Normally Wednesday is a carefree, playful day during a week-long residency.  The concert seems pleasantly distant, though it’s only four days from now (forever, we think). Everything is simmering nicely, and no one is anxious about memory. There’s plenty of time to experiment and explore!

That was not the feeling in the hall today. We were all pretty ragged by the time 6:10 PM rolled around and we called a halt. There was some new staging, and some review, and (finally!) some solo work too. Nothing was amiss—it was just a matter of fatigue. Katherine had been in the hall since the morning, placing the platforms and focusing the lights. Poquatuck, I am pleased to say, has more lighting instruments than in the past, and we now can isolate several areas and use more of the space instead of hugging the small square near the piano. The singers arrived at 12:30, I got there an hour later, and by tea-time (scheduled for 3:30 every day) we were all running on fumes. Katherine never flagged, but I could tell she was drawing on her reserves of professionalism to stay focussed. As I mentioned on Monday, those reserves are impressive.

I have no real excuse for flaking out—my day was long, but still probably the shortest of anyone’s, just four hours at the piano. But I smashed my left big toe on Thursday just before leaving New York and I have a ferocious sprain that makes my foot too large and too sensitive to fit into a shoe. I’ve started a new look in Orient, one shoe and one sandal (with a sock)—the latest in Long Island chic. I’m happy to say it’s getting better, bit by bit, but my left foot still looks like something unappealing you might find hanging in a wild-game butcher shop. Having this throbbing extremity at the end of my left leg seems to lower my stamina a bit. “Thank God it wasn’t your right,” said Philip when he saw it. From his mouth to god’s ear—my pedal foot is blessedly normal.

I’ve been leaning very hard on Adriana this week. The truth is that I chose this program with her in mind. I felt she had never been given a chance in her undergraduate years to strut her vocal stuff. Since she’s a young singer, she is automatically asked to sing lightweight material, and I watched her hold back and thin out her sound to fulfill her school assignments. I am fond of her personally, and I also believe in her sound—a strong, colorful, even voice that emerges freely from her, with an easy upper register and (best of all) a beautiful connection to her low notes. Having spent the last few years cast as a tinselly soubrette, or asked to sing with no vibrato in a Baroque opera, Adriana needed a place for her voice to come out of the closet. And this program of operetta was just the thing to release her inner diva. She is one of the few singers who needs to be instructed in narcissism. 

For example, she has a great high C and a lovely pianissimo high B-flat, and she was nailing the climax of her Puccini aria—technically. But gorgeous as it was, it lacked excitement. “Take that high C and spray the room with it!” (This used to be called the “Freni Spray,” named after Mirella Freni who would hold her high notes and sweep the hall like a Puccinian aerosol can.)

“OK…” she said cautiously. “And Adriana, be aware of the EFFECT your voice has on the audience—it’s electrifying, so play with them!” This had not occurred to her. Why would it? At this point in her life she’s always auditioning, and it is well-nigh impossible to raise-goose bumps on a panel who has been hearing operatic arias for the last seven hours. 

I gave her one more tip: “About the piano B-flat: sing the note before it a little louder, a little more supported, THEN float the Bb, taper it down—and when you come off the B-flat, give it a little crescendo-zing, just a flash.” She sang the phrases again—the same free, fresh sound, but this time, oh what magic.