Middle of the week, how did this happen?! D survived his first day of school. We went out for ice cream after, messy but fun. Then I had opera rehearsal - did I mention that this is rather long? I guess not as far as operas go...but we are guessing it will run about 3 hours and 20 minutes. GAHHHH. My chops tremble at the thought. That is longer than our rehearsals, and by the end I am barely coherant. So I guess it is back to the chop exercises, at least on the nights I don't have rehearsal.
We sound good though, at least I think so. We have one more rehearsal before the sitzprobe (with singers), and usually I would be unhappy that we are wasting time. But this opera I know *I* need the rehearsal, so I won't complain!
I am really hoping to get some good practicing in today, but of course I have procratinated about bell choir, and we start TONIGHT! Argh. I just got an email from the DOM about which hymns we are doing Sunday, and I hope I can figure something out before tonight.
7 comments:
Am I missing something? Did you mention which opera you are playing? Do tell!
When we have longer operas our company often makes cuts to keep them under 3 hours. Audiences seem to have trouble sticking to a long opera. Go figure. Our contract allows for 3 hours 15 minutes and anything over that pays overtime.
I went to see Tristan und Isolde up at San Francisco Opera last year. Now THAT is loooong!
Sorry, we are playing Madame Butterfly! I'm sure they OUGHT to cut it to 3 hours. People will be snoozing in the aisles.
We have contracts (of a sort) for the first year - but they don't have any time specs, and we just get a flat rate per service. I suppose you have a union gig, but I'm not even in the union because there are just no union gigs around here! I was *going* to join this fall for a show, but that was Into the Woods (no oboe part, and they STILL haven't called to tell me!)
Ah. I find that to be a challenging book ... LOTS of playing, yes? And that one little lick ... the one with the high grace note. Sigh. Not my cuppa until I figured out an alternate fingering. We did Butterfly last year. And yes, it was under 3 hours.
The humming chorus is my favorite moment. (Of course we don't play!)
Yes, everything I do is union. It would be trouble to do anything that wasn't union at this point in my career, though.
So, do you remember that alternate fingering???? I think you mean the D#-C# one -
I'm about to go teach, but I'll try and remember to get back to you on this. It really helped me out. It doesn't work, though, on some oboes. One of my colleagues finds the thing very easy with regular fingerings. Go figure.
Okay ... here you go:
D# fingering is 0XX/0XX
C# fingering is 0XX/X0X
Works for me ... don't know if it'll work for you! Some have to add the C# key for C#.
So did the fingerings work for you? I'm curious!
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