Today was the first of our two open dress rehearsals for Barber of Seville. The rehearsal is an early one (for us night folk), beginning at 11:30. Most of the orchestra shows up about 30 minutes prior to the start, but I get places early (anyone who knows me knows this), so I was there at 10:00. I had forgotten to eat breakfast, so I picked up some oatmeal from the coffee shop in the Marriott, along with my “Americano with room” and headed over to the orchestra room. It’s always nice to get places early and have some quiet time. Of course the singers were already there … all those costumes adn make-up. I can’t even imagine dealign with all of that. All we do is don black, and not even that for our dress rehearsals. A “dress rehearsal” for an instrumentalist merely means it’s the final rehearsal … or, in opera’s case, one of the final two rehearsals, since there are two casts. It has nothing to do with “dress” for us. (Although at my former church they insisted that dress rehearsal meant we had to come in the proper clothing. Go figure.)

Ramble ramble ….

The audience today was the younger crowd: kids from schools come in to see and hear the show. I often don’t care for the kiddie rehearsal; they laugh at inappropriate places, or they are unruly. But today they were pretty darn well behaved. Judging by the laughter, there were also some singers in the hall along with the kids. You can just hear that “Singer’s Laughter” and it ain’t like my laugh, to be sure. I suspect it was the “other” cast (we don’t call them #1 and #2. I’m not even sure if we call them 1 and A, as I do my two oboes, in order not to make one appear to be better than the other. But we do have two casts, at least for most of the lead roles.)

After the rehearsal I had 35 minutes to get home to prepare for student #1. It’s difficult to switch hats that quickly.

Tomorrow night is the final dress, which is open to some (mostly grown up) guests. After that it’s “only” shows. I missed one rehearsal, and between that and playing so little in this opera I feel a bit disconnected to it all. It feels very strange.

And no, I didn’t leave early today. I hung around (in case we had something to rehearse) and stood in a place where I could see a bit of the show after I had finished playing. I wish I could see the first half, though. That’s when everyone is laughing so much.

I think I’ll leave from here on out, but we’ll see.

I haven’t much to say about the show, and nothing I’ll write here. I’ll leave the critiquing to the reviewers. I have a few “I wish …” items (but no one asks me!) and a couple of “What in the world?!” moments. But I’ll keep those to myself. At least for now. 🙂

Tonight we’ll finally see Jameson (our 17 year old) in Bye Bye Birdie, where he plays the role of Conrad Birdie. I’ve never seen this show, although I know the general story line. It’s the dessert benefit, so it should be no only fun, but tasty too!

First, though, I have two more students to teach.