An enjoyable, if somewhat eccentric, leavetaking of Germany (just for the summer).  A friend had planned a lawnwarming (like a housewarming, but for her fresh new lawn, of course) for the afternoon before I flew to England; this then grew, slightly out of control, into a sort of high tea / garden party (probably says a lot about us that it was only about two hours in, chatting to some German guests, that I realised we'd forgotten...erm, the tea!).  I was far more occupied by planning for cucumber sandwiches, and scones (we outsourced most of the baking to a sweet American friend whose hobby it is), and correctly-constituted Pimms, than anything quite so mundane as packing a suitcase (lord alone knows what's in there - it will be interesting to find out over the summer!).  We even managed to track down doilies (doilies!!) and bunting, which we scooted up ladders to hang from branches in the grey and overcast morning cool.

Amazingly, the weather brightened just as the first guests started to arrive, and it really felt like one of those perfect English days (helped, naturally, by the Pimms).  Wonderful relaxation, once the pre-party scurry of peeling and chopping and buttering and arranging was swapped for the glass in the hand. 

A singer, however, is seldom properly off duty.  I was press-ganged (there really is no other term for it) into singing by my friend's next-door neighbour and landlord, a delightful and totally crazy sculptor with a passion for playing guitar in the pub.  He dragged me to one side, eyes shining, and showed me the crib sheets for three songs, explaining that they'd fished out a music stand for me so I would be able to read the words, and that he could play in any key I wanted, and he was just DYING to make music with me.  I tried a few pathetic little excuses (like, just because I'm a singer, it doesn't mean I know how the middle bits of popular songs necessarily go), but I was swept away on a tide of his enthusiasm (yes, yes; and Pimms).

Thus I found myself standing in the sunshine at an English garden party in Germany, complete with hat and gloves, belting out Moon River and Somewhere Over the Rainbow and finishing with Memories (from Cats... this one in German!!)... and grinning like a loon!!  The sheer joy of performing, with no pressure at all and mainly for the purpose of making someone else happy, was overwhelming.  A much-needed reminder, as I head for a period of (relative) vocal rest, of just how exhilarating being a performer can be.  Cheers!

 

Should anyone be interested in experiencing the General Laws of Relativity on a very practical level, I would highly recommend losing one's way when speaking on stage.  Amazing how the search for one blasted word can last for utter eternities.

It was just the ONE word.  I started the sentence OK ... "Ich will nicht..." then ground to a halt.  What *should* have come out was, "Ich will nicht exkommuniziert werden" (I don't want to be excommunicated).  The following is a rough transcript of what went on in my mind during the space between getting lost and getting my act back together - in "normal" time a matter of a second or two:

"Ich will nicht WHAT?  Bloody hell, I've lost the word.  I'm going to dry on stage. I'm going to panic. NO!!  No, I am NOT going to panic, I am cooler than that, I've done this role loads of times, if I just carry on it will probably just happen, and... ahhh, um yeah, it DIDN'T just happen, what do I do now? (don'tpanicdon'tpanic). 

OK, so I just go ahead and say it in English.  No probs; my character speaks in English half the time anyway.  Only thing is, I can't remember the bloody word in English either.  Right.  Something to do with getting chucked out of the church.  Ex, ah yes, I'm pretty sure it starts with ex.  Then, it must be something to do with the church, right?  So, Latin?  Rats, what's the Latin for church?  Ecclesia?  Hmmm, not sure about that, sounds a little Greek to me.  Put it together and damn it, it's definitely not what I'm looking for.

Keep breathing.  Smilesmilesmile."

Eventually it wandered back in and made a belated appearance - the whole thing being far, FAR more relaxed than I have ever been about mislaying my text.  I don't mind admitting that I was jealous.  Being jealous of one's own mind in a slightly-less-than-natural state, mind, is probably not the healthiest option, mentally speaking, so maybe we'll just ignore that. 

And, in terms of "mentally speaking", I am happy to say that I survived the carnival in this city once again.  Photo is of a few of the papier-mache heads that generally express a lot of political opínions.  This year, I understood some of them!!  (Some, mind.  Definitely not all.  However a general sweep of the papers weekly means I have a vague idea of the political arena.)

Helped greatly that I ended up behind the barriers next to an immensely sweet girl, mentally subnormal, with a childlike ability to enjoy the moment.  She was forever turning to me with a look of absolute wonder.  Look at the FROG!! Look at the CLOWNS!!!  Huge grin.  In the absence of children, I reckon this was probably the best way to appreciate the whole thing.

The parade lasted over four hours. Luckily there was glorious and unseasonal sunshine, offsetting the icy-cold winds.  And even luckier, I had ventured out for coffee on the Sunday and had realised how bone-chillingly cold it was, and altered my costume accordingly.

Details of bone-turningly high heels and ridiculously late nights suppressed, mainly because my mother is an avid reader of whatever I post on the internet.  Suffice it to say that it terms of wild carousing, it really doesn't help to know that you have to be on stage at 10 a.m. the next morning, sufficiently sober to be able to sing your lines and march on in all the right places.  And given that we have far more places than lines... Ah, this profession does take it out of you unexpected ways!

You'd think, really, that my brain had enough to be getting on with.

New term, right? Music to learn, of course, including some ferociously tricky modern stuff. New people to call by the wrong names, or inappropriately address as "du", or fail to recognise.

Flat to furnish. Van booked, must remember to drive on the wrong side of the road (English joke that; luckily for me I'm usually happy to swap sides at the drop of a hat). How to get to van-hire place if it continues this biblical deluge (even I can't cycle in this). What are the various addresses I need to pick up furniture from and considering that Frankfurt is a nightmare of diversions and holes in the road even when you're on foot, how on earth will I manage to find them?

Getting back to full health. Although this appears to be sorting itself out. I had a check-up at the hospital a couple of days ago. The doctor looked thoughtfully at my baggage. "How did you get here today?" he asked. "Cycled," said I. (An hour. Uphill. Blasted map doesn't show gradients...) "Hmm," he muttered, scribbling things down, "well you're a damn sight fitter than I am..."

Even the voice is starting to behave beautifully, on occasion feeling like a sports car whose engine has been taken to bits, cleaned thoroughly, then painstakingly and meticulously rebuilt, leading to purring and easy speed and manoeuvrability. On occasion.

I'm conscious of holes in my German grammar which need seeing to urgently, and of sneaky little verbal traps into which I am currently fated to leap (whilst explaining a rather spectacular bruise on my thigh to a friend yesterday, I airily let it slip that my bike had fallen for me, hard. Same mistake as in English, it would appear...)

Even, were it up to me, how to actually use a decoy duck call... long story, involves a party, needless to say, rather than actually hunting ducks. Was actually quite proud of myself for entering the weapons shop (surreally situated amongst the chichi gift shops in the picturesque Old Town) yesterday, armed with the translation for duck call. Nonchalantly, I made my request to the lady behind the counter, rather incongruous herself in electric-blue eyeshadow and amazingly high shining white bouffant. She looked at me in bemusement. Rats, I thought, obviously got told the wrong word. Again. Nope, she was just looking after things while her son was on the phone, he'd be out in a minute. Impatient snorting sounds from bewhiskered serious hunter type who'd come in just after me. Eventually the chap wandered through, and whilst evidently amused by my request (What?? Just because I was dressed in low-cut top, floor-skimming skirt with sequins and a flower in my long tangled hair, doesn't mean I couldn't have been a world-class shot. Or something.), rummaged through his box of tricks and found exactly what I was looking for. While I was handing over the money, he turned to the Serious Hunter and asked what he would like. "I'd like to be a duck!" he growled, bushy eyebrows bouncing up and down as he winked and grinned at me through his thick droopy moustache...

But no. What my brain spent a great deal of last night obsessing about was, hmm if I were to attempt to crochet the inside lining of a full-body close-fitting suit (evidently, and please don't ask me why, including integral gloves etc), would I manage to get things the right way around? And how? And which bits would be tricky, given that I appear to crochet things inside out anyway? I mean, good lord, I have NO intention of doing anything so ridiculous, yet here was my brain spending my precious sleeping time pondering the phenomenon of looking in a mirror and seeing oneself reversed, as it were, on a vertical axis and yet not on the horizontal (so left and right are transposed, but not up and down - why?), and what did that mean for trying to crochet the ends of arms and hands, inside out? No sooner had I squashed one idiotic query than another popped up. Three a.m. saw me awake pondering the deep and meaningful subject of the knees - I mean, I was thinking, even if I managed to get all the fingers right, would the knees perhaps be pointing in the wrong direction?

Sometimes I despair.

Final rehearsals...

We've got to the stage now where I'm frantically trying to make sense of a whole load of acronyms on the call sheets. BO? HP? GP? Whut?

So far we've managed BO (which, seeing as I'm English, makes me giggle and the Germans look bemused) - Bühnenorchesterprobe (stage & orchestra rehearsal, so you have the orchestra playing their hearts out while you're trying to co-ordinate your tempi with those of the conductor, and simultaneously trying to remember where you're meant to be heading, whilst stepping over the inevitable accidents that occur once the actual props turn up) and Hauptprobe (back to piano, with everyone trying to avoid treading on the same toes as at the BO, but hindered by costumes which are too wide for entrances and in which one can't step back and faint neatly).

There are the usual niggles en route, but at Saturday's rehearsal, which was open (free!! how wonderful!) to the public for the first half, there was laughter in all the right places (which is reassuring). The costumes are stunning for all involved, it's such a pleasure to be in the middle of such a visual feast (even though I'm still getting "Hmm, we need to make you look more bonkers, you're a little elegant there...").

I have to admit that, whilst I normally bat around madly, I'm doing my best to conserve energy at the moment, so that I can concentrate properly and stay in decent voice. This is not easy - whilst it's not cold here, we have evidently passed the date when the Germans Put The Heating On. I was confronted by a wall of heat even in the library today, and have had to sneakily turn the radiator off in my dressing room. Flipping from hot to cold and back again is one of the worst things you can do to a voice; they sulk.

Here's hoping the remainder of the rehearsal process continues apace. Meanwhile, the picture is a bleak reminder of what happens when you sit with a couple of friends on a sofa quite happily at a cast party and ask a baritone to take a picture...

Theaterfest

On Saturday, the theatre threw open its doors to the public, and, on an occasionally sunny and rather cheerful day, the public streamed in to enjoy it. It's a German thing, I think, and something which other countries would do well to note and copy - there was a distinct local feeling of pride in "our" theatre, a definite feeling of relaxed ownership as people strolled in and out of the auditoriums and the foyers, and were given guided tours around (everything was free).

In the square outside, set painters were allowing children to create riotously coloured pictures, and taping them on the theatre walls in a mad display. Actors were strapping on their guitars, and by turns moody and hilarious, were belting out rock numbers at the tops of their voices. Beer and sausages, naturally, helped proceedings along.

I watched a "fashion show" of costumes in fascination; half at the glorious creations on display, and half at the little girls beside me, who were spellbound (especially by the huge diamond-studded princess's wedding dress - that was greeted with audibly awed indrawn breaths!). There were lots of children, and their parents were patiently explaining various aspects of the theatre to them - a great introduction. I have to admit I was evilly anticipating my friend's entrance - the poor girl had drawn the short straw and was down to enter in the fat suit she wore in a production last year, which she had to strip off - in full public view and aided only by striptease music - to reveal frilly undies and fishnets. In the event she did wonderfully and it went without a hitch (although my karma has probably, as another friend pointed out, taken a severe battering). Some of the costumes were absolutely astonishing - there's a huge amount of imagination and craft here, which feels very encouraging. I have had a lot of costume disappointments in the past, however (details another day, maybe) so I shan't hold my breath when it comes to my turn.

My friend and I wandered along to a jazz / world music concert in the foyer - it was so packed, the only seats we could find (and we needed to sit down for a while, we'd been drinking beer in the sunshine, laughing as one person after another came to congratulate her on her star turn and gorgeous legs) were tucked down the side. Fabulous music, an immensely talented jazz quartet, and some happily energetic cabaret turns from chorus members. Toe-tapping stuff - literally - a tiny old lady sitting by me couldn't stop wriggling up and down - she was evidently itching to get up and dance!

To cap the day off, there was a concert on the main stage in the early evening, again free to anyone who could nab a seat. There were highlights from the forthcoming opera season, presented in a chatty, genial manner by the music director, who was conducting. It was relaxed and pleasant and a great way to sell the new season. The couple next to me actually gasped in excitement when she mentioned Salome. The whole thing was definitely a success, and it gave me such pleasure to think that I was a part of it.

Naturally, the photo has absolutely nothing to do with the above subject (I forgot to take my camera!). It's the interior of a slide I found inside a sort of windmill up on the higher bit of the city. I felt a trifle silly climbing up there and whooshing down, at my age, but heck, there was no-one to see! Interestingly, there appears to be a dragon's tail waiting for me at the bottom. The dragon had, however, disappointingly quite disappeared once I landed with an undignified bump and opened my eyes...

Goodness, a birthday party... (gulp!)

Amazingly generously, I was invited to a birthday party over the weekend by a member of the theatre staff I'd never even met. I do appreciate my dear mezzo friend for engineering the invitation; any chance to get to know my colleagues better (and to have a bash at conversational German) is gratefully pounced on. I suspect that when things get busier for me in terms of rehearsals and performances, there will as always be more opportunities to socialise, but just for the moment I'm wandering around slightly like a lost soul. Very strange! As I've always sung freelance before, I'm used to leaping into high-intensity encounters, working with colleagues virtually around the clock, from the start - so this is slightly disorientating. I've been having a few thoughts about the difference between this Fest contract and my freelance life, which I dare say will get aired once they've been properly digested!

However back to the main event. I was invited for 3 p.m. and arranged to meet my friend by the theatre at 2.30 so we could get lost en route together. I had to resort to a rather pathetic text to her asking what was normal to bring to birthday parties - wine? chocolate? flowers? We plumped for a gorgeous orchid and a box of chocolates which amused us because the name, Pralinés des Dames, translates as Ladies' Pralines, and we thought a ladies-only box of chocs was an eminently suitable birthday present!

Well I had a lovely time! Utterly different from my usual experience of birthday parties in England, which tend more towards the bacchanal, with everyone dressed up and sparkling, drink flowing freely and strangers engaging in heated discussion (although I will admit that this could just be the circles I move in...). Nope, this was a hugely civilised affair; there were only a few guests, we were offered a choice of guest slippers upon entering (luckily there was an orange pair to match the flower in my hair; despite bike-friendly dressing (more on which at some point!) a diva has her limits). We sat around the table, and the birthday girl served lovely cakes (if there's one area where the Germans rule supreme, cooking-wise, it's cakes), whipped cream and coffee. Lovely contributions were made by the hostess's children (I now know the German for that twirly stick thing majorettes chuck around - ein Majorettenstab - pity I've no idea what they're called in English!). Conversation flowed happily - I appear to have some very simpatico colleagues, who listened gently to my mangled contributions and rescued me when I got stuck down a vocabulary dead-end (note to self: stick to simpler anecdotes in the near future - save the one about Daddy getting caught by the police scraping roadkill into a plastic bag at 3 a.m. for a more confidently German-speaking future). The only slightly surreal moment was turning around at one point to find the hostess in full Harry Potter get-up - floor-length cloak and wand. (Checked my coffee - definitely alcohol-free; eh, how nice that people have such enthusiasms! I also learned the word for wand, being der Stab - no majorettes this time, but connections definitely starting to be made!).

I came away very much appreciating the time I'd had and thinking, yes, I could definitely get into this German lark. One advantage of German parties to remember - you don't need to eat a thing for the rest of the day!!