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Week 10: Goodbye (for now)!

Wow!  What a wonderful (almost) three months this has been! We've traversed many miles, sang many hours and made

Oh no! Pamina!

so many new friendships. 


This week we ventured down to beautiful southern Oregon to elementary schools in Medford, Grants Pass, Jacksonville, Klamath Falls and back to Portland to perform three public performances at The Hampton Opera Center.


Since this is my last blog, I wanted to share a few of my favorite memories from these three months on the road...


During a Q&A at one school, a young Latino boy raised his hand and asked Claudia if she spoke Spanish.  When she responded (in Spanish), "Yes I do, do you?"  He answered, "Si!" and turned to his teacher with such a look of pride to be able to speak Spanish like one of the opera singers! This meant a lot to Claudia and all of her fellow POGOers as well!

 

Dear Tamino

 

Rinaldo: fun facts, & farewell

 

world's best entrance

Was this not the most fabulous entrance ever? Lindsay Ohse in her first entrance as Armida
Cory Weaver/Portland Opera

 

We closed Rinaldo Saturday night. It was bittersweet for all of us; we'd all really fallen in love with the show, and we also hated to say goodbye to our conductor, Gary Wedow, and our former Resident Artist soprano, Sharin Apostolou. But that's the business! We always have to say goodbye.

 

We're all tired and there's a ton to wrap up (heartbreakingly, all those Rinaldo parts I so carefully crafted have to be disassembled and returned to the publisher). But I wanted to take a minute to share a few miscellaneous Rinaldo items before we put Handel away for awhile.

 

Fun facts

The boat

 

The boat

Cory Weaver/Portland Opera

 

The tiny boat that appears at the top of Act II, which sails across the top of the set and, it turns out, is attached to Armida's hair, was a big hit with the audience. It's one of my favorite scenes -- I love stage magic! But do you know a crazy thing? That boat wasn't just stuffed into Lindsay's wig during the Act I intermission. The boat had its own wig.

POGO Week 9: PCPA, Providence and RINALDO!

Hello Awesome POGO Blog Followers! Ksenia here (aka Queenie or 1st Lady...and sometimes Papagena) We are in our home stretch, two more weeks to go. This last week proved to be a toughie as many of us were battling icky sickies and allergies from the beautiful weather. We started off our week on Monday with two shows, one of which was in the Portland Center for Performing Arts. More specifically, the lobby of where the Newmark Theatre is (For those attending Rinaldo this week....p.s.- go see it! it's awesome, so much glitter and shirtless barihunkiness). The acoustics made it so easy to sing, which is not always the case for every space we're in. The performance was well attended and we even had a special appearance by little Mozart himself!


Later that day we received an emergency email that our next two days of shows had been rescheduled so we could have a completely healthy cast. We try our best to hand sanitize, and stay as healthy as possible but with 3 months of touring, it's bound to happen. Thursday we were back on the road with a show at Colonel Wright Elementary — a particularly vocally excited bunch (which we love to hear!). Friday was our marathon day, leaving at 9am to head out to Mosier for a show, heading back to The Hampton Opera Center for about a 40min. break then meeting back up at Providence Hospital for an evening show. You might be surprised to learn that a good handful of our shows are NOT at schools, but at community centers and are open to the public.