Suor Angelica and Sweet Little First-Graders

It was Suor Angelica, again, and this time with a new company, for me - Center City Opera Theater (CCOT) in Philadelphia, PA. As before, I sang the role of Una Novizia (A Novice), as well as the first soprano chorus lines.

You've probably surmised from last summer's posts how special this opera is to me. I was all too happy to accept the request to be a part of this production. This time, however, participation came with a great challenge....MEMORIZING THE ENTIRE SCORE IN ONE WEEK!

"What?" you ask. "Didn't you perform this opera, last summer? How long could it have taken for the lines to resurface from your memory?"

Yes, I did perform Suor Angelica, last summer.....IN ENGLISH! This production was performed in the original language.....ITALIAN!

Oh, and about the ONE WEEK? Here's what that was about: I was subbing in a first-grade classroom, surrounded by gorgeous little children begging me for help with their classwork, when I saw the e-mail from CCOT. I actually thought it was SPAM and was about to delete it. (I was distracted by, and more concerned with helping, my little students.) I opened it, read the request to join the cast, saw that I could make all of the rehearsals, and replied with an enthusiastic, "Yes!" What I did not check was the performance date (busy helping my little students) which was NINE DAYS away! (Oh, yeah, did I mention that I received the e-mail the Friday before Memorial Day?) Anyway, I knew that I needed to have the score roughly memorized by the first rehearsal (which was FIVE DAYS away), so that is what I spent my holiday weekend doing.

I often joke about having a lot of men in my life who, unfortunately, are dead (those composers). Well, the steady man in my life, last week, was Puccini. I carried his score everywhere with me - on the bus, on the train, in the church choir loft during service (where I read over it whenever we weren't singing anthems or hymns), to my mom's on Memorial Day, etc... I even took note cards with me to a funeral. (Got the picture?) For an entire week all but the necessities of life (sleeping, eating, singing, breathing, working) ceased to exist. Laundry piled up, the chefs at Whole Foods were elevated to mega-star status by me, phone calls from friends were simply not returned, and I think you can guess the rest. When I wasn't reading the score, I was listening to the opera on CD. When I awakened in the mornings the first thing I did - after thanking God for waking up - was to retrieve either my solo lines, chorus lines, or ensemble lines from my memory.

If anyone had told me that I could have memorized that entire Italian libretto in one week I would have thought them delusional. The truth is I would've been the delusional one, because I did it. I MEMORIZED IT! A few days of intense rehearsals solidified it. I met a challenge that I would not have taken on were it not for being distracted by a roomful of sweet little first-graders. Children are truly a blessing (and this time in disguise).

As I walked through Whole Foods, the day after the performance, the voice of Chaka Khan (love her) was playing over the PA system. It was after I'd left the store with the song still on my mind when I realized that my life, last week, personified the lyrics she was singing. I was taken "through the fire, to the limit, to the wall" and to my surprise I HAD A BALL!

(Backstage with my sister-friend, Bertica. This was her very first time attending an opera.)