posts tagged with 'opera'
it begins
We're well into rehearsing for the opera now, Harvey, Zion, and me. We have roles now: Zion and I are part of the Dutch crew (I'm Captain Gouda) and Harvey was just promoted to the part of Cecily, with several solo lines. It was slow work getting into the show: with so many songs and dances to learn it started out as just an overwhelming swirl of information. But at this past Sunday's rehearsal we ran through a whole scene for the first time, which gave us enough context to really start practicing at home. Plus I was able to access the practice tracks for us to listen to. What that means, of course, it that all of us—including Elijah, and probably Leah too—now have the music to Scene 1 of The Cutlass Crew firmly established in our brains. Like, so much it's preventing me from sleeping. Or maybe I'm having trouble sleeping for other reasons and while I lie awake the music is all I can think of? Either way, if you hear me singing about Moll Cutpurse, that old thief from the market you'll know why. Until next week. Then we'll have different songs to obsess over.
future opera stars
Yesterday evening we went to the first rehearsal for the North Cambridge Family Opera production we find ourselves taking part in. Despite his relative enthusiasm at the audition Elijah decided he didn't want to do the show so he stayed home; Zion also decided—very decidedly—that he didn't want to either, but I made him go. We make these children do very few things, so when one of them loves singing and acting and has a beautiful voice and great stage presence but resists trying new things sometimes he doesn't get to refuse. Don't worry, he had a fine time! They haven't assigned roles yet, but we have our voice parts so we could start working on the choruses: Harvey is singing alto, I've become a bass in my old age, and Zion—along with all the other preteens—is singing "melody", which means he can sing along with whatever sounds like the melody to him at any point. Which he's quite good at. Besides the singing we also started learning some dances, which was harder, but still fun. This morning Zion was showing us how he remembered the moves better than the rest of us. I think he'll do ok.