As promised... a picture of The Dress I Made!!  Sorry it's not exactly what you might call sharp, but in my flat it's backlighting or nothing, and I reckon you can still see the basics (without noting that some of the seams are not exactly in Germanly straight lines).  I had such FUN making this - a great deal of which was because I had no idea of what I was doing and made it up as I went along.  

Its first outing was to a premiere (Tristan & Isolde) on Saturday.  Whilst both the dress and I aimed for sophistication, I definitely failed.  Two of the three acts passed with me acting in decent fashion.  Then came the third act.  It was so beautifully sung that despite the very modern and political production I dissolved into hopeless tears...  my neighbour, a complete stranger, offered me a tissue and even fished it out for me when he saw I was blind with weeping.  Ahhhh, Wagner!

Amazing how one exchanges one frustration for another, huh?  I FINALLY got an audition - and a good one, for a role I would very much like to sing.  This coming  Wednesday.  So I have been trying to get hold of the right person at the state agency to OK it in order to reclaim at least a proportion of the travel costs, without much success, I might add.  Then, because it is over six hours' train ride away, and the flight would have been ridiculous, I have been trying for a decently-priced hotel, only to find them ALL completely booked.  I am determined that this will work out, but the time spent on logistics is disproportionate; one really feels that here is where it would be rather useful to have money enough to ignore the annoyances.

Ah well.  Meanwhile I am wandering around muttering in Czech to myself (it is a very spitty sort of language, and I always think of the late and wonderful Philip Langridge when accidental spitting happens, as he adored singing in Czech for this very reason!), trying to reaquaint my  brain with the words to the one aria I can reasonably fish out for this audition...

See you later!

O mein GOTT, ich bin so KLEIN!!!  (Oh my god, I'm so LITTLE!!).  My astonished cry at seeing the attached snapshot is still making my colleagues laugh.  Really, it just goes to show how warped our sense of our own appearance can be...

We're playing here three - well, bitches, not to put too fine a point on it.  We finish each other's sentences, fight over a tenor's bleeding entrails (don't ask), and strut around the stage in a line, taking the same steps (well, that's the idea, anyway, occasionally foxed by circumstance).  We have the same costumes (we are all entranced by the leopard-print corsets; many of our male colleagues appeared more fascinated by points further north...).  Exactly the same boots, and we had a couple of costume fittings to make sure that our skirts were the same distance from the floor to the millimetre. 

But there was me thinking that, height-wise, we were much of a muchness.  I knew in my head that my dear friend Trish was taller than me, but hadn't realised at ALL just how much taller - and then there was the photographic evidence to prove that in cold hard fact, in this particular trio I am the unchallenged midget!  (That's me in the middle there:  I know it's not obvious, mind, given the wigs and make-up.)

I'm simply so used to thinking of myself as taller than average that it had not occurred to me that, paired with a couple of tall, slim, beauties, I would be the little one.  Weird.  Not bad at all, just... weird.  I can't get over how many inches I was mentally adding to my height!  (Mind you, I know who I got it from; my father has a lot of people convinced he's six feet tall, whereas in reality he has to cheat a bit to get to five foot ten...)

I fudged the outside of the photo (a) to protect the... well, innocent is maybe not quite the word, given what we're asked to get up to in this production, but at least unwary (OK, the camera angle was not flattering for one of my colleagues, and am not inclined to post a less-than-gorgeous photo of her) and (b) because costume and make-up have yet to be finalised for the production, and I wouldn't wish either to let any cats out of bags or to raise false hopes.  It's Monday now; the curtain rises on the premiere on Saturday night.  Plenty of time for all sorts of changes.  Throughout all of which I shall remain five foot seven and rather surprised...

This here is a picture of my absolute favourite Christmas present this year.  It's a beautiful top, conceived ("for Aunty Katy when she does her singing"), designed, modelled painstakingly upon his mother and decorated by my darling cousin's son Luca.  He isn't even five yet!!!  (I think. I remain vague as to children's ages.)

My entire family was flabbergasted that he had come up with such an idea totally unprompted, and had at that age seen the whole concept through to completion.  Marvellous - bodes well for his future.  I shall definitely treasure this unique garment, and I am sure I can find some occasion upon which to wear it!

Speaking of costumes etc, we had the piano dress rehearsal last night for the Szymanowski opera coming up.  My costume is quite fabulous, in cardinal purple, and the make-up is a slightly alien effect; very pale skin, eyebrows removed (anyone who knows me will realise what a big deal this is - the secret is soap), purple shiny eyeshadow in arcs high on my forehead, and strips of my costume material around my head in a sort of mediaeval/religious reference.  Marching around the corridors prior to the rehearsal beginning, quite a few people said "wow!", one was evidently rather scared, and a tenor from the chorus introduced himself to me, asking if I was a guest singer at the theatre - he really hadn't recognised me!!

Toweringly high heels are a great advantage on stage, in that those expanses of lower limb to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting public are displayed to their best advantage. They also help interestingly in the intimidation of tenors, I find. However in long rehearsal periods (up to four hours each morning and evening, with the normal minutiae of life not ceasing in between), they can be hellish. In this staging I am standing for all but a minute of my time on stage, and my feet are currently aching like nobody's business. How anyone working in a retail environment can wear anything but the flattest of shoes to work, I have no idea - and I feel nothing but admiration for those who insist that high heels are a basic requirement for life...

I have to admit though that I'm looking forward to getting rid of these rehearsal shoes - on top of being so steep, and clashing horribly with my rehearsal dress, they're also a little too big, and although they're loosely held in place by elastic bands, I feel like a small girl taking precarious steps in her mother's shoes! Bring on the performance stilettos, even though the costume director got a distinct glint in his eye when asking whether I could wear them... this high?... this high?... higher?... good!

Première!

Yes, drag queens of my acquaintance, you may well weep with jealousy! This is my costume for the last act, comprising pink/red bodice and full, trailing skirts (interesting when performing the can-can), with clashing silky bolero and over all that a fake leopard-skin sleeveless gown. You don't really get the full effect of the orange nail varnish, unfortunately, but you can see the hair backcombed, white streak to the fore, swept up high and added to with various feathers, and a pirates' treasure chest of clashing sparklies (a colleague's young son was hugely impressed when he visited my dressing room - "Are these all yours?" he asked. I came out with my best evil laugh, and shrieked "Mine, ALL mine...", at which point of course the Intendant (yep, the one who's in charge of the whole shebang) popped in to say hello... Goodness, but my timing is wonderful!)

I managed to get to the theatre in very decent time, considering (a) a car ran into me en route - no harm done, it just sort of slid, but rather disconcerting, and (b) when I'd opened my mouth to start warming up, an eerie bagpipe-like wail and thumping beat started up right outside the window. Turkish wedding, I think - I suspect it's more fun if you're actually taking part. Anyway, I managed to distribute my toi-toi cards - not as easy as it sounds, as not everyone has a dressing room so you have to physically hunt them down, and the whole team seems to be prowling around restlessly before curtain-up. I also discovered, by trial and error, a few faux pas when it comes to wishing people well - firstly, you don't say thanks at all when wished toi toi (this feels weird, as all I managed to do after that was sort of dip my head regally!), and secondly, you don't wish anyone toi toi (often done by making spitting noises over their shoulder) until they're in costume. Which is awkward if you're not due in make-up until the curtain rises, and your costume is one of those where it's not easy to nip to the loo... I think I was more exhausted by negotiating the pre-première rituals than I was by the performance!

Everything went swimmingly, I believe - the audience certainly loved the production, which of course is the main thing. I remembered my German words, had fun with my aria, then breathed a sigh of relief and proceeded to just enjoy myself throughout the rest of the opera. The director's excellent work showed in such a slick and funny production, it looked absolutely stunning, in terms of both set and costume, and sounded great. I am so lucky to have been a part of this. All (ha ha) we have to do now is retain the same energy in each performance - there's another one tomorrow (Monday) and then they're dotted throughout the calendar until late next Spring. I'm looking forward to them!

Just staggered back from a pretty chaotic and bad-tempered rehearsal. There's always one! (Well, to be honest, there's often more than just the one, but fingers crossed.)

When it's a first costume rehearsal, you look forward to seeing your final outfits - but of course hems are invariably the wrong length or dresses so wide you can't see if you stand behind their wearer; you hunt fruitlessly for your last-act skirt, only to discover it hasn't yet been made; towels and slippers are quite violently soaked and the stage therefore covered in water; and bits of the set turn out to be too narrow to pass, too rickety to be silent or simply in completely the wrong place.

Everywhere you turn, there are people sulking or muttering mutinously in corners, pulling uneasily at their wigs, or treading gingerly on broken "glass" and crunching. And we've to be back on stage pretty much first thing tomorrow morning...

I love the theatre!

Well, the hat at least materialised!

Vaguely head-shaped (always a Good Thing in hats, I find), and it will definitely keep off the rain. Some ruffles appear to have made it in there, too which is very reassuring (when I started I think I had quite a severe pattern in mind - good thing my fingers know better!).

Slightly less progress on the horses'-heads front. Firstly, it took a good deal of ingenuity to track down chicken wire. The first three DIY/building materials superstores I tried didn't have any. A friend who's lived here a lot longer than me suggested that there was probably a shop somewhere selling chicken wire alone, but I persevered (this meant a half-hour cycle ride to the Baumarkt furthest out of town) and was eventually rewarded by finding a small selection of large rolls of chicken wire.

This of course prompted my speech, well polished in English but possibly slightly shaky in German, about how ridiculous it is that EU rules do not allow the shop to cut your chicken wire into lengths for you. So, large men in leather aprons and wearing leather gloves, with access to specialist cutting equipment, are no longer allowed to cut you off say three metres of wire; you have to buy enough to fence a small garden, then wrestle with it yourself, invariably ending up looking like something out of a horror film (well, I do anyway). The effect of this speech, to the young man who'd shown me where to find the wire, was quite disconcerting, though - he started blushing furiously when I got to "leather" and I ended up in uncontrollable giggles... Oh well. With some difficulty, I hauled my prey home, and am looking forward to seeing how the heads will turn out!

Impossible things...

I don't mean I'm going as far as believing "as many as six impossible things before breakfast". For a start, I've had breakfast already, and to be fair to myself, it's only a couple of forays into uncharted territory, but somehow the White Queen's words are echoing around my head...

Firstly, I appear to have agreed to make a couple of horses' heads for the English-speaking theatre in Frankfurt. Drinking beer at lunchtime in exceptionally congenial company can lead one down very strange paths. Now, I'm a dab hand at dragon-making, discussing which is, I suspect, how I got myself into this. It involves chicken wire, papier mâché and an awful lot of blood. That said, of course, I have absolutely no idea how to make theatrical masks which don't end up poking anyone's eye out... it will be interesting to learn!!

Secondly, I am crocheting myself a hat. See photo above for the first hesitant steps - the vaguely circly sort of black thing behind the ball of wool is my hat-seed. I just need something to keep the rain off my hair en route to the theatre. All the really expensive hats in the department stores I padded around looked home-made to me, and, as you do, I thought, OK, and headed for the wool shop. I chose the wool because I'm fond of black and purple, and because it was called Tosca. The kind lady in the shop said I needed a No. 7 crochet hook - so I am now the proud owner of one No. 7 hook, rather excitingly constructed of clear acrylic with gold sparkles throughout. Very cheerful. She also, I think, mentioned something about double-thicknesses if it was for a hat. I bought two balls, just in case, but didn't like to tell her I couldn't actually crochet...

I first picked up a crochet hook last year after visiting a fabulous exhibition in the South Bank featuring hyperbolic crochet (further explanation here, or pretty pictures here; I was fascinated by the thought of a terribly clever maths bod saying, eh well the equations for hyperbolic planes are pretty damn complicated, but if you hang on a second, I'll crochet you one...). I wandered out of that strange and wonderful exhibition slightly obsessed, bought hook and wool, thought about the equations for a bit and spent the next few weeks creating coral fantasies and brains. If I can crochet a brain, surely I can crochet a hat; it's all just maths, right?

Luckily these are nice sedentary occupations; I am rather aching all over at the moment, having accidentally done the splits, then (more deliberately) the can-can, and having shins full of bruises. I'm sure there are opera singers who don't end up battered and bruised by this point in the rehearsal process, but I've definitely never been one of them!

That Dress...

Well, here it is, for all those who have been asking! Slightly foreshortened but you get the general idea. SO much more impressive than any rehearsal dress I've ever had and probably ever will have. I do enjoy slinking around in it!

Looking at it, I cannot imagine how it survived today's rehearsal - at one point I am meant to fall whilst attempting to restrain my stage daughter; well, fall I did, with feet skidding over the stage in opposite directions, ending near as dammit in the splits, and laughing so hard I bit a huge chunk out of the inside of my mouth and spent the rest of the act furtively swallowing blood (yes, yes, I know - the glamour, huh?).

'Tis the season of mists and... nope, forget the mellow fruitfulness, we're straight into fog, chill and blasted colds. Always a tricky time of year for singers, this. A couple of people have gone down already, and I am dreading that familiar tickling at the back of the nose which presages some lurgy or other.

My previous experience with German chemists (I was in Berlin a few years ago, purportedly to do a batch of auditions; came down with severe laryngitis/pharyngitis and was utterly unable to sing for weeks. The chemists shrugged their shoulders and recommended sage tea. I was gobsmacked - sage tea?? I wanted DRUGS!) allowed me to stock up on cold'n'flu medicine in Boots before I left (I also bought a load of painkillers and remedies for vaguely embarrassing ailments while I was at it, just in case - they thought me a complete hypochondriac!), so I am prepared, but I do hope the inevitable cold doesn't clash with the première. My body has appalling timing when it comes to illnesses, so fingers crossed!

I love this place!

I have never in my life seen such a fabulous rehearsal dress as the one I got given to wear today! Transparently the costume department could find nothing worse along those lines in my body shape; it is the most stunning hot pink satin fishtail dress (à la Jessica Rabbit), just skimming the floor and with a plunging décolletage that appeared to inspire the director to hilarious flights of fancy. It could have been made for me to wear to a ball (it felt vaguely blasphemous, actually, to be fainting around a rehearsal stage in it...). What fun! I do hope they don't find something worse (i.e. more suitable to actually rehearse in) and confiscate it. They will have to work bloody hard to make the actual costume any better!

I got a little light-headed because I found the rehearsal so funny (OK, yes, I admit it; not helped by enquiring of the costume assistant whether I had to take off my slip before changing into this dress. From her aghast expression, I very quickly gathered that "slip" in German probably means the same as "slip" in French - knickers, rather than an actual blasted slip, as intended... I apologised, but imagine my reputation is forever sealed). I suspect I shall have trouble mastering myself during my friend's first words to me - she's meant to be remarking on my sour expression, however every time I looked at her I was overtaken by giggles. Good thing there's a long rehearsal period...

It now feels like the building I'm living in is polarising around me. On the anti side, we have tired-looking youth below, and hermaphrodite to the left. On the pro, luckily, the building superintendant and his wife, and a lovely couple on the first floor (I got a card from the postman saying he'd left a package with them, and when I knocked and asked for it, they were so charming, saying we had to have coffee, they loved my voice, and would I please accept this gift of a book from his publishing company about the "underworld" of the city - i.e. the cellars etc; he said that the theatre had the deepest point in the city, and of course that was of interest, as I was heading off directly to my rehearsal in that very place). Ah well, I've always said I would prefer to be either loved or hated, rather than simply tolerated, in terms of my voice; this is simply such preferences made concrete and quotidian. Interesting thought.

A sweet disorder in the dress...

...seems to be pretty unavoidable, actually, if one combines a penchant for flowing, ground-trailing skirts and riding a bike. Well, either a little disorder, or (which has not YET happened, but I can see how it might) a full-scale magnificent crash off the bike in a welter of velvet and greasy chains.

Thus far I've avoided the issue as far as possible by knotting up my skirts on front and wearing bicycle leggings underneath. The trouble is that somehow it seems indecent to oik up or unknot my skirts in public, and wearing only the cycle leggings I feel naked! (I do NOT. DO. trousers.)

This is only going to get worse, I feel; a kind lady pointed out to me today in the market, after I'd gone to buy flowers and vegetables, that my dress was knotted around my thighs and looked a little strange... Bless her! I'd cycled in and completely forgotten to normalise myself.

At least, however, it just feels like a practical problem. The people here, thank goodness, don't seem to give a damn what anyone wears. Sure, most of them wear jeans and T-shirts all the time, as far as I can see, but they don't bat an eyelid at whatever I've chosen to wear, which is gloriously restful. I indulged in a daytrip to Wiesbaden last week, because I'd heard it was gorgeous; well, my main impression was, it felt exactly like one of those hyper-snob Italian spa towns (what is it about spa towns? something in the water, maybe...) (incidentally, the photo is of the Schiller statue in front of the opera house). Lots of extremely thin ladies in skinny white jeans, eyeing me disdainfully due to the lack of designer clothes and superabundance of flesh! Luckily I managed to confuse them with brilliant Italian earrings and matching hair flower... but I have to admit, I felt so much better coming back here!

Today the theatre had a Theaterfest, where the doors were flung open to the public. There was a costume fashion show, guided tours, scene painting for children, brilliant jazz concerts, enough unexpected sunshine to *really* enjoy beer and sausages in the open air, a wonderful opera highlights concert... oh, I had fun! Most of all, though, I appreciated the way the town and the theatre interreacted. The entertainments were all free. The costume show I attended was packed to the roof, and I was next to several entranced children, being instructed by their parents or grandparents, and evidently close to getting hooked on this idiotic art. People wandered in and out. Catching up with some singer friends later, they were assailed on all sides by friendly supporters. Evidently the town is proud of, and feels part of, its theatre. (I need to do a bit of thinking as to how one could extend this to, say, England, but it's a nice example to follow.)

The clothing dilemma can only get more complicated as the seasons close in; but I have to admit I'm actually enjoying it! The worst options are endurable; all I need now is a waterproof cape, and I'm Superwoman!

A glittering start...

I was rather amused to note that, en route from England, amongst the baggage kindly dragged along by my long-suffering parents, a pot of gold eye-glitter had got a little overexcited and exploded all over the bag in which it was carried. Naturally, this wasn't the one full of ballgowns and concert dresses, where it frankly wouldn't have made much difference; no, this was the one stuffed to bursting with my "normal" daytime tops (quotation marks because frankly my motto is "Never Knowingly Underdressed", but maybe more of that another day...). Damned hard stuff to get out, glitter, as anyone who has ever got carried away at one of those parties will know ;-) - so into town I marched, casually dressed in vest top, floor-length velvet skirt, diamond earrings (small!) and accidental lashings of glitter all over my chest... Never mind the atrocious German, I suspect there will be myriad little ways of failing to fit in which I shall discover over the coming months!