Posts Categorized: Uncategorized

Wabi-sabi

(No, not wasabi. Wabi-sabi.) “There is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen Wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection; of accepting transience. It reveres authenticity and is simple, slow, and uncluttered. It loves those little cracks in our lives that allow the light to

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Reframing

“Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux.” (The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.) Marcel Proust One of the true bonuses of getting off the merry-go-round for a few minutes a day is that

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Being Ready

“Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” Winnie the Pooh via A.A. Milne You thought this was going to be about tackling the audition to-do list, didn’t you? Notice I didn’t say “Getting Ready,” but rather

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The Beginning

“And so each venture is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate.” T.S. Eliot It’s tough to remember where we started, and sometimes it’s essential that we let it go. Nostalgia is overrated and is mostly revisionist history anyway. But there had to be some unavoidable truth embedded in the decision to make music

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Sfumato

I know that my readership in conservatories and other singer training hotbeds spikes in the fall, and I’m keenly aware that many of you are looking here for some sort of clarity as you claw your way through this peculiar thing that is auditioning.  Last fall, I decided to take all of the random audition

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Desire

We who have been around a while know a dirty little secret.  The quickest way to fall short of a goal is to want it too much.  Not that there’s anything wrong with desire or ambition, for they are both necessary in any competitive environment.  But the best, most effective, and even sanest way is

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New York / Philadelphia / Vienna Deadline Approaches

Audition application deadlines are rolling around earlier this year, and the east coast component is first at bat.  Get your application in by Friday, September 24 to be considered for our first three stops (see list in right sidebar). Plans are underway for this year’s iteration of the audition season blog.  Be afraid.  Be very

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Trip away; make no stay…

The summer was an exhausting, amazing, and beautiful thing.  But 15 weeks of long days and little time to breathe have left us a little worse for wear.  The to-do list is long, as application review and auditions, the premiere of The Inspector, and preparations for the 40th anniversary WTOC season are added to essential

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Behind the Curtain: Family Day at the Opera

This morning, enthusiastic children and their families were treated to our first Family Day event – a special collaboration between Wolf Trap Opera & Wolf Trap Education! Participants had a chance to… … have a photo taken on the Midsummer Night’s Dream set …. … make their own fairy masks (here, a young participant working

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A Midsummer Photo Diary

If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended, That you have but slumber’d here While these visions did appear. A Midsummer Night’s Dream Music by Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) Libretto adapted from William Shakespeare by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears The Barns at Wolf Trap 2010 August 13 at 8pm, August 15

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