july 24-25
July 24th: More of the same. And cheeseburgers!
A good portion of the beginning of my day was spent finishing my book, which I realized I didn’t mention the name of in my previous entry. For those who care, it’s “The Girl with Dragon Tattoo.” Anywho, it was really good. Jenn and Gabby returned from a trip to the farmer’s market (which I had no interest in thanks to the book), and Jenn surprised me with a gift... a really cute purple-jeweled necklace! It’s super cute. The rest of the afternoon was spent practicing, and then I prepared dinner…salad, cheeseburgers, and homemade French fries! All 6 of us loved it, and it satisfied our craving for red meat, which is a bit of a scarcity in Italy when you’re trying to watch your budget. Then we were off to performance numero due of Suor Angelica, this time with the other cast. This cast decided to create their own rhythms, tempos, entrances, etc, which made for another “interesting” performance. Afterwards we spent some time online doing more research on possible vacation spots, and have pretty much decided on traveling to Lucca, birthplace of Puccini, and day-tripping from there to the coast on the sea. We’ll iron out the details tomorrow and be all set for Monday morning. Hurray! Beach!
July 25th: Lazy Sunday
Today consisted of practicing, rehearsing “La Traviata”, and solidifying a plan for our trip tomorrow. My practice session was a solid three hours long, and I got some good work done. Can’t say the same for our Traviata rehearsal, however. So get this…for our 1-hour operetta, Suor Angelica, we had 15 hours of scheduled rehearsal time. Not all of the time was used, but 15 hours were scheduled to rehearse for a 1-hour opera. The festival’s version of Traviata is a reduced concert version. While there is no staging to deal with, it’s still a considerably longer piece of music when put together. I would say it’s at least 2 hours of much more complicated music than Suor Angelica. But for Traviata the geniuses at the festival scheduled just 4 hours of rehearsal. That was yesterday. In those 4 hours we were supposed to have received the cuts they made (a difficult task given the Italian conductor), rehearsed alone with the orchestra, and then rehearsed with the singers. The conductor, of course, made poor use of his time, and by 8:45 (after starting at 4:30) we still had the third act to go. He asked us to come early on the day of the first performance, Thursday, to finish rehearsing. Apparently our oboist started to complain about needing more rehearsal time (the same oboist who is responsible for that first chamber concert we had to put on), and the conductor told us that the Americans had to show up tomorrow from 10-12 to rehearse. The four of us had already decided to go away tomorrow, so Jenn and I decided to ditch rehearsal (our parts are pointless) to prepare for our trip, and Gabbi and Ai will go to the useless rehearsal. Ugh. Afterwards we did some research and solidified our trip over dinner- Ai made spaghetti carbonara ,YUM- and we’ve decided to go to Rome after the rehearsal tomorrow, check into a cheap hotel (TBA), and explore what we haven’t seen yet. Plus, it’ll be nice to see Rome at night, which isn’t possible unless you’re staying overnight. Tuesday will also be spent exploring (Pines of Rome maybe?!), and we’ll take a late train back to Viterbo. The overnight beach trip idea ended up being to expensive and complicated with the train schedules, etc, and we decided that there was still so much to Rome to be explored. We have a couple days off next week, our last week, and we may do a day trip to the coast if we have the money. Screw you, shotty festival…I’m going back to Rome!
A good portion of the beginning of my day was spent finishing my book, which I realized I didn’t mention the name of in my previous entry. For those who care, it’s “The Girl with Dragon Tattoo.” Anywho, it was really good. Jenn and Gabby returned from a trip to the farmer’s market (which I had no interest in thanks to the book), and Jenn surprised me with a gift... a really cute purple-jeweled necklace! It’s super cute. The rest of the afternoon was spent practicing, and then I prepared dinner…salad, cheeseburgers, and homemade French fries! All 6 of us loved it, and it satisfied our craving for red meat, which is a bit of a scarcity in Italy when you’re trying to watch your budget. Then we were off to performance numero due of Suor Angelica, this time with the other cast. This cast decided to create their own rhythms, tempos, entrances, etc, which made for another “interesting” performance. Afterwards we spent some time online doing more research on possible vacation spots, and have pretty much decided on traveling to Lucca, birthplace of Puccini, and day-tripping from there to the coast on the sea. We’ll iron out the details tomorrow and be all set for Monday morning. Hurray! Beach!
July 25th: Lazy Sunday
Today consisted of practicing, rehearsing “La Traviata”, and solidifying a plan for our trip tomorrow. My practice session was a solid three hours long, and I got some good work done. Can’t say the same for our Traviata rehearsal, however. So get this…for our 1-hour operetta, Suor Angelica, we had 15 hours of scheduled rehearsal time. Not all of the time was used, but 15 hours were scheduled to rehearse for a 1-hour opera. The festival’s version of Traviata is a reduced concert version. While there is no staging to deal with, it’s still a considerably longer piece of music when put together. I would say it’s at least 2 hours of much more complicated music than Suor Angelica. But for Traviata the geniuses at the festival scheduled just 4 hours of rehearsal. That was yesterday. In those 4 hours we were supposed to have received the cuts they made (a difficult task given the Italian conductor), rehearsed alone with the orchestra, and then rehearsed with the singers. The conductor, of course, made poor use of his time, and by 8:45 (after starting at 4:30) we still had the third act to go. He asked us to come early on the day of the first performance, Thursday, to finish rehearsing. Apparently our oboist started to complain about needing more rehearsal time (the same oboist who is responsible for that first chamber concert we had to put on), and the conductor told us that the Americans had to show up tomorrow from 10-12 to rehearse. The four of us had already decided to go away tomorrow, so Jenn and I decided to ditch rehearsal (our parts are pointless) to prepare for our trip, and Gabbi and Ai will go to the useless rehearsal. Ugh. Afterwards we did some research and solidified our trip over dinner- Ai made spaghetti carbonara ,YUM- and we’ve decided to go to Rome after the rehearsal tomorrow, check into a cheap hotel (TBA), and explore what we haven’t seen yet. Plus, it’ll be nice to see Rome at night, which isn’t possible unless you’re staying overnight. Tuesday will also be spent exploring (Pines of Rome maybe?!), and we’ll take a late train back to Viterbo. The overnight beach trip idea ended up being to expensive and complicated with the train schedules, etc, and we decided that there was still so much to Rome to be explored. We have a couple days off next week, our last week, and we may do a day trip to the coast if we have the money. Screw you, shotty festival…I’m going back to Rome!