It would be singing things like "O Holy Night and Ave Maria."
In this incredibly busy season I just happened to have the day of the gig clear.
About 2 weeks before the gig (right in the heat of getting my Amahl score memorized) I got an email containing 7 songs for the gig.
None of them were O Holy Night or Ave Maria.
In fact, I only knew 2 of them, O mio babbino caro and Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
So, I learned the other songs and figured that they'd need to be memorized even though no one had given me any more details.
I memorized the last one "Nella Fantasia" on the tread mill Tuesday morning. It took me 2.75 of my 4 miles to do it.
(By the way, in my opinion, that song is so saccharine it makes my teeth hurt, but maybe I just have a tainted view because the first arrangement I heard was sung by Sarah Brightman.)
(And also, this week has only solidified for me that memorizing is a muscle. The more you do it, the stronger it gets.)
So, Tuesday night I had a piano dress for Amahl and the Night Visitors and I'm trying to be very disciplined about only thinking about one gig at a time and praying the right lyrics come out when they're supposed to.
Monday night Aleks had food poisoning and was up all night. And so was I.
Tuesday I'm nasceous all day, secretly terrified that I'm getting what Aleks had, but refusing to get sick.
So Wednesday morning rolls around and I'm exhausted and still not quite myself.
In retrospect, I think it was nerves.
So I show up to the rehearsal today for our 3 hour rehearsal and meet the music director who says "so what have you picked to sing?"
I stammer and try to figure out what he's talking about and come to find that I only need to sing 4 of the 7 songs, 2 in each set.
And while that is a complete relief, I'm also a bit irritated at the lack of communication which resulted in so much unnecessary stress.
Anyway, as I write this, it's 4:15 on Wednesday and I haven't sung a note and still don't know exactly what I'm going to sing.
So there you have it.
Maybe there will be some holy intervention or miracle tonight.
If l was on Twitter, I'd be live tweeting this experience, but I don't tweet.
If you're in Wichita, you should come tonight just to see what happens!
*Update*
And then I sang and IT WAS SO MUCH FUN!
So much fun? :) is that a late update? I hope so!
ReplyDelete