After a long 7 hour drive from Chautauqua I finally arrived back in DC Tuesday afternoon. It's been a long 10 weeks but I'm already starting to move into my new house. School starts in 2 weeks and there's way too much to do: books, classes, parking permits, scheduling voice lessons, actually learning my music...... I have to say I'm already missing everyone, oh well I'll just deal with it and keep working. 

As always, anyone looking to get in touch with me, please visit my website, www.inspiredrevolutions.com, all of my contact information there.

Well here's on to the next adventure! Stay Classy Chautauqua!

It's been a long while since my last entry, almost 3 weeks. Traviata has finished, the musical theater Revue "Coming to America: Words and Music of Irving Berlin" was a huge hit, Street Scene opened, we even threw together the Studio Artists Scenes Program and somehow we pulled it all off. With an hour till Norton Hall lights up for one last time this summer, I'm sitting in the living down stairs in the dorm, looking forward to the last scrabble game of the season. It's hard to imagine what my life was like before Chautauqua, lol, it's been a crazy 10 weeks, and oddly enough, I'm not ready to leave.

There's a lot of commotion, people packing, cleaning out the fridges, running around in circles. I have to say, I had a great time this summer, I accomplished everything I wanted, got to go fishing, hang out by the lake, party, oh yeah and I did a little bit of singing too. Here's one or two highlights of the summer:

SCRABBLE: At the beginning of the summer season, Vernon, Clay, Michael, and I took our seats in the basement of Norton hall to play scrabble during Cosi. Whether it be a dress rehearsal or closing night performance, we were always downstairs playing scrabble. Over the course of the summer, we only missed one game during a performance (which was my fault as I was out in the house watching the dress rehearsal, so we didn't play). 

THE DAILY: As I have mentioned before, and bless their hearts for trying, the Chautauqua Daily has a great way of printing some of the most crazy comments from our recital interviews. There was an apprentice artist here a few years ago named Tim Devit that dared a bunch of studio artists to get an amazing quote from "the Naked Gun" into the Chautauqua Daily newspaper. At the time no one was up to the challenge, this year though, we pulled it off. Noah Van Niel somehow managed to get "Some people say, singing doesn't amount to a hill of beans, but this my hill and these are my beans," into one of his answers for his interview. Sure enough come thursday morning, there it was, smack dab in the center of the article! Perfection, by far one of my favorite highlights of the summer!

SHEETCAKE!!!! What Chautauqua Opera Party would be complete without one! it's perfect for every occasion (as we so often found out).

Well, I'm off to the last performance of Street Scene and the season. Let's see what the night brings!

Every season Marlena Malas (Chautauqua Institution Music Festival Voice Chair) and Jay Lesenger (Chautauqua Opera Company Artistic/General Director) each hold a masterclass for the singers in the others program. Marlena works with the Opera Company and Jay works with Marlena's students. Earlier in the season Marlena gave a masterclass with four of the Opera Company kids, so today was Jay's turn. Obviously since Jay isn't a voice teacher, like Marlena, today's masterclass focused on the "acting of singing." I was really happy with the masterclass today, Jay worked with four great singers all with very different voices and really kept the atmosphere lighthearted and intriguing. 

I was really happy to discover that Jay approaches the acting side of our performance the same way as my director, Leon Major, does at the University of Maryland Opera Studio. Jay has eight well set steps to constructing an acting performance (according to the handout he made up) which includes discovering who am I (as the character), what are my overall objectives, what do I want, and how do I get what I want? Oddly enough these are exactly the same questions that were asked of me from my director at the UM Opera Studio. It was no doubt that I enjoyed watching Jay work with Marlena's students and to help them really discover what is really going on within the aria and to gain a more personal connection with the character. Consequently, the singers stopped thinking so much about what they were singing and it allowed them to open up more, sing better and really connect to the audience. Everything we want to do! 

Well I'm off to rehearsal....

We're halfway through the season and with about 5 sheet cakes down, it was only a matter of time that a food fight would break out! Surely enough tonight was the night! The Opera Guild and Company threw a party at the dorms tonight following the Musical Theater Revue. Towards the end of the night I walked outside to find one of my friends hiding in the bushes from two of the girls who were stalking him with handfuls of sheet cake. After a furious food fight, this is the result:

So what have we learned? Sheet cake makes for both a tasty treat and a messy projectile! Yay!

At the very end of "Act II" (Vixen is really a 3 act opera we just combined the first two acts so we had only one intermission) there is an offstage chorus that Jay decided would be a good idea to actually stage. Now of course there's nothing wrong with staging the off stage chorus, it's quite common (when appropriate); Of course this does mean that the chorus needs COSTUMES!!! So the day of the final dress rehearsal, to our excitement and laughter, we all got to wear Black NINJA outfits!!!!! To continue the animal theme we all wore animal masks in the form birds, deer, raccoons, etc. it was so much FUN!!!!! So for two performance nights the chorus became the Cunning Little Ninjas!!!

The production of The Cunning Little Vixen was absolutely amazing. The set design was incredible and I was immensely impressed with the use of space in Norton Hall. The 2 level set extended back into the workshop to allow for center stage entrances and exits on the upper level. The rake on the floor was the perfect height to create the illusion of a recessed fox "cave" at the top of center stage. The singers were absolutely amazing too. Philip Cokorinos was incredible to work with and has such an amazing talent as the Forrester. Sari Gruber has a beautiful voice and is one of the nicest people I have met. She was so much fun in rehearsals, laid back, hard working, and very talented. Sari and Philip have such a great sense of humor and professionalism that really set a high bar for the rest of us throughout the production. I have to say that we never would have made it through the Janacek if it wasn't for Maestro Ari Pelto. He worked so hard to make sure that we could pull this opera together and perform it well, and I have no idea how he managed that in two weeks! Ari was a blast to work with and even though I was covering a role and in the chorus I am extremely happy to have worked with him and would love to in the future. (hint, hint, wink, wink Ari.)

I have to say, Vixen is probably going to be my favorite production of the season, Cosi is always fun (except when you have 5 straight months of it!) and Traviata has a very interesting setting that I'm looking forward to, and I don't know much about Street Scene; but the set was amazing, it has so many roles for so many young artists, the costumes were phenomenal and somehow we pulled the extremely hard music together in two weeks. I know that this opera has very special meaning for Jay and I m really saddened that we don't get to do another run of it this year.