A young(ish) opera singer's random thoughts and observations.

Sunday 24 July 2011

Can one learn an opera in 3 days?

Day 6 - Saturday

Well, the answer is: not quite, but close... and I wouldn't recommend it as standard practice. The fact is that at today's cover music run of Cosi I feel I managed to avoid embarrassment by the skin of my teeth. Having bottled down and spent all my free time (and we get only about 1.5h of that daily) with the score (as my roommate can attest to) to learn 80% of the recit (having done the rest before on various occasions) and 40% of the ensembles I got through with only a couple of rough patches. Valuable lessons learned: firstly don't leave it 'til this late next time (I have excuses, but who cares?), and secondly that it is possible to learn quickly given the right motivation.

Back to the day: In the morning we had our usual warm up, then the aforementioned Cosi run through. The afternoon saw us running Act 1 of Lillian Alling (skipping chorus scenes) and I have to say that it is a fantastic piece of music. After that we finished off Cosi.

A double rainbow to lift our spirits after the warm up

Having the evening off, we venture into Banff proper for the first time. It's everything you'd expect of a mountain resort town. We have the evening off, so I go to the photography program's show. Stunning pictures, but unfortunately technology let us down and we had to watch most of them on a laptop screen. We have a day off tomorrow (to be spent reviewing chorus music), so there's a chance to socialise tonight (which as you know, I am a big fan of)!

Banff downtown

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