I will choose the handsome dark one

If it's all the same to you...? Too bad Renee has graduated. I always said this is the perfect duet for the two of us, since I always pick the dark ones, and she always picks the blondes... and because when she lets go and really sings, she's so dang good...

I figured it up today, and I have 5 ensembles left to learn and I'll have the role down. Not all memorized yet, but at least in my voice and where it can be performable in a matter of days. So, I'm slightly more than halfway there. It's hard to learn ensembles without the ensemble... Also, it's not all in the same language... but Italian, English, what's the difference???

I worked on "more teeth" today. It really makes a big difference. I can spit out the diction a lot better that way, and the sound is bigger... it's just good all around. Why does it take me so long to figure out all these things? Something still isn't quite right, but it's closer. Hopefully it becomes a good habit quickly, since it takes so much concentration to get everything working right at the same time. It also helps with "waking up my face," as Buddy Clark has told me about every semester on my jury sheets, but we won't get into that-- it makes me grouchy.

I am REALLY tired of hearing about Michael Jackson. And he was NOT "our Mozart."

I may have said this at some point before, but oh well-- I find it really interesting to learn about the origins of this opera. Though who commissioned it, etc, is really not important, the history of the performers it quite interesting, and I believe it gives some insight into the relationships between characters. For example, the original sisters were sisters in real life too. Fiordiligi has a smaller part than most of the other characters, and a butt-kicking aria in the second act- as it turns out, she was da Ponte's mistress, and Mozart really didn't like her. The original Despina and Don Alfonso were married. Though they have no relationship like that in the show, they obviously have a history and know each other fairly well, from the way Mozart and da Ponte had them interact. I think it helps a lot to know these details in order to really develop the character. Of course, the sister thing doesn't help me a whole lot, even though I have a sister, since we never really lived together, but it still adds a new dimension to the Dorabella I'd imagined.

We talked in rehearsal last week about the way Mozart designed the music perfectly to fit the situation. I'm not good at picking up on this, but I'm working on it. For example, in the finale of the first act, Mozart uses straight note values in the voices trying to create calm, and dotted rhythms in the voices that are losing control. As the finale goes on, Mozart begins writing unison lines in the parts that really need to come out. In several places Dorabella and Fiordiligi have unison parts as they're trying to ward off the men's advances. The volume and intensity just keep building to the very end of the act, and the notes keep getting higher, and all the time the ever-proper women are losing control more and more, until at the end they've just lost it all, and have made it to high As. (Yeah, try reading that all in one breath). I realize now that I've never paid much attention to the way music fits text. Hopefully that will become a new good habit too.

I don't know if I'm learning what I expected to from this experience or not, but I'm definitely learning a lot. The biggest challenge I think is going to be putting all of this down on paper, in a way that's not offensive to academics... I tend to understand academics well, but I'm not sure they understand me. I can be very intellectual, but my mind works differently than most people. I HAVE to start getting the history part of all this down on paper soon. No more procrastinating... I hope... but I'm very good at it...