I can now officially say I have sung my first complete opera role live in performance of the actual opera itself!! (Albeit an abridged version). The resume now includes "Frasquita" in Bizet's Carmen and it was one heck of an experience.
We had seven rehearsals in total - five with principals only and two with the chorus who had been rehearsing seperately for longer. Of those seven rehearsals our lovely leading lady was, unfortunately unable to actually sing due to illness for three or four and as the problem failed to resolve, she couldn't make the one night only performance either - with about 4 days notice.
We were sad for her, but no time to dwell on that as we all had to ensure we were absolutely focussed in order to support the professional mezzo parachuted in to carry the show. No easy task to be a last minute stand in for the title role of the whole opera - although I can see from various programme notes that in the professional world these "einspringen" are fairly matter of course.
The life of an opera singer seems to be beset by the risk of illness, the effect of illness and recovery from illness and my twitter timeline is strewn with singers gutted that they have had to drop stuff, singers standing in for other singers who are ill and operagoers sharing information about who is standing in for who!
Our replacement leading lady appeared in the final rehearsal as if by magic several pages into the quintet - and if you have ever sung one of the five characters who sing it, you know the it as the one that everyone calls the quintet. (Or to give it it's full names "Every time I've directed this it has taken ages to get right" "This is fiendishly difficult to sing" or "Don't worry it will fall apart when we first put movement with it" and "Do you want to go over that one more time"). She simply appeared vocally at precisely the right moment, singing a totally different english translation from the one we were using but not being thrown by that at all. Good start.
All the singers - many of us not professional - rose to the challenge and I think we all enjoyed ourselves enormously. Our Carmen was great, totally relaxed and unfazed.
Thankfully we did have a stage manager for the night who knew who
should be where and with what props - quite a challenge for a "semi
staged" (read "actually in full costume, with movement & props")
production on a concert hall stage. I know she will remember fondly the
broken table - unfortunately the tenor bullfighter hadn't got that
message so leapt onto it with gusto. Talk about rapt attention -
Escamillo has never been watched so carefully by Frasquita &
Mercedes (with legs wedged under the table legs). Am sure she also
enjoyed running round the building Benny Hill style with three gipsies
and a bullfighter trying to find the correct unlocked door for the final
entry.........
The show was exhilaratingly successful and extremely well received and for both those things I feel profoundly relieved and not at all personally responsible!
I loved every minute and I still can't really believe I did it. The chance to sing Frasquita was fantastic - I hope to have the opportunity to sing roles rather than arias in future.
Watch this space!
