Ouch.  OUCH!  Certain members of the orchestra here have FAR too good an aim when equipped with the pointy ends of a whole damned bunch of roses...

It being the last operatic performance here of the outgoing music director, the orchestra celebrated by "spontaneously" chucking flowers onstage (we had been warned beforehand about "spontaneously" picking them up and handing them to the conductor - this is Germany, remember?).  I know they love her - she's a wonderful musician - so the spontaneity was heartfelt.  Wonderful!   However I couldn't help noticing how many smothered giggles wafted up from the pit when yet another rose landed smack in the middle of my cleavage... In the costumes we had, it was probably unavoidable, mind, when leaning down to collect fallen greenery.  Cannot blame the brass section...   (Although I really, really want to.)

It will be sad, I think, not to have such a constant connection with the orchestra.  However, I have had two years to get to know individuals, and that doesn't disappear.  Indeed, when I get back after the summer, I am pretty sure I have a couple of revenge strikes to plan.  It is Not Done to lob scratchy flowers back down into the pit once they've got you.  Doesn't mean one can't do weasel-planning to get one's own back in a different way eventually. HaHA!

Today I had occasion to really appreciate the work of our prompter.  Before coming to Germany I really hadn't worked much with prompters, and so hadn't quite realised how hard they worked, especially in the rehearsal period of a musical.  In opera, we are supported by the music (well, so long as it is through-written, and thank goodness I generally sing that sort), and the roles I've had over here haven't been the massively wordy kinds, so I haven't really ever needed the prompter (oh, except for one slightly panicky moment in Salome one evening, when my mind went blank, I goggled around dry-throated for the prompt box, only to discover that, because it was to one side for staging purposes, I couldn't see the damned thíng from where I was standing...).

I had my own reasons for being thankful, of course - we're in the early staging rehearsals for these scenes, so this is the first time we're out there without scripts.  Naturally a few words get left out, or mispronounced, or (in my case) accidentally bunged in the wrong language or mis-stressed.  The prompter carefully noted where my mistakes were in the first run-through, and even before my facial muscles had had time to tense, the missing or mangled word came through clearly just before I needed it.

The exactness of her timing and the precision of her prompting, though, I had time to appreciate from a dark hole of a storage room in the very depths of the theatre (lots of stage curtains, miscellaneous lumpy, well-wrapped objects and audience-gathering ropes, and who knows what else, since I couldn't see the edges...).  It's where I ended up after an offstage-right exit in this particular scene.  No getting out from there (well, none that I could see or knew about.  Buggered if I was going to explore pitch-black corners!!)  So, as I couldn't very well trot back across the stage without upsetting the others' concentration, I gathered my garish red polyester dressing gown (with original 70s cigarette burn - ahhh, rehearsal dress is such a joy) and lay flat on the floor to listen before my return to the scene.

Without visual clues, therefore, and from a position behind the protagonists, I could hear all the prompts. I was massively impressed.  I knew how much work she put into it - her scores are a riot of colour, with every part marked up differently - but goodness, in full flow, this is amazing.  Prompts were clear and precisely directed, at exactly the right moment.  And they're not always the first word you have to say or sing - this isn't much help if it's another "and" or "so" or something.  Nope, she picks the one which is going to recall the sentence to you.  And apparently her voice is so clear and focused that if you need a prompt on stage, you can hear every word and the audience nothing.

And as a person, impressively scary for someone who comes about up to my chest, and that's if she's standing on tiptoe.  The sight of her coming towards you with a scowl and the score held out in front like a weapon can make the strongest man here quail...  In such moments it really doesn't help to remember that she's a mad Harry Potter aficionado, good company and bakes like a professional.  Abject apology and learning the damn thing perfectly before the next rehearsal is the name of the game.

Still, always good to learn a bit more about what various people who inhabit the underworld of the theatre actually DO!

(Unrelated photo of the day is of the new synagogue here - saw most of its construction whilst living nearby and was fascinated to see it complete whilst on a bike ride last weekend.  Beautiful!)

I have been amazed over the past few days by just how talented my entire group of colleagues is. (I was thinking this even before the aftermath of a post-rehearsal salsa session, where I discovered that many of them can roll their eyes in different directions at the same time, whilst still squinting.) Seriously, I've been in fits of laughter during the rehearsal period for this latest opera, which involves most of my colleagues in one role or another, and there was a particular moment, watching yet another example of perfect comic timing, when I thought, hmm, everyone I work with can be funny whilst keeping the singing at a technically high standard - how wonderful is that? Not just those for whom the comic roles are bread and butter, but also the whomping great voices, who do the serious stuff but are expected to pitch in on team efforts like this one.

Remarking on this to a friend, she agreed and added that what's more, they're also a wholly likeable bunch. So true! I feel really lucky that my work is a joy due to those who work with me. (I can write this down safe in the knowledge that none of them read this!)

Mind you, all the comic genius is doing no good to my shoulder (the one I wrenched when falling at the feet of the pilot in Stansted) - I've discovered that you sort of shrug your shoulders unintentionally when surprised into laughter, and each time it damn well hurts. I know I should be taking it to a physiotherapist or something, but simply daren't risk their reaction when I admit that what I do for a living involves serious amounts of pratfalls and lugging around three-tier wedding cakes...

Last-Minute Preparations

In a few days' time I shall be starting stage rehearsals of the Strauss opera I have been waiting for since I got here. I can't wait! My particular vocal and dramatic talents are itching to get stuck in, and my eagerness has been whetted by the musical rehearsals I have had of late with my stage husband; but before things really kick off later in the week, there are details I need to double-check, the minutiae of which might surprise the non-singer (they are decidedly unglamorous).

As with all operatic preparation, we started with the actual music. One-on-one coachings with various répétiteurs, picking me up on (especially) that DAMNED "ü" vowel, rhythms, pitches, everything, and hooray for it! I spend enough time going through it on my own, learning it laboriously and carefully, but there's always something you miss, or are not quite exact enough about. The perfectionists among you will recognise the sense of relief upon being picked upon for trifles. By now, I have the music I shall be singing firmly fixed in my voice, and the musical cues I need for each entry stored in my brain. I know exactly what I am singing about, and have translated all the scenes in which I am involved, so that I know what I am responding to.

However, there's more to check before launching in. Yes, I'm responding to X saying Y. Has he said it before? To me? Have I ignored him? Does the chord pattern upon which I am relying occur elsewhere? (Some of these questions are particularly pertinent to Strauss, his music being through-written and devoid of "OK, so you sing this aria then we have a duet, during most of which I can turn my back and clear my throat, then there's that tricky quartet"... nope, you're on your own in a lot of Strauss, especially if the role is bitty; but it's so much truer to life - meaning, damned difficult to learn but very exciting to sing.) Am I being talked about? Am I being talked TO? Can I hear this? Do I choose to respond? If not, why not?

At each point I have, through learning and singing the music and the words, formed an opinion of what I (as a character) am thinking and feeling. I have to be very careful here NOT to crystallise this. Whatever I feel may not converge with the director's thoughts. At this point, I deliberately allow my interpretative possibilities to widen, to embrace all possible viewpoints. Naturally, this leads to brain-ache (and is actually often best done with glass of wine in hand), but it has to be done. A particular joy of my situation is that I then have to make sure that for every possibility, I have the German words and phrases that will allow me to argue my case, should I need to. Or indeed to understand the opposite case. I am learning quite a bit of vocabulary this way!

The one glorious thing about this amount of nitty-gritty work is that the music comes completely alive through it. I know it will be obscured during rehearsals, it always happens; but the time put in now and beforehand will never be wasted; here's to the final shape of the performance!

PS the photo is of the Berliner Dom, taken from the direction of the Hackescher Markt heading towards the Museumsinsel last week. I am amazed it's vaguely upright as it was so dratted slippery on the pavements I barely made it to the museums!

Moving up a gear

Well, whilst it's been relaxing in one sense to spend the past few weeks doing, basically, bugger all, in another sense (generally the pedantic, OCD, over-sensitive one), it's fabulous to start getting down to the nitty-gritty.

Today's agenda went roughly like this:

6 a.m.: Wake up. Realise it's seriously chucking it down. Revise projected clothes for today. Worry about whether I've remembered to bring that particular top with me. Worry about whether it reveals too much. Choose another one. Remember I haven't brought along a cardy that would go with that...

9.20 a.m.: Meeting with new Operndirektor (head of opera at the theatre) (I think this went OK but was so busy trying to chatter nervously in German that I suspect I lost most of the gist).

10 a.m. (ish): Coffee in canteen. Discussion with lovely prompter and her family about dentistry (her eldest son kept hitting his nose rather violently; I gathered rather hopefully that he had a cyst, they'd given him an anaesthetic, he couldn't feel his nose, and resented this; otherwise, I had breakfast with madmen). I feel I failed to convey the subtleties of finding an NHS dentist in the current climate...

11 a.m.: Konzeptionsgespräch (for those who understand a small percentage of German, as I do, this is not as interesting as it may sound - it's a conversation about the concept behind the piece, rather than about conception). I was very glad I'd gone through the score translating what I wasn't sure of; it meant I understood what the director was saying for the most part. I concentrated hard on laughing when I should, and shutting up when I wasn't sure of what he'd said (nothing worse than people asking why you're laughing when you don't actually know, you were following everyone else; I learned this the hard way on the school bus some decades ago).

About 12.30 p.m. (losing track of time by now): Lesenprobe. This consisted of us reading out the spoken bits and either (a) sweating with nerves (me) or (b) falling about with laughter (rest of cast).

Some time after that: cycling home, stuffing cheese and apple down gullet, and falling dead asleep for a couple of hours (probably the weather; it's due to rain again). Warning: learning German can seriously damage your nervous system.

5.30 p.m.: Catch up on e-mail; coffee, half-hearted ashtanga yoga and practising swearing to wake self up (latter helped by, yes seriously, what looked like a hermaphrodite appearing from next-door flat and asking me to keep the singing down during its exams).

7.30 p.m.: Rehearsal for first entrance, with director, pianist, costume people, set people, etc. Absolutely priceless! It occurred to me during the first few minutes that this was what I love about the theatre. I buggered up the German left, right and centre. My "husband" laughed his socks off. The soprano, whose character (my daughter) is meant during my aria to be attempting suicide in various novel ways, managed to half-destroy a sofa, nearly brained me with a falling wall, and ended by pinning herself giggling to the ground by means of a rehearsal dress snagged on an errant nail.

I'm going to enjoy this!

D-Day minus one...

All in all a most pleasant way to spend the last day before I begin my employment proper. I tidied up the last few bits of necessary admin this morning. And goodness, some of the things you think are going to be quite straightforward, such as opening a bog-standard bank account, turn out to be somewhat different here in Germany. I had no idea, coming from England, that such things as local banks still existed. Well, they do. I was 90% of the way to signing up with the Sparkasse on the corner before they proudly announced (took me a few minutes to catch up, mind, but got there in the end) that their bank cards could get money out of more than a hundred holes-in-the-wall!!! I thought for a second. "More than a hundred?". "Yes! We have them all over the region!" (Said in tones of great pride.) However I'm hoping I'm going to be doing a bit of travelling all over Germany, and it would be useful to be able to, say, eat, in some of the towns. So I eventually took my business to a nationwide bank (I checked on the internet), where an extremely helpful lady helped me overcome all the computer's misgivings about dealing with a foreigner. ("Place of issue of passport?" "Erm, there isn't one, we don't do it like that in England." "Hmm, well how about we put London?" - How fabulous! Was not expecting that degree of helpfulness). Anyway, I have collected enough bits of paper, long numbers, and even-longer German names for said bits of paper etc, and thought I deserved a day at the outdoor pool.

These outdoor pools are wonderful. €3 a day for an adult, less if you bowl up after teatime, plenty of room to actually swim (please take note, English lidos) and huge amounts of grass to lounge around on and read books until you turn slightly pink. Jolly interesting to note the number of pallid Germans who roasted all day, seemingly without suncream, without burning. They are made of stern stuff! Despite my Tuscan holiday, a few hours' sun was enough for me, and after several final lengths of the pool, I retired gracefully. (Well, I say I retired gracefully.
It would probably have been slightly more graceful without the interlude where I accidentally bought a locker for the season instead of a season ticket, and had to weasel my way out of that one, but hey, who's to know?).

After scrubbing up a touch I headed for town to meet one of my colleagues-to-be, who had generously agreed to a glass of wine and a few pointers. She was generous, hugely funny and enjoyed the odd glass of wine - the perfect colleague? One of the great advantages of the 21st century, I think, being able to get in touch with friends of friends so easily; I felt very reassured after having met her.

As may be obvious, I did justice to a few glasses, then headed home for dinner (hooray! chanterelle mushrooms on sale!) before retiring to what hopefully, given last night's apocalyptic visions (the very very least of which was the absolute conviction my bike had been stolen; I crept down at dawn to see, only to find it guarded by a red squirrel - what a good omen!), will be a restful night's sleep before the dawn of this fresh adventure.