Moscow concert, which is awesome and everyone should watch, it’s on YouTube
I must admit I’ve been postponing
writing another post since my “Vesselina Kasarova” adventures were such a tough
act of follow. But it’s been more than a week and I’m kind of still
under the effects of the concert. Sometimes I start laughing out of joy remembering
how she extended her hand to me and how she so magnificently sang. Ok, too much
information.
First of all I’d like to say a
BIG GIGANT Thank You to everybody who read, commented, sent
me messages. And most especially to Rob, Smorg, Thadieu and The Eyes Have it, , who went the extra mile to
recommend my blog in their own blogs, I was extremely touched and very happy
you guys enjoyed my writing so much!
Not much has happened this past
week in regards to my musical life, no exciting new concerts, or operas (we
unfortunately do not get as much of these as we should). But I did do that test
I was absolutely terrified of, and believe it or not, it went pretty well. I
was petrified as I entered the classroom, so very scared, but I tried to think
about the wonderful moments of my past week and I managed to walk in with a
warm smile. The teacher was really nice to me, I sang what I had to sing and he
told me I had done pretty well. Then I told him I was sorry for the things that
had happened between us, and he told me that what’s in the past is in the past
and we shouldn’t dwell on that and that, if it depended on him, it was all
right between us. I was, I must admit, at first stunned, but then said that I
absolutely agreed with him and we ended up having a quite nice chat about the
new building.
But back to opera, I’d like to
tackle a subject I haven’t talked about before and that I most appreciate that
exists. Audio Streams, more specifically the Met’s Live Streams that brighten
up a couple of evenings of my week. This past Tuesday we’ve had quite a surprisingly
wonderful stream of Giulio Cesare in Egitto. Look, I’m not going to lie, I’m
just gonna say it that, in my opinion, it was just so great that Danielle De
Niese filled in for Natalie Dessay. Now, some say that she hadn’t rehearsed any
of the material of that production in a long time, and yet others say the director
had secretly been rehearsing with her just in case something went wrong.
Anyway, she did the most amazing job!
 |
| Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra |
I was actually at the gym when I
heard (saw on twitter actually) that Danielle was going in as Cleopatra that
day and immediately regretted the class schedule I had prepared for myself that
day which would keep me there until 8pm (7pm Eastern Time). The opera started
at 6:55 and as I rushed out of my spinning class I desperately tried to get the
Met player on my phone. But those guys in my gym are smart, in order for us not
to be distracted by our buzzing phones they’ve done something in there and the signal is almost inexistent! So as I
showered and changed I tried to listen to the broadcast, without any success,
as I left the gym (cursing all involved in the signal shield) my bars went up
and I was in, listening just in time to hear Dani sing, Non Disperar, chi sà? Her
first aria, there was still hope, but then the obvious happened, since I’m such
a lucky person, my phone died.
It was quite obvious that was
going to happen, since I spend most of my battery trying to get signal. Well, I
had a silent trip home, and as I am crazy, crazy I decided I wanted to only
take one bus and one train, instead of having to change trains. So I took the
bus to one of the most dangerous places in town, at night, and there I walked,
alone. Yes, I’m insane, I’m not doing that again, rest assured, I just really
wanted to get home soon! I did have an opera moment then though, a what I call
Micaela moment, third act Micaela moment, when she enters the gypsies camp and
is scared half to death for her life, that’s exactly what I felt.
 |
| David Daniels as Cesare and Danielle De Niese as Cleopatra |
Got home and immediately tuned in
and the first act had just ended. I was upset, since most of my favorite arias
are in the first act. But then we had trivia, a tricky one I could never get:
What characters in opera can be played by both men and women? Operas that are
less than 150 years old, I must add. Well all my baroque dreams went to the
dumps with that 150 years old thing. I had no idea, but my dear friend Melanie
Spector did, she’s also known as the queen of trivia, and it was quite funny
because when William Berger said the first answer was Melanie’s the presenter,
Margareth, said “Why, of course!” and William went on to saying “But wasn’t she
watching the Met’s game today?” and I was like, “Holy shot, my friend is famous
on the Met Radio!”.
Well, trivia aside, the
performance was wonderful, I can attest for the music at least. I was live
tweeting with my usual international opera buddies, but to my delight I was
also commenting the performance with my new opera bff on facebook in Portuguese. Which is, I think, so good, because there are some things I think about that only
are funny and witty when said in Portuguese and I could finally share them with
someone who knows what he’s talking about and who is actually also listening.
There was a pretty awesome plus
in the whole performance, the fact that one of my favorite mezzo sopranos was
singing, Alice Coote. Unfortunately she wasn’t playing Cesare, which I do
prefer when is sung by a mezzo instead of a countertenor, she was playing
Sesto, but she nailed it.
 |
| Alice Coote as Sesto and Patricia Barton as Cornelia |
When Da Tempesta was up everyone
in their little corner of the world seemed to be doing the Bollywood dance of
this production and Danielle sounded so enthusiastic and amazing. And her
Piangero La Sorte Mia was heart breaking, I love this aria, it’s one of my favorites
of the whole opera! I was so very lucky because my cousin wasn’t home so I
could sing along to everything I knew, which was about 60% of the opera so you
can imagine it wouldn’t be possible to have my fun with the cousin home.
The opera ended around 1:30 in
the morning in my local time and I knew I was doomed the next day, but again, I
didn’t care, I somehow had gotten yet another great day at the opera listening
to top notch singers, so I was cool. The next day I was a wreck, because I’ve
also contracted a flu, but did get a great day of study.
AAAH, and I got today my DON’T SMOKE,
SING BAROQUE (OPERA IT’S COOL: YOU CANT HANDEL US) shirt and wore it in college
and none of my ‘musician’ friends thought much about it (I say ‘musician’
because you can’t be a real musician and not thing that shirt is FREAKING
AWESOME), but what do they know? My cousin liked it!
Gotta go! Peace all!
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