To Blog Again!

I've blogged before a couple of years ago but in a completely different light. I'm very into web design so what I really cared about was actually making cool layouts for the blog more than actually writing in it. But now I just feel a certain urge to write, many things have changed in my life in the past 6 months and I just think I could put it into writing. My fingers ache to write. Well, I am a 22 year old Brazilian living in São Paulo but always going back to my home town Santos on the weekends.

I have a great passion for the performing arts, always have, ever since I was a little girl dressed up as a little bee in my ballet recital. I'm part of a fantastic theatre group ever since I was 14 in my home town called "Agradagregos e Troianos" which translating means it pleases Greeks and Trojans. And it was at that age that I decided that my life should be on the stage, more specifically when I watched a performance of "The Phantom of the Opera" here in Brasil in January 2005 and I just thought to myself, 'Gosh, I just gotta do this'. I was convinced from that age that musical theatre was my life, and for the past years it really was, I graduated High School and for a year after that I dedicated myself to learning tap dancing, ballet, jazz, singing, and acting.

Then I entered College to major in music with a Bachelor in Opera singing, which I detested 'cause I was a musical theatre gal through and through. Many, many things happened in the course of the past 4 years that I've been in this college, I learned many, many things, got to go to NYC to watch all my favorite musicals (and I did, I watched 10 musicals in 10 days, all my money, gone), I lost a very good friend and mentor of mine, I evolved as an actress, played wonderful roles, but never really acquired a taste for opera.

Until last August, my singing teacher told me to sing Massenet's Manon's Gavotte for our Opera Studio Recital and told me that Manon was very much like Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl. I was intrigued and wanted to watch the whole production. So I watched the Metropolitan Opera's 2012 production with Anna Netrebko as Manon and Piotr Beczala as De Chevalier. That was on a Thursday, oddly enough on Friday I watched it again, then on Saturday again, then once more on Sunday, 'Wait, there is something wrong here. I'm not supposed to like this.', then I realized I was picturing myself doing what Anna was doing, and wanting it with a drive that I'd never had before for musical theatre.

 And then, just like a light switch, I changed! I wanted to be an opera singer, and it was scary, because it was a sort of certainty that I'd never had before, and that I had absolutely NO DOUBT about, it just happened. Needless to say that none of my friends in college and in the theatre group believed me, but I just knew, this was it! I also thought it was very odd until I saw an interview with the great baritone Simon Keenlyside where he says that if you go on and say you're thinking about having a career in opera then you probably shouldn't go for it, because this kind of thing just happens, and you just KNOW. I'm most certainly in that category, so here I'm, and I indented to write about everything that I discover in this wondrous universe of Opera.

As I've mentioned before I went to New York City once, and happened to go to the Met and took a few pictures and all. At that time I had no clue of the huge change was gonna happen to me, so there's me, with my, "Ok, since we are here let's take a picture" face. I hate myself for that! And also love myself for at least having taken the program with me! By the way, that was the HOTTEST day of the year, it was 46C!

 I've been watching as many as I can for the past 5 months but I still consider myself to be a total newbie at this. So this blog is indented for me to talk about the operas that I watch, here in Brasil, in live streams from the Met, in the not so live ones from the Royal Opera House, from the ones I watch on YouTube (blessed be that site!), and also for me to talk about how insanely crazy it is to aspire to be an opera singer, especially when you don't speak Italian, or French or German, and your music theory is not as good as it should be and your country has next to zero opportunities for you to make a career, which is my case. So yeah, that's it!