[tl;dr – I’m retiring this winter. Be happy for me!] I began writing in this space 14 years ago this fall. The blogosphere wasn’t very crowded in 2004, and it took me a while to explain and justify this relatively new medium to my Wolf Trap colleagues. At that time, web sites were surprisingly static
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Audition Tour: Home Stretch!
Want a glimpse of our travels to cities number 4 & 5 on this year’s tour? Miss the first installment? Los Angeles, Cincinnati, and Houston are here.
Read More2019 Audition Tour Musings
We’re almost done… One more day of auditions at our home base in Vienna, and then it’s off to the drawing board (well, literally, a big ol’ white board) to choose some repertoire and select singers! On today’s blog menu are some fragments of would-be posts… things that I wanted to share along the way
Read MoreKeeping Up With the Audition Tour
If you follow us on Facebook (and btw, if you don’t, you should!:)), you might have seen the clips below. I’m sharing them here for those of you who eschew social media, or those whose feed algorithm hasn’t faithfully served them up! Chicago, New York, and Virginia await.
Read More26.67%
Four audition days in the rearview, eleven to go. Random observations on auditions so far, shared from Terminal B at CVG airport, where we were deposited by a chatty Uber driver, where I can’t find a water bottle filling station (3 for 3 airports so far… what the heck?), and where we are over an
Read MoreUntranslatable Words: Audition Tour Edition
During her pre-audition visit to LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art, Lee Anne picked up a box of Untranslatable Words (20 cards of Perfect Words from Other Languages). We’ve decided to feature one of them on each day of this 2019 Season Audition Tour. Check back here or on the WTO Facebook page for updates! WALDEINSAMKEIT [GERMAN]
Read MoreList of Starter Arias
Hi, singer friends. As y’all are preparing your aria packages for this audition season, I thought you might want to see these lists of first arias from last year’s audition tour. Unlike the master Aria Frequency Lists (which represent the full complement of 4 arias that singers put on their applications), these starter aria lists represent the
Read MoreNumbers
Today, a few interpretations of audition tour statistics. Numbers can tell stories. Important stories. But a single set of statistics can sometimes tell stories that seem at odds with one another. First, the raw numbers: Audition Tour 2019 1,134 applications – a 300% increase from just a couple of decades ago. 444 auditions scheduled 3% expected to
Read MoreEmpathy
As I fire up this engine to chronicle this year’s audition tour (and how is it happening as early as September 13…?), I see that I abandoned the blog in the middle of this past season. So many good things went undocumented, so many beautiful stories were untold. But regret is cheap; it’s now time
Read MoreRoméo et Juliette Opens Tomorrow
Dress rehearsal was last night. Opening performance is sold out, but there are tickets available for next week. I never cease to be amazed by the way The Barns reinvents itself with every beautiful new production, and the way our artists rise to the challenges we toss their way.
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