PDX OPERAbeat | A Company Blog is the blog for all things Portland Opera, featuring a variety of guest contributors who will provide insider's tidbits on all we do to celebrate the beauty and breadth of opera.
Jess Crawford is our primary blogger.
Jess spends much of her time eating enormous amounts of cake, making long lists of books she'll probably never read, and challenging people to arm-wrestling contests.
During the day (and sometimes at night) she is Portland Opera's music librarian.
She writes more about her escapades at her personal blog: http://bravissimi.blogspot.com
Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 07/02/2012 - 10:59
And: we're back!
It's the period I lovingly refer to as "opera summer." Those fleeting few months when there's a lull between shows, when one season has ended and another has yet to begin. Although of course we all love producing operas, the break is, as breaks usually are, delicious.
What happens during opera summer?
• We put everything away. The pieces of our final production -- sets, costumes, props -- are sent home. Candide, made mostly of projections, gets its relevant bits and pieces stored in our warehouse. Costumes which were rented are returned to the rental house. The orchestra music is given a once-over (for paperclips, tape, messily-drawn cuts, etc) and, in the case of Candide, returned to the publisher.
• We do a final reckoning. In the sometimes frantic hustle of the season, things get left behind, messy, upended. In my case, I put away scores from the whole season. The filing in my office took me a whole day. I still had an entire pile of music from the gala -- LAST SEASON'S GALA -- sitting on my desk. Good grief.
• We catch up on things we never get time for mid-season. I inventoried the whole library! I spent one luxurious week wearing scrubby clothes (because of the dust things acquire from long periods on shelves) and counted every single slip of music we own. (Well, almost every one. I know better than to think I got them all.) I unearthed things I had no idea were kicking around. There just isn't time for all those big projects when you're trying to juggle the immediate issues of the production at hand.
Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Tue, 05/22/2012 - 09:39
Saturday night, closing night of Candide, was also the final night of the 2011-2012 opera season. Sitting up in the supertext booth, listening to the show (because of the number of follow spot operators in the show, my place in the booth had a very limited view of the stage), I got laughing at myself: as much as I've been looking forward to a few months without late rehearsal nights, I suddenly felt a little melancholy. We'll all be glad to get our evenings back for awhile -- it's been about four months since any of us has gotten to routinely eat dinner at home -- and yet there's a certain bittersweet sadness, too. Now there are four months to wait before we put on another production!
There's always so much I want to tell you on this blog. Sometimes words just fall short. On opening night of Candide, I listened from backstage (having split the supertext duty with our other operator, principal accompanist Tom Webb). I mostly sat in the production office and worked, listening to the show as it was piped through the monitors. During the exquisite final number, though, I got up and made my way into the wings. Our temporary chorusmaster, Adam Turner, was there already. "Aren't you going to sing?" he asked, grinning, as the chorus made their entrance. So Adam and I stood next to the fly rail, watched the performers in their final number, and we sang our hearts out right along with them. Just being in the wings during a show always feels sort of thrilling and magical -- people working and talking and watching, all out of sight of the audience -- but 'participating' for a few moments from that vantage point was something else entirely. And is there a finer song to end a season with than 'Make Our Garden Grow'?
What a lovely and interesting season this has been, both in front of the curtain and behind it. Some highlights:
-- Surviving our first gala concert. What satisfaction there was in walking around the street fair in The Dress, watching the giant Marx Brothers dance and listening to the bands. I'm just beginning to gear up for next year's concert; I'm very glad to have one under my belt now. And you guys. That dress.
-- Listening to Jennifer Aylmer sing Deh vieni non tardar (one of my favorite arias) during our run of Figaro. Also: standing backstage with Jennifer Hammontree, our Production Stage Manager, and singing "Marcellina, Marcellina" during this scene:
-- Related: playing the door knock noise during the Act II finale every night. The key lock noise scared the socks off of me, but I got a thrill every time I stood pressed with my back against the set, surrounded on all sides by the chorus, clutching the wooden knocker in one nervous hand.
-- Watching the children who played Trouble in Madama Butterfly make their first entrance. So sweet, so small! Then later, watching Kelly Kaduce clutch the child to her in the final scene, just before her character's suicide.
-- Galileo. Blog, I have to tell you the truth. Although I wrote to you at length about how to like music you might otherwise dismiss, I did not believe I was going to like Galileo. I wasn't convinced the piece was very strong, not until I began watching rehearsals. Then, I think I became the production's loudest and most fervent advocate. I was completely vindicated when I sent a friend to the dress rehearsal with my comp tickets and, when approached afterwards by our marketing staff to give her take on it, she burst into spontaneous tears. I said what I needed to say on opening night, but just to reiterate: Galileo was without question the most satisfying experience of my career so far.
-- Listening through headphones every night to Robert Orth as Cacambo (one of his various Candide roles), in that scene with the sheep. I could have listened to him say, "One by one, all of the sheeps was lost. Some into precipes -- OOHHHHH NOOOOOOOOO *crash*" every day and still crack up every single time. And I couldn't even see him.
What a great season. Although by this point in the season I am always exhausted and frazzled and ready for a break, I never take this work for granted. At the end of this, my seventh season, it is still just as magical and exciting to be in the theater as it was for my very first show. We are lucky to do what we do, surrounded as we are by wonderful artists: singers, instrumentalists, designers, craftsmen, stagehands. I never forget how lucky I am. Thanks so much to all of you for being here with us, for reading and watching and taking part in our opera community. We couldn't do it without you -- seriously.
Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Wed, 05/09/2012 - 16:45
"Candide ... said to himself, 'If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?'"
Monday night was the first time I got to see our production of Candide. I spent the weekend working in the supertext booth, where, because there are four follow-spot operators for the show, I'm relegated to a seat with a window measuring roughly 5" x 5". Since I don't really need to see in order to run the supertext, I didn't bother to adjust my chair to window height (tall), and spent three nights just listening to the show, which I found increasingly hilarious.
I've never seen Candide before, although I played the concert version of the overture at least twice in college. (And what a piece of music! Talk about an overture that demands a listener's attention). Nevertheless, Candide is a piece that feels naturally familiar -- one of those that you know even without knowing it. It's so very Bernstein, and so very American. It's beautiful, and charming, and fun. And what a refreshing change of pace from Very Serious Opera!
Anyway: back to Monday night. As we have done in the past (Barber of Seville, Rigoletto), we invited several local comic artists to Monday night's dress rehearsal, where they got a backstage tour and then were encouraged to draw whatever inspired them from their seats in the first few rows of the orchestra section. This year, for the first time, we also invited several prolific local Twitter users to come and live-tweet the opera. What a hoot! I also use Twitter, so I took the opportunity to join in on the fun; it was so interesting and hilarious to read other peoples' reactions to the show in real time. (And also strange and a little thrilling to be allowed/encouraged to use our phones during the show.)
