Day 6

Meant to start at the very beginning last Monday but was sidelined. Mostly by the need for a last-minute tenor replacement. Never a dull moment! But here we are, in rehearsal for the first show of the 2005 season, Sweeney Todd. Check the audio posts for a brief look backstage every day (or as often as I can possibly get to it!). And we’re off!

It’s Day 6. Wolf Trap Opera Company 2005. This is the audio blog that was supposed to start on Day 1, but we got just a little sidelines this week by a couple of thing, the first being tenors, and the second, microphones. But more about that later. First, a little context.

We do lots of different things at WT. We do lots of retro things, we do lots of cutting edge things. And the opera company is probably a little bit of both. Very often pretty old-fashioned, but then again very often about the newest things under the sun. So here we are, blogging our way across the summer season, taking you behind the scenes. We’ll tell you everything that we feel we can get away with. If you’re an opera fan, this might be your chance to see how things get put together. If you’re not, well, we hope you’ll learn that this is a fascinating place to be. We’re all about young professionals. The average age of our singers, our coaches, our stage mangers is mid-late 20’s. It’s an exhilarating place, and it comes together every summer for about three months.

So, I’m going to try to blog every day for a few minutes – it’s hard to find the time, and I’m sure it’s hard for you to find the time to listen. We are in rehearsal, as I said, Day 6. Sweeney Todd – the first thing we start rehearsing. Other things will be layered on later, but Sweeney is our first project. We started on Monday, and it’s now Saturday evening already. Rehearsals are over, and I’m keeping a promise to myself to get this blog started. As I said, it’s surprisingly this week, alittle bit about microphones, andit’s about tenors.

The reason it’s about tenors is that we began rehearsals one tenor shy of a cast. Pirelli has mononucleosis. These things happen. Our erstwhile Pirelli is at home recuperating, and he will join us later in the summer for other projects. Meanwhile, we have precious little time to sort this out. More tomorrow, Day 7.