while she wafted in front of me to camouflage my concentrated workings. I started to think we might have to pull a Siamese twin move for the rest of the scene when suddenly, we were free.

As I said yesterday - the beauty of live theatre is that anything can and does happen :)

The picture you see above is basically what I see when I'm waiting in the wings for my cue as the Maid in Manon. The lighting is a little different. (I took this photo when I got to the theatre for my call time tonight.) But it gives you a sense of what I was talking about with the Roman numerals and the diagrams.

So now I get to try to wash off the copious amounts of makeup I'm wearing. And then it's off to sleep, likely to dream what I've been dreaming for the past week or so -- the music from Ariadne.

~Hope