Spring 2008

Summer 2008

Spring has sprung!

I am currently in Pittsburgh, rehearsing I Capuleti e i Montecchi, a role which is dear to my heart. It was the role of my big break in Geneva 14 years ago, and it continues to be one of my favorite roles to sing. My colleagues here are wonderful: my Romeo is the beautiful Vivica Genaux, my Lorenzo is POC young artist Jonathan Beyer, Tybalt is sung wonderfully by the former-POC tenor Arthur Espiritu (someone to keep your eye on!) and my father is sung by the hunk David Pittsinger! We make quite a good-looking family! hee hee. Anthony Walker, Pittsburgh Opera's talented music director is lovingly conducting and Thor Steingraber, an old friend from San Francisco days, is remounting (actually re-vamping) his beautiful production we originated in Los Angeles NINE YEARS AGO! I still find it incredible that it was that long ago. I'm running out of superlatives. Actually, it's been quite fun, as David, Thor and Christopher Hahn were in San Francisco around the same era when I was there (David was on mainstage when I was in Merola, Thor was an assistant director during my Adlership and Christopher was head of the Rehearsal department), so we all know the same people. And, yes, we are TELLING STORIES ON ALL OF YOU!! HA HA HA HA! Quite fun.

Here are two pictures of Vivica and me in costume (Dan Klein Photos)
Here are some preview articles in the newspaper:


http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/living/events/s_565094.html



http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08122/878011-42.stm



And here is most of the team in the rehearsal room:

I have managed to only eat out ONCE the entire time I've been here (not counting two sponsor meals!), as a result of having spent over $400 on groceries at Whole Foods when I got here... If you want a green vegetable, I'm your girl! I've kept it my quest to eat well while I've been here, and so far, so good. Now, if only Thor would stop bringing me cookies to rehearsal. He knows how to motivate this Cookie Monster.

It has been so great to have friendly faces around me, as I've had a pretty tumultuous last few months. In a good way, as well as tough. Shortly before coming to Pittsburgh, I moved all my things out of my home for the past 8 years, and into storage in Brussels. Since I'm going to be on the road so much this next year with Pitié, a project with Les Ballets C de la B and Alain Platel, I decided I didn't need to find another place, just to NOT be there. More on the tour later... Anyhow, my sister came over to Brussels after some work in England, and my parents met up with us to help me pack. Basically, my dad did the majority of the packing, and Mom, Lisa and I did the SIFTING and CULLING. We gave away seven huge trash sacks of clothes and shoes (actually my dear friend ANJA was an angel and carted away all those bags to the Salvation Army!!!! THANK YOU, ANJA!!) I finally got through all my STUFF and papers, and got everything in order. Just in time to put it all in a box. Now, if I can just find my retainer...

Here are some pictures of us at work. We took off a day in the midst of packing to go to Paris. My father has always wanted to go to the restaurant at the top of the Eiffel Tower, Jules Verne. So we DID! I miraculously got a place for us for lunch - it usually it takes months, and our wait-listed table opened up the day beforehand. So we spent a lovely day, farting around Paris, and then took the train back to Brussels, so we'd be in shape for the big move the next day. Not before we searched in vain for a Charles Jourdan shoe shop, only to come to the cruel realization that Charles Jourdan has shut its doors forever. It's very sad, and we almost shed a tear. Especially since 80's styles seem to be coming back into style. If only Lisa had let me keep some of that fuchsia stuff...

I wasn't so much in need of running off to Paris, as I had just spent two months in Paris singing the Rake's Progress at the Palais Garnier. The quick-witted director, Olivier Py, made his directorial debut at the Paris Opera with about 6 months of preparation. You'd never have known from the intricate production we came up with. Laurent Naouri was exceedingly dapper as the evil Nick Shadow, Jane Henschel was appropriately masculine (and hilarious, as well as being easy to crack up), Hilary Summers was a LUXURY cast Mother Goose and Toby Spence made an amazing role-debut as Tom Rakewell.


It was a tight-knit group and we socialized a LOT. Since there were dancers and a lot of supers in the show, the company really developed into a COMPANY. That always seems to happen when you have dancers in a show; I don't know why. It was hard to leave them at the end of the run.

I think Jane Henschel had done The Rake's Progress in Germany, as sometimes she would make a mistake by singing a lone word here and there (like UND) in German. Pretty funny. She did it once in a rehearsal and we all died laughing. She did it in one of the last shows, and I was hard-pressed not to laugh or even smile. Not easy. I was thrilled to spend time with many good friends in Paris. My dear friend Kresimir Spicer, with whom I sang Ariodante in Paris ages ago, has now moved to Paris. I was thrilled to meet his beautiful little baby and wife. My friend Hilary Summers was Mother Goose in the show, so we were able to hang out a lot - and even made a few trips to Mariage Freres. Emmanuelle Haim was in town, and I was able to catch one of her shows at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées as well as have dinner at her house. I was able to see a ton of shows and really enjoy Paris thanks to my friend Jacob, especially, for being the most engaging escort a girl could dream of... My sister came to visit as well as my friend Mischa from Moscow and Tullio from Turin (not all at the same time, luckily!) Besides having a great show, I made some new friends and was quite a social butterfly.

In between Paris and moving, I spent some time with my friend Tullio in Catania, Sicily and then Turin, where he lives. We've been friends for over 14 years, but discovered there was more to our friendship than that when he came to visit me... We'd never been single at the same time during our long friendship, so we hadn't ever thought of one another in that way... But now we've woken up to the possibilities, and I am very happy to announce that I am very happy with the man I named my beloved dog after! He is as wonderful as his namesake.

I almost forgot my trip to Athens and Lisa joining me in Paris - here are some pictures from that. Gergiev was pretty intense, but it was great watching him with the orchestra. He is incredible in the detail he gives them in rehearsal. He may not be everyone's taste in Mahler, but it was exciting to sing with him. He makes me NERVOUS! yikes! He paid so much attention to the strings - his comments were illuminating (at least I thought so). He talked about what each hand was doing (that the left hand - the one changing notes on the strings - was more important at some points, and that it should be legatissimo...) The most interesting comment he had to create a beautiful legatissimo was for the string players to NOT be together with their bowing: more than just staggering their bowing so that their left hand did NOT correspond to their right hand (i.e. you change bow every time you change your finger), he didn't want them to rush the bow at the end of a note so they could then be together bowing with their colleagues. It looked very messy, which I'm sure went against the grain for many of the LSO members' sensibilities, but it sounded seamless! When you rush the bow to get to the frog to start another bow, it changes the timbre of the sound. Who'd a thunk it? Pretty elementary, but everyone's so used to having neat rows of violins all up- and down-bowing together in orchestras, we forget! I didn't get to do much but look around Athens my last morning there before flying out, but it was worth it. I hope I'll get to go back. Kavakos, the violin soloist for the Sibelius concerto, was a ROCK STAR in Athens! A sweet guy, and it sounded like such an historic concert in Athens. I only realized how BAD the acoustic really is in the Barbican when we came back to London: I sat in the house for the first half to listen to his concerto, and it didn't come across half as well as in the Megaron in Athens. The acoustic at the Barbican is just SO vast and so directional for soloists, that if you're not sitting directly in front of the soloist, you don't get the full acoustic of the sound. Frustrating, but interesting to know, as well for my own performances. Enjoy these pictures, along with Lisa's trip to visit me in Paris - we went to - you guessed it - the Eiffel Tower!