C'est la Carmencita!

Carmen rehearsals started this week. Well, for the chorus anyway. We are being babied, because as the chorus we are presumed to be musically inept and unable to pronounce French.

It is 20 minutes past my new self-imposed bedtime.

I must away.

Anzac Day

It's Anzac day and it's raining. I didn't go to the dawn service and i feel ever so slightly guilty. The sleep-in was exceedingly nice though, and i did wake up at 7.36am to the sound of two trumpets (pretty much in) unison playing The Last Post. I have no idea where they were though.

But yes, Anzac day. Poppies. Gallipoli. Rain. Mud. Death...

and the hypocritical words: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

whinge whinge whinge...

I've only been back in Dunedin for 36 hours and already i want to go back home to my mummy, my sister, and our various pets, and crawl into bed.

The final straw was this morning when i hopped into the shower and found a huge disgusting hairball stuck in the drain meaning the water was building up in the bottom. I felt ill. It's so much worse when you don't know whose hairball it is. I am going to write a dirty note on my floor's whiteboard about it when i get home. I have no idea who the culprit is, but it's not the first time it's happened, and i really do feel like i could scream with frustration. It's definitely the little things that piss you off, and it's left me feeling quite fed up with being an RA and living in a hall for the entire day.

Late yesterday i also remembered i have a 500 word German report due in tomorrow. I still havent started. I am incredibly sick of German. My BA is completely and utterly pointless; it's more like torture than education. This is made 100 times worse by the fact that i don't actually think the German dept. is all that great. Sure, it's probably underfunded, but so is music - and i love my Mus.B(Hons) and my music lecturers.

All i really wanna concentrate on is singing anyway. But conversely, i hate and am sick of singing. There are so many things wrong with my technique that i feel overwhelmed, and don't even know what to fix first, or fix simultaneously. I feel incredibly daunted by the absolutely enormous pile of brand new repertoire that i have to learn in time for the Christchurch competitions. I've had to jettison my super cool Idomeneo aria too, in favour of a more sedate Clemenza di Tito aria. 'Deh, Se Piacer Mi Vuoi' is cool, but nowhere as exciting or as dramatic as 'D'oreste D'Aiace,' just the small problem of the stranglingly high tessitura in the latter which there is NO way i can cope with at the moment, especially when i need to do so much singing just to keep on top of things.

I do too many things. I totally forgot i was working from 5-7 tonight. And i thought i was supposed to be doing supervising of the music dept. yesterday, not neek week, when it actually is. I'm a MESS.

I wanna go home and hide.

Sony DSCT9B... drool

I quite possibly risked life and limb today in pursuit of my brand new Sony DSCT9B. I had found it quite cheaply online via PriceSpy, a NZ price comparison website, at a 'store' based in Christchurch. I use the term 'store' in a rather loose sense as it wasn't so much a store, as somebody's front porch. But hey, the product was the same, and at a fraction of the retail price! My escort, Mr. K., wasn't much help as we pulled up in front of the house, opting to stay in the car. We sat there for a while, pondering what to do and after a short discussion I convinced him to come in with me. We walked the short driveway slowly, Mr. K. making jokes about the rather large fence, and the 'store' being a pretence to lure victims to be murdered and fed to wolves. As a result I felt uncomfortable as my sister knocked on the door, and even more uncomfortable when it opened. I introduced myself and asked the guy if he was Mr. G. whom I had emailed. He replied affirmatively. I pulled out my rather large wad o' cash and explained that i wasn't used to "buying things from houses." He looked perplexed; i felt foolish. I asked about a receipt and he said he would email it to me. I, still feeling a little less than trusting asked if i could have it then and there. He trotted off to fetch it for me and Mr. K. and I stood huddled in the foyer/porch feeling strangely out of place. It wasn't all bad though... we came away alive and unscathed AND I have a sexy camera.

We figured it must be legit. when we saw a courier van delivering things to the house 2 minutes later while we were sitting back outside in the car. However we both agreed that it wouldn't seem half so dodgy if there were a sign, any sort of sign, proclaiming it as a place of business. I guess it wouldn't be half so fun then either! :P

Geeky? Yes!

Oooooooh I'm excited! I registered www.nicole-evans.com today. It's something i've been meaning to do for quite some time, especially since i discovered that some horrid person in Washington already has www.nicoleevans.com. I have no plans for my url as of yet. It will be a website one day... eventually... :D

Books and more books

The past two days have proved a blissful respite from the stresses of the first term, and have actually allowed me time to read non-university related material.

Yesterday I started and then later finished a rather silly and tawdry "novel" called Voluntary Madness by Vicki Hendricks. It was about a 22 year old called Juliette, who is in love with 40-something year old 'Punch,' an alcoholic, diabetic, (for the most part) impotent black guy with suicidal tendencies. They live together in Key West (where Hemingway lived for many years), while Punch works on his pièce de résistance: a debut novel based loosely on their crazy adventures. These include adopting a "guide" dog from the local SPCA and pretending Punch is blind, breaking into Hemingway's home to take photos of Juliette à la Marilyn Monroe on Hemingway's bed, holding up fancy restaurants not for money but for 'take out' gourmet meals, and Juliette's penchant for getting stoned and flashing anyone who crosses her path. Meanwhile, Juliette is also struggling to keep Punch off alcohol so he can finish the book, but time is running out: the couple have made a pact to live together for one year and then kill themselves in a festival parade... Add into this mix Juliette's burgeoning friendship with wiccan lesbian, Isis, who runs the local witchy supply store, and Voluntary Madness really is an apt title...

Moving onto more interesting and highbrow writing, I turned today to a short biogrpahy of Fanny Burney, daughter of well known eighteenth century musicologist Dr Charles Burney, and esteemed writer in her own right. The biography is written in a very readable and immediate fashion, rather than the distanced and stuffy language of some biographies. I've not yet finished, but so far the 'cast' includes many notable personalities of the day including actor David Garrick, and literary critic and writer of the dictionary, Dr Samuel Johnson. Also interesting is that Fanny's brother, James, sailed with Captain Cook, perhaps gracing our own shores.

I haven't quite decided what to move onto when I've finished Fanny's biography - so many books, so little time! I suppose i ought to start Maria Stuart by Schiller, but reading is such a chore when one is obligated to for university, rather than for one's own pleasure.

Beethoven 9

After last night's performance of Beethoven's 9th I am glad that my reservations about the Sinfonia were completely unfounded! I hadn't bought a programme so didn't know what to expect of the first half, and was thus rather excited when the first few chords of the Don Giovanni ouverture sounded, prompting me to elbow my neighbour rather excitedly and say something completely unintelligible but which if translated into English would have meant "oh fantastic, I really do like this ouverture, what a pleasant surprise."

This was followed by a selection of arias from our four Beethoven 9 soloists, Viktoriya Dodoka, Helen Medlyn (resplendent in fantastic orange gown!), Keith Lewis and David Thelander. These ranged from pleasant without overwhelming the senses, to being almost sublime. Although my one criticism would be that they were for the most part over-acted in terms of being on a concert stage. Nonetheless it was an enjoyable first half, and I particularly enjoyed Keith's Dalla sua pace.

The Sinfonia was definitely in fine form for the Beethoven, and it was nice to see the Town Hall at almost full capacity. It was also heartening to see quite a large number of young people in the audience who are not musicians! Marc conducted sans score, and his obvious passion was apparent in his very involved conducting and his joyous singing along with the chorus in the last movement. I only wish I had been able to see his facial expressions! The soloists had gorgeous ensemble singing, voices bowing in and out of prominence according to their melodic/harmonic function, and i did like Thelander's intial "Freude...."

The scherzo second movement is one of my favourites, and i thought the 2nd violins and violas were an asbolute credit to themselves in the staggered fugal like entries. The celli in the last movement had beautiful pianoissimo tone and their dialogue with the rest of the orchestra really did feel like it was saying something. The other outstanding section that i thoroughly enjoyed was the winds; the bassoons were fantastic! And that's saying something, coming from a soprano who doesn't usually pay woodwind much more than lip service! The horns had creative intonation at one or two moments, but it wasn't really enough to mar such an impassioned performance - we need more music like this in Dunedin!

I left feeling uplifted, but that's what one expects of Beethoven and Schiller.

Deine,
Tochter aus Elysium

Random...

So what's been happening lately?

Well, Falstaff is well and truly over, which is both good and bad. Good because my life is a little less hectic; bad because it was loads of fun and i miss the cast and crew already! Little parts of the music keep getting stuck in my head and run around in there for hours, very maddening!

Having Keith Lewis (a tenor based in London) here at the moment has also been very interesting and more than a little inspiring. His recital on Sunday was spectacular, especially his lieder interpretation which i just adored, and I am so looking forward to Sat night's Beethoven 9, although i do have reservations about the sinfonia! Hopefully they will prove me wrong!

I don't think i've ever been quite as obsessed by singing as I am this year. The realization that Claire, Fiona, Michael and I are actually doing Hons and everybody else is looking up to us to set a certain standard is a strange feeling. The only downside to all my hard work is vocal exhaustion, which showed itself spectacularly at Monday's masterclass.. hurrah :p As a result I've had to take a couple of days off singing and feel myself becoming increasingly twitchy... Things had better be back to normal tomorrow or I shall be a very unahppy soprano indeed.

In other news, my job with ITS is faaantaaastic and i love them to pieces. I've honestly never had such an awesome job. I am soo feeling the love right now.

Three weeks til Carmen rehearsals start... that will certainly be rather different to Falstaff, considering the chorus alone is four times the size of our entire cast for the former!

Anyway yes, i do have lots of music to learn, Mozart, Barber, Mahler, Ross Harris, Gounod and maybe (fingers crossed) Verdi! :D

Edit: Claire says she is too short for anyone to actually look up to her...