june 2006

The real stuff going on behind the scenes!
June 2006

Well, it's been a crazy year so far, and we're just barely into the summer!

Paris...
While in Paris singing Gilda (and back and forth to my home in Belgium), I was able to catch a few shows at the Paris Opera Garnier - a fabulous (and controversial) Don Giovanni, directed by Michael Haneke, the director of the intriguing, ambiguous movie "Caché" and the equally controversial Nozze di Figaro (from Salzburg) directed by Marthaler, which was great fun and again, relevant. Don Giovanni was wonderfully dark, modern and relevant. Peter Mattei as Don Giovanni was wonderfully horrible and multi-faceted. Figaro was great, with a fine cast, even though I still felt like all of the women would've been better off all singing Susanna. The guy doing all the "weird stuff" (singing, playing on strange instruments, etc...) for the accompaniment for the recitatives was actually quite fun, although I thought the evening was really long enough without his "extra" added-in song with the water glasses. You don't really need to add a song to a Mozart opera to make it relevant. ahem. Last, I saw the new Kaija Saariaho opera at the Bastille, Adriana Mater, directed by Peter Sellars. It was beautiful music, movingly sung in the title role by Patricia Bardon - an absolute lesson in grace. What a beautiful woman and what a story of beauty in the midst of ugliness. Peter's direction was unobtrusive, organic and allowed the moving story to move, as it should. It rang true to what he once told me about how his idea of directing, that he "is just finding the show that's already there." The lighting was incredible, as usual from Jim Ingalls. Although I thought the set made a great visual impression, it worked totally against making the singers audible without amplification. The entire set had no backdrop and used the entire bare stage - no flies, no back wall until the actual back wall of the theater - and built low "buildings" out of a resin that looked like ice all over the stage. Because the buildings were so low and there was no back wall, there was absolutely nothing to bounce singers' voices out into the hall. Even one more floor on the buildings (in my estimation) could've been enough to help the singers out acoustically and make it possible for them to sing it without microphones. The Bastille, for all its faults, has a great acoustic, so it seemed a shame to have to mike everyone. Since opera houses and singers are not built nor trained to work with microphones, I find the use of them more than off-putting. We sing the way we sing in order to make our voices carry. If we're just going to use mikes, why bother studying? Despite this, I loved the show. The strength of the story (written by Amin Maloof) and the music (Saariaho) were enough to make me forget any qualms about details. And what a treat to get to see all these people and Esa-Pekka Salonen, who was conducting, again!

KVS REOPENING...
Next, I was able to be home a bit, as my boyfriend Jan's historic theater, the KVS (Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg) was re-opening on the weekend of April 7, after years of reconstruction. The new building opened for the politicians on the 7th, but the "real" opening was on the 8th with a full "show" of "Coup des Coeurs," a piece featuring over 15 local Brussels choirs. There were walks of every ethnicity, language, type, stripe and flavor: movement-based choirs, nonsense-word choirs, comic choir, gay choir, church choir, children's choir, communist choir, rap groups, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Dutch (of course), Swahili, Greek the list goes on. The show started out with the public onstage and some singers singing in the rafters. Then the curtain came up and consecutive groups sang their pieces out the house while the audience stood on the stage. Then the audience moved into the seats, and the choirs started singing onstage, one by one, and then added up, until they reached the finale. Written and led by musician Fabrizio Casol, the finale was based on the "Peace" prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace,
where there is hatred, I may bring love;
where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness;
where there is discord, I may bring harmony;
where there is error, I may bring truth;
where there is doubt, I may bring faith;
where there is despair, I may bring hope;
where there are shadows, I may bring light;
where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

You have to admit that it is a lovely sentiment, even if you are not religious. Each phrase was sung by a different group or groups of choirs, in each of their languages and in each of their styles, until in the end, they all came together on the word "Peace" (in all the languages). At the end, the religious groups sang "amen" while other groups sang "peace" in their own language, joining in a cacophony of languages, over 350 voices, and they moved around in a circle of sound - until in the end, the back doors of the stage were thrown open, and they spilled out of the theater into the city - a moving attestation to the force of the arts to bring people together, and of the beautiful diversity of our scruffy, beloved city. I can't do it justice in words, but it was one of the all-time highs in all of my life of theater-going. I haven't been prouder ever! And this isn't even mentioning the other shows - "The Cherry Orchard" and Wim van de Keybus' "Puur," which were huge successes in those months, as well. Visit the theater here on the KVS website: http://kvs.be

Moscow...
I spent a week or so in Moscow in March, rehearsing for a Solo Gala concert in a "Coloratura Divas" series in the Tchaikovsky Hall. It was a wild time. A bit of background: in 1994, when I competed in the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (in that very same hall), I arrived at the rehearsals for the final round (with orchestra) and the conductor rushed up to me to say in Russian "Catastrofa! Catastrofa!" Well, I didn't speak much but "tea, thanks" and "if I were a blade of grass..." in Russian at that point, but I definitely understood what he was saying. It turns out, they had the orchestral parts for the first aria I was doing (Princess Schemacha's aria from The Golden Cockerel) but thought they had the parts for one of my arias (the Mad Scene from Thomas' Hamlet), which they had borrowed from the Bolshoi. Instead, the parts had cuts in them. I said, as any other reasonable musician might, "Well, why don't they just erase the 'vi-' and '-de' from the parts?" (For non-musicians: it is customary to pencil in "vi-" where you start a cut and then "-de" when you end a cut, like an open and close parenthesis.) Well, I found out the reason cuts are called "cuts" in every language: the Russians actually physically had CUT THEM OUT OF THE PARTS. So the most challenging parts of the aria (i.e. the showy parts you want to sing in the competition) were nowhere to be found. And they didn't have time to get any other parts. So I had to learn big cuts in my aria the day before the finals. Despite this, and pharyngitis from the cottonwood trees which lined every tree in town and blew blossoms like a blizzard of snow all over downtown, up your nose, in your eyes... I got the Silver Medal and was the audience favorite.

When I made up the program for this concert in Moscow, I wanted to bring something different to the Muscovite public than just some pretty ditties, and they wanted me to do some "show-stoppers." I find a concert of famous arias taken out of context so banal and useless - why bother? Let them hear it in context! So I made up an eclectic program which included some Russian pieces the Russians don't get to hear much or that they never hear with my type of voice and pieces that I wanted to try out with orchestra - Anne Truelove's aria and Stravinsky's Rossignol, as well as Ravel's "Fire aria" from L'Enfant et les sortilêges, Corinna's aria from Rossini's largely unheard Il Viaggio a Rheims, the big scene from the end of Bellini's Sonnambula, and the two pieces I did in the 1994 Tchaikovsky finals, so I could finally sing the ENTIRE Thomas scene without cuts. (This is not to mention the three - or was it four? - arias for encores we had.) We even had a great choir (the Moscow Conservatory Chamber Choir) for the big scenes. I had told them my whole sad Tchaikovskly sob story, and my reasons to do the Thomas. I had stressed a year before the concert that we needed to make sure that we had the WHOLE orchestra parts, not these same "cut-up" parts. They assured me they would find the parts. We even decided to do the whole scene - including the actual death of Ophelie after the aria (a beautiful scene with chorus where Ophelie recaps most of the main tunes in the duets and then wades into the waters.) I sent them the piano part of the entire scene to make sure they would double-check the parts against the piano-vocal score.

I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't have to rehearse the day before the concert, nor more than a sound-check the day of the concert (it was being recorded for both tv and radio.)

So you can guess what happened, right? The week before I arrive, we find out the chorus could only rehearse the day before the concert, as they had other concerts before in the days I was rehearsing. When I arrived, they came to me with bad news - the librarian of the orchestra had only called THAT DAY (after having assured everyone that the parts she had did match up with the piano/vocal I'd sent) to say that, "uh, the piano/vocal you gave me doesn't seem to match up with the orchestra parts we have..." They still didn't have the right orchestra parts. So they tried to locate the right orchestra parts for the Thomas. The problem in Russia seems to be that nobody actually rents the scores from publishers, but borrows them from a neighboring theater or orchestra (replete with their old cuts or weird keys, of course). They couldn't find anyone in Russia who had the parts for Hamlet, either. So they found some German publisher who drove to Paris (students were marching near the Sorbonne at this time, of course...), got the parts, drove BACK to Germany, scanned the parts and emailed them to Moscow, where they printed out the parts. The day before the concert. Then the orchestra balked once they saw the parts and said they couldn't read the parts and wanted to cancel the whole piece. So we talked them into trying, at least. (A few frustrated tears were involved, I have to admit - I have rarely been so angry and sad in my life about a concert! I nearly lost it.) To top it all off, I had a full rehearsal the day before the concert. The day of the concert, we were supposed to have a "sound check" at 5pm for the 7 pm concert. Our "sound check" ended up being another runthrough of the entire program with me singing things, as they still didn't know the Hamlet, for example. We had to hold the doors of the auditorium until we finished at 7:05, at which point I ran back to the dressing room to throw on my clothes and slap on some lipstick. We started at 7:30.

And people wonder why singers turn into demanding, exacting divas?? Someone asked me in one of my interviews there, "What kind of riders do you have in your contract?" and I laughed at them and said, "What do you mean? None!" Now I know better, and all of the 'normal' things (like a sane rehearsal period and everyone else being prepared in advance) will be written into my contracts. Better safe than sorry. There's a great bumper sticker in the technician's room here at L.A. Opera which says "lack of preparedness on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." It's now my motto! Oh, did I mention that the librarian who created the majority of our problems was serenely doing a crossword puzzle backstage? I asked her if she could punch holes in my music to put it into a folder for me. Grumbling, she very reluctantly disappeared with it, returned the music to me A) out of order B) in the folder in such a way that no page would stay on one side of the folder without holding onto it at every moment. I was obviously disturbing her crossword puzzle. And nobody thought to say ONE cross word to Comrade Librarian. I had a great dream that night of walking up to her and maliciously tearing up her almost-finished crossword puzzle right in front of her eyes before telling her to do her job! Fantasy is a great stress-buster.

Oh, and the concert? It was a huge success, despite me being stressed out and tired. I didn't feel it was my best singing (and I had a few "brain farts" as a result during the concert), but the audience seemed to love it. Of course, it's all now memorialized in the tv and radio broadcast. Yikes.

Will I ever go back to Russia? You betcha! The audiences know their stuff, the people are for the most part very willing, and my conductor, Theodor Currentsis (pictured with me at left) was both inspiring and exciting. We had to do three encores: Lakme's Bell Song, Caro nome and Glitter and be Gay. Needless to say, I was POOPED! I have never gotten so many flowers brought to me DURING a concert! I love Russia. As you can see, I'm easy... all is forgiven with flowers.

New York ...
After all that excitement, I went to New York to study with my teacher before the rehearsals of Grendel started. And I had an audition at the Met. Yes, EVERYONE has to audition for the Met. I haven't done an audition in years! I had had an audition scheduled in January when I was in New York to see a show, which the Met cancelled two days beforehand because Peter Gelb, the new intendant, wanted to come hear me but wasn't able to make the date we already had set. So the only next time we could both find in our schedules was in April. I had some great rehearsals with my voice teacher, worked on Grendel with coach Joe Smith and promptly got sick with a bad cold two days before my audition... So I had to cancel, and I hope we'll be able to reschedule at a time when Gelb can hear me again. Argh. With our schedules, it'll probably be in 2009 when we can meet up again. He's not in town for my Lincoln Center appearances.

At least I was still able to see some theater and concerts while in New York. I saw the new opera "Miss Lonelihearts" at Juilliard - nice music, but too much talking (voice-overs of the letters), I thought, which made it feel more like a musical than an opera. And I saw the San Francisco Symphony and MTT at Carnegie Hall, which made me rethink my aversion to Ives. That takes some doing!

In the meantime, I decided to finally get rid of this annoying click in my jaw that I have had since high school. It turns out that the orthodontics that gave me beautiful straight teeth in junior high basically didn't take into account that the new position of my teeth jammed my jaw into the back socket. So I now have a mouthpiece from "the" top TMJ doctor, Harold Gelb (no relation to Peter at the Met - I asked!) in New York which I wear almost all the time to reposition my jaw. I'll have a mouthpiece that I wear at night in a few months which will correct my bite. So in the meantime, I'm a real charmer with a gooby mouthpiece (Ok, only I know it's in there) but in about a year or so I will be PERFECT - or at least my bite will! ;-)

Los Angeles ...

L.A. has been a hoot. I arrived two weeks later than I thought I was going to, as I'm only in the second act, and they weren't even going to get to me until mid-April. (Thus, the time to go to New York appeared!) The team for Grendel is fabulous - lots of familiar faces: Thor Steingraber, the director in "my" Capuleti in L.A. in 1999 was assisting Julie Taymor, Rick Croft, Ray Aceto, Jay Morris, Denyce Graves and of course Eric Owens were all old colleagues and/or friends. The three "Shadow Grendels" and the three Dragonettes are all lovely up-and-comers on the scene, and the 20-some-odd dancers added a splash of vim and vigor into our rehearsals and lives, as well.

Working with a living composer is very exciting. Elliot was around a lot, and very approachable, so he would take input and explain what he wanted from different things - but mainly he was just complimentary! Julie is incredible - she has such a great way of explaining what she wants, and is amazing in how she dreams up the visual world she wants and can show you corporally what she wants. If I could just dress her up in my costume and I could sing from off-stage, I have to admit it'd be even better! Eric Owens is FANTASTIC! The reviews have talked about how he owns this role, and it can't be more true. He is the anchor which holds this cast and this show together. This role will make him a star, mark my words. You won't find a more selfless, self-effacing person, either. What a great guy! He deserves a medal... uh, Placido...

While I'm down here, I'm mooching off my sister, staying with her in her lovely home in Long Beach. We have had a lot of fun - we threw a Mexican-themed party on Memorial Day, and even had a piñata that Eric finally bashed down, in true Grendel style. Here's the hostess with the mostest, my sister Lisa (the one on the left with the bright blue eyes) with some of our guests at the party... For more party pictures, click here.

I bet you're waiting to hear more about "the wall" from me... Well, actually there's not a whole heck of a lot more to tell that hasn't already been hashed and re-hashed in the newspapers about our "mechanical wall." We had five full days of onstage technical rehearsals - already a TON of technical time, so L.A. Opera was obviously aware that it was going to be a complicated show and needed that kind of commitment from the house. Nevertheless, we weren't ever able to actually get real work done during those days, as the wall had such major problems (uh, the software working it couldn't make it move, so there were three guys on computers in front of it creating software on the fly to communicate with the wheels in the wall, etc...) So we were getting through about 10 minutes of music per hour - painstakingly. All of us have to commend L.A. Opera for having the courage to move our premiere so the opera could have the world premiere it deserves, and we could do it in a safe way. The technicians also deserve special mention, as they worked literally around the clock for days on end to try and make the set work. Hats off to them!

Tullio's health...

As Tullio has started coughing more and more from his mitral valve problems (heart murmur) despite medicine and since we were getting conflicting accounts about his medicines from homeopathic doctors, we decided to see a cardiac specialist here in California. Tullio saw a veterinarian cardiologist, who did all kinds of tests on him (sonogram, etc...) to check out his heart function. Her conclusions are not very happy. My beloved Tullio is in the first stages of heart failure. We always knew "he had a big heart" - but it turns out he literally does: his heart has had to work so hard to pump enough blood into his system because of his leaky valve(S!) that his heart, being a muscle, has grown to enormous proportions. Our worry is that his heart muscle might tear, at which point we will have to put him to sleep. The doctor said he could probably last another two years, in the best of diagnoses. This made me so inconsolably sad and still upsets me sometimes, but my boyfriend brought things into perspective when he pointed out to me that A)Tullio feels fine and is still around today to be loved B)doctors love to give statistics, but statistics are the median of the full spectrum of experiences and Tullio could be an extraordinary case C)Tullio has lived the equivalent of 77+ years already, has travelled the world and had a really great life already and D) that another two years for him, although short to me, means the equivalent of another 14 human years and would be another 15% of his life. The good news on Tullio's part, if we can find any silver lining in this news, is that diet no longer can make much of a difference for his longevity, so he can EAT WHATEVER HE WANTS if it isn't an abrupt change and it's not going to mess up his stomach. So he is now eating cousin Tessa's food here at my sister's house in Long Beach. Oh JOY! The two of them have been drooling over each other's food (literally!) So he now wakes me up at 6am (there's LIGHT, MOM!) in order to eat breakfast. He has learned that he needs to wait until about 7, but he still gets restless at about 6. His stomach's growling is so loud by 7 that even night-owl (not morning person) me has to get up to feed him. But I'd rather be woken up in the morning because he has a reason to get out of bed than the alternative. At present, he sleeps a lot, but is just as loving and sweet as always. And he's almost deaf. I don't think it's much of a hardship, as he didn't really listen to me much, anyhow. I have always had hand signals for him, so luckily his eyes are still fine. He probably just thinks I stopped talking to him and resorted to whistles, which he can still - barely - hear. My sweet puppy. Keep him in your thoughts.