My Day-to-Day Adventures

Playtime (and it isn't even summer vacation yet!)

According to the women in the choir, this is a very unsual spring for the choir at the Landestheater. Currently we are only appearing in Jesus Christ Superstar performances and rehearsing the two operas for the beginning of next season. That means we have quite a bit of free time to rest, relax, enjoy the coming of summer! I have been told to enjoy my free time now, because next season (and particularly the spring) will be very busy for us and we won't be receiving this many free days.


Well, I took their advice and have really been enjoying my time off! Yesterday I went and visited some horses that my friend Verena rides. I haven't been that close to a horse in probably almost 20 years! My goodness, they sure are sweet creatures, but very very big!




















Another fun (and new) activity I recently tried was archery. A group from the theater went out about two weeks ago with an archery instructor and got to try our hand at shooting a bow and arrow. It was a lot of fun and this weekend we are even going to have a mini-tournament in a local forest!
















I did better with the foam animals than with the target. Our instructor said that humans shoot very instinctively, since we've been hunters for so many thousands of years. I hit the owl six times in a row--thank goodness he couldn't feel anything!!
















By far the highlight of my free time lately was meeting and spending time with Joe. He flew to Europe at the beginning of June and we spent a week together exploring Germany and Austria.



In Coburg we rode the Bimmel Bahn (a crazy train/bus hybrid) to the top of the hill where the fortress is to look around. It was a bumpy ride, but very fun!















Inside the fortress museum we saw several different collections. Out of all the collections, my favorite was the great room of coaches and buggies. Joe is standing next to my favorite, a really posh coach that was used to transport royalty. Very swank!

After a few days in Coburg, we headed down to Munich. We spent the greater part of one day walking around and enjoying the beautiful architecture, like the Frauenkirche with the twin clock towers.

















Being true tourists, we had dinner at the infamous Hofbräuhaus, which is famous for serving beer in one-liter steins. Look Dad, two hands, just like softball practice!! :)















And to go with all that beer, we ordered traditional meals that were recommended by our waiter. Between the two of us we plowed through a pork shoulder, dumplings and gravy, a variety of sausages, souerkraut, and mashed potatoes. My my, being a tourist is hard work!




















Our next stop after Munich was Salzburg, Austria. I was really excited to show Joe all of my favorite spots from when I studied abroad there for a year. This bridge really has the best view of downtown.
















The highlight of our time in Salzburg was attending a performance at the marionette theater, located next door to the music conservatory where I used to take lessons. We bought tickets to "The Magic Flute" and were both amazed at how talented the puppet masters are!





















The last stop on our whirlwind tour was Vienna. The weather wasn't always cooperative, but we still saw lots of beautiful things, like the Stephansdom in the center of town.















During a particularly wild thunder and lightening storm, we sat on the steps of this building and watched the flashes of lightening streak across the sky!















I had a lot of fun on this trip and am enjoying my free time, but I will be glad to finish our last four performances of Jesus Christ Superstar and then head back to Seattle! I will be flying back to the States on July 16th and have about six weeks to relax and catch up with friends and family. And when my blog comes back in the fall, I will hopefully have new and exciting stories about my experiences as a soloist!

Labels: This and That

posted by Teresa @ 1:15 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

Waiting...and another audition

I am glad that I like to knit and do crafty projects that take a lot of time. Over the years I have tried to curb my impatient nature and doing these types of activities really helps. But I have to say, after singing a good audition for the theater and not hearing anything concrete from the Intendant started to wear on my patience. After hearing really positive feedback from the people in the audition (either the legitimate audience or the ones hiding in the balcony) I was pretty sure that the theater would want to give me one or two small solo roles for next season. But being pretty sure and actually having a meeting and something in writing are two different things. So, I was really happy when I got a call from the theater dramaturge yesterday. I thought she was going to schedule an appointment for me to sit down with the indentdant, but instead she asked if I had time the next day (today) to sing another audition. Apparently the director for "Kiss me Kate" (which goes into production in December) is in town to hear singers and he wanted to meet me and hear me sing. So, someone left me a copy of the score (in German, of course) and told me what song to have prepared for the next day. Totally informal. no pressure. Uh huh.

So after getting the music and rehearsing it, it really wasn't that hard and I relaxed. And today when I came to the theater the "audition" was on one of the rehearsal stages with pretty much the same people I sang for before plus the new director. I heard two other singers go before me and then I was up. It was a short song and I had a different arrangement than the accompanist, but we plunked through the 3 or 4 pages so the director could hear my voice. He wanted me to sing less operatic, which made me cringe a little bit, but I tried the song again with a little more pop style and he seemed happy.

After I was done singing the powers-that-be gave me a little more information, since they all realized that they all expected someone else to sit down and talk to me, and none of them ever did. This season there was a young mezzo in the ensemble who found another position at a different theater for next season. Instead of replacing her, the theater decided to leave that position open and give the smaller mezzo roles to me. The thing that's holding up the process is how to fanagle my contract, since I'm singing in the choir as well. As far as I know, these solo roles next year would be in addition to singing in the choir, but I'm not 100% sure. Either way, they promised to get things ironed out "as soon as possible" and get back to me about what I'll be doing next season. So it looks like I will be a soloist next year, but I have to have a little more patience still to wait for the actual contract. So hopefully I'll have news soon!

Labels: Theater Life

posted by Teresa @ 6:40 AM 2 Comments Links to this post