Ah, the irony...

Yesterday I had my first coaching of the season, and got back from that to an e-mail from the director of the next thing I'm in, obligingly sending me the bare bones of my script.

The coaching was on the 21st-century opera (the one that's not until May or something but we're starting now because it will take that long to learn the music...).  The conductor seemed pleased with what I was doing, and we had a discussion about what exactly was happening, stylistically, so he could make suggestions to a couple of the other singers.  What it boiled down to (and this is absolutely as per the composer's instructions, I hasten to add) is NOT singing.  Letting go of "being an opera singer" and the need to "have a beautiful voice", and simply being an actress whose sentences happen to follow that particular musical phrasing. 

The script is a comical mix of English and German (luckily it's meant to be funny).  My character will be an Englishwoman who has emigrated to Germany but who has never quite got the hang of the language, nor indeed the accent.

So here I am having worked so hard to get where I am vocally, deliberately Not Singing, and having worked so hard on my German, being asked to speak with an English accent and get all my phrases muddled up!  I am mightily amused at the irony of both situations, and thought it rather neat that they coincided on the one day.  Satisfying!