A Fond Farewell to a Fast Faust

Faust is over and it is a bittersweet end. I did not think I would grow to love this opera as much as I have. When I first started working on the score I was mostly interested in getting the language correct since the music was not too difficult. The chorus rehearsals and my private practice all flowed easily and I entered staging excited to turn it all into action. The staging went very quick, just four days, and the technical rehearsals resulted in some sleep deprivation for many of us who had to be at work early in the morning, but it all seemed to fly by too quickly. Now the show is over and I can read the newspaper, go through my mail, and stare into my empty refrigerator. I almost forgot to go home after work yesterday, expecting to walk over to DeVos Hall once again and prepare for an audience. Once home I did notice that my house doesn’t look as clean by daylight as it does by the light of the moon and that the laundry does not clean itself or the lawn mow itself (though I do believe someone else is mowing for me today).

The Opera season is over and I am very thankful that I was able to participate in each of the shows. I would like to thank the principal artists who were so kind to the chorus and worked with us to make great opera. Everyone who had anything to do with the productions should be very proud of themselves for we had a great run!

For Faust in particular I need to thank Joe Gladstone for being a great stage manager, Jon Mull for being my personal masseur when my back had a spasm during the Dress Rehearsal, Christian Vigrass for his work on the dance scene, Jill Marrese for the language help, and Tina Williams for being a professional dresser. I could go on, but this sounds like an academy award speech so I will end with saying that I enjoyed working with everyone associated with Faust and I hope to work with all of you again.

Final Dress

Our final dress rehearsal was last night and went quite well. The show is about 3 hours long which includes 2 intermissions. The chorus had to stay longer to work on sound checks and to receive notes from the conductor/director so it was another late night for us. Tonight is a “dark” night so there is no rehearsal and the performers can relax for a day. Some of the production team still works today, but not everyone. That is one nice thing about working in professional opera; a day off before performance.
I tried to take some pictures backstage and will post some when I can. I have a great shot of our Faust (Bryan) showing off his tights, but I think I will preserve his dignity and not post that one!
For now, it is a night off and hopefully everyone will get some rest.

Sunday Night Stumble Through

Last night was our first rehearsal on DeVos Hall stage with the set and most of the props. This was the night when we discovered that there are poles and stairs that we had not envisioned previously. I felt like everything went rather well. We had to re-work a few areas and place people differently on the stage at certain moments, but for the most part it seemed to function as planned. One scary aspect of this set is the platform which is made of steel grate with large holes. The women cannot wear heeled shoes so we all now have to get flats to go with our costumes. I will be trying out a couple of pairs of shoes tonight to see which will work best on the set. When the whole chorus climbs onto the platform it sways and some of us have found it a bit disconcerting, but so far we have not had a casualty.
I am feeling better about my knowledge of French; I can actually understand some of what the principals are singing without reading the libretto first. Some day I would like to be able to comprehend Italian and French well enough to follow a conversation. Fluently speaking French will take a while, but understanding the language is a big step for me. Once again I regret not taking French and/or Italian in college; but I was a theater major and never even dreamed of being an opera singer!
Tonight we are adding costumes and other technical aspects to the production. I am trying to get by on only 4 hours of sleep from last night so my goal is to stay alert and not make too many mistakes.

A Devilishly Good Show

Staging for Faust began this week. We are back at the old Dunham’s store which has plenty of space for our rehearsal needs. The principals are here and it has been fun interacting with them. Marguerite Krull (Cherubino, The Marriage of Figaro) has returned for another pants role. This time she is the young boy, Siebel, who is in love with Marguerite (the character; not herself). The other leads are new to Opera Grand Rapids. Pamela Armstrong (Marguerite) was originally booked at this time to sing for another company that cancelled their season. Their loss is our gain. Bryan Griffin is our Faust, Quinn Kelsey is Valentin (Marguerite’s noble brother) and Kirk Eichelberger is the “cute, but creepy” devil Mephistopheles. Having heard all them sing a bit at rehearsals, I am looking forward to the sitzprobe on Saturday when we sing the entire opera with the Symphony for the first time. It will be the first time the chorus will get to hear the principals in full voice sing all the arias that happen when we are not on stage. No one should miss that!
Tonight we are running through the whole show in the rehearsal space. The principals don’t have to sing full voice in staging rehearsal, but sometimes they do just for the practice. This is our last chance to work on staging before we get to DeVos Hall on Sunday evening where the whole show takes on a new dimension with the technical aspects of lights, sound and real set pieces.

Fittings and Faust

Another week has past and my memorization of Faust is coming along. I didn’t use my music during this Monday’s rehearsal and I felt rather confident with the notes. I hope I had the majority of them right! I don’t have the new part memorized for words, but I think I have the notes locked in. Now I need to work on the dynamics and mood of the music. I know that will all fall into place when the principals come into town and we start staging, but it is nice to have the atmosphere set before we hit the rehearsal hall. The opera always takes on a whole different feeling when we put our bodies and minds into the moments we are performing.

The costume shop is up and running and most of the women have been fitted for their dresses. I was supposed to have gone last Friday but they were not ready for me so I still need to make an appointment this week. I know we are peasants so I don’t plan on having a beautiful gown; probably something brown or earth-tone. The nice thing about being a peasant is that the costumes are usually light-weight unlike the ball gowns we have to wear for shows like La Traviata. If the dress is very pretty it most likely will be cumbersome. As long as my Faust outfit doesn’t itch or pinch, I won’t complain.

More French!

Just as I thought I was progressing with my music and language nicely, Maestro has added music for the women. The women are now singing along with the men on two pieces which should be fun. I prefer to have more to sing and do rather than less. The first piece we join in is the Chorale of the Swords when Mephistopheles is repelled with the broken sword held up as a cross. This is a powerful moment and full voices are definitely needed so I can see why Maestro would add the women. Most companies would use a chorus of 40 or 50 men, but we are confined to use only 24 so the additional 16 women will help with the double fortissimo that is called for in the score. The second men’s piece that we join is the Soldiers chorus. This is the music that is most recognizable (to me at least) from this opera and it is a great triumphal moment which, again, is double fortissimo. This extra music should not be too taxing and it should be fun to sing on stage. I am looking forward to starting staging in a couple of weeks when the Maestro and principals come into town. We have a shortened rehearsal period for this show, so we will be doing all the preliminary staging in four days rather than the normal eight, before we hit the DeVos Hall stage for the technical rehearsals. Things are going to get crazy real soon!

En Français

Music rehearsals for Faust are going well. The men have more to sing than the women this time so they had one more rehearsal than we did. We still have three more music rehearsals with Maestro Davis before Maestro Lyall comes into town for staging.
My studies in French are developing at a slow pace. Our Production Manager, Cat, said a simple sentence to me in French the other day and I had to ask her to translate. Some days it feels like one step forward and two steps back. My goal is to be able to understand the French of Faust in my head as I am performing rather than just singing the words with only a concept of the text. I wish I had taken French in college rather than trying to learn it on my own now. Faust and other French operas would be a lot easier to sing if I knew what I was saying!
The music of Faust is not difficult. There are a couple of possible tricky parts, but I don’t see any train wrecks so far. We have two sections that are sung rather fast, depending on Maestro’s tempo, and at least one part that is very slow, again depending on Maestro. The fast parts make the language difficult and the slow parts make breathing (breath control) hard. I plan on using repetition to get the fast language to flow fluently and staggered breathing to make it through the slow moments.
So far I feel rather confident with the memorization of the words and music. I hope I am not being overly optimistic. Only time will tell how well I learn French and Faust.