What an absolutely crazy new year! The festivities are endless for my family on New Year’s, because apart from the normal celebrations there’s also my baby sister’s birthday that is on the 1st of January.
So on the 31st afternoon I baked my sister’s birthday cake (that is in the shape of a castle, by the way, pretty cool!), while listening to Il Barbieri di Siviglia, and then made my famous Tomato and Bread Soup (it’s not miiine, it’s from Jaime Oliver’s Italian Recipes Book) listening to Le Comte Ory. Not very smart I must confess, I should have switched, made the cake listening to the French Italian Pastry (I don’t know who said that in the Met’s broadcast of Le Comte Ory, but I think it’s fitting) and then made the super Italian tasting soup listening to the ‘I can’t get more Italian than this’ Barber of Seville. I did mess up a bit in the cake’s recipe because I was trying to separate de parts of the egg in the same speed as the coloratura was being done. But they all turned alright in the end!
In evening I resembled my grandfather very much. That is because I was walking around my grandma’s house clutching my phone, wearing earphones and occasionally making loud noises like “FIGLIA IMPURA DI BOLENA!”. And my grandpa used to do that every football game there was, it was really quite funny. Especially ‘cause sound travels faster than image or something like that, so there was a microscopic delay on what we saw on TV, and he’d shout “GOAL!!” like 3 seconds before I’d happen on TV.
Anyways, the broadcast of the opening night of Maria Stuarda was amazing. My congratulations to Joyce DiDonato, Elsa van der Heever, Matthew Polenzani and the whole cast and crew of Maria Stuarda who have given me the best new years I could have asked for. But the fact that I had one ear in New York City and the other in Santos did piss off my mother a bit. But she gets it that it is very important to me, my dad is getting slightly irritated by the incessant opera singing that I listen to, but he’s also very supportive.
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Dawn on the first of January at the beach
of Santos, we went there to jump the seven
waves as we say here in Brasil.
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After the family festivities I went to a party and my drunken friend was rambling about how much he loved watching Le Nozze di Figaro. And most importantly on how he wanted to watch other operas, especially the Barber of Seville (since I told him it’s the story before Nozze). My plan to make my friends like opera is going pretty well!
On my sister’s party the next day another friend of mine commented on how much he had enjoyed watching the Maria Stuarda clip I had shared on Facebook (The “Figlia impura di Bolena” one). And so we started talking about the story of the opera, then another friend who likes the Tudor history joined in, and before we knew they were super interested in knowing about opera. Plus towards the end of the party I found myself telling the story of Nozze di Figaro to quite a large number of my friends who were very keen on learning more about it. But I think today was the best one yet, one of my friends who was listening to the story actually googled Nozze and read more about it, loved it and started asking me all sorts of questions about Cherubino!
This makes me truly VERY happy, because opera makes me thoroughly happy, and having my friends like it and talk about it is a dream come true! They even want to do Nozze as a play this year, which is awesome, ‘cause then I get to be Condessa earlier than I expected (since as my teacher has told me, I’m in my Susanna years).
This year is going to be awesome, I can feel it. I’m graduating in college and because of that I have to put up an opera all by myself (of course with the help of my fantastic theatre group friends who have already agreed to help). I chose to do La Serva Padrona, ‘cause then I can use even 2 actor friends of mine and only one other singer (willing singers are hard to find here, but thank God I have a great friend who is more than happy to help). It’s gonna be crazy cool!
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Me, my dad and my uncle on New Year’s. I just thought this picture was too funny not share.
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It seems as if everyone in the universe comes to spend New Year’s in my City, here’s a picture of the beach around midnight.
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