Just finished a "Street Scene" practice. I guess I underestimated the piece. Although it's in English and it's a fun piece, but it is much harder than "Madame Butterfly". I took ages trying to master "Madame Butterfly" as the notes are very high, even to a Soprano like me. Now comparatively, "Madame Butterfly" looks like a piece of cake. Except for the constant high notes, the rest of the opera is pretty straight-forward. But for "Street Scene", there are lots of diminished minor notes, lots of semitones and an off-beat rhythm. In other words, hard to get right, hard to pitch, constant danger of going flat on the notes.
Our artistic director drilled us on our pitches today. She made each one of us sing a semitone, with the next person followed by the next semitone and so on. Then she wanted to separate the sopranos into 2 parts. So she determined the first sopranos by those who can reach up to a high G note. In the end 5 of us (me included) were chosen to sing the part of the first sopranos and the other 4 had to sing the part of the second sopranos. It is no easy feat, considering that most of the notes are high G! It is already hard trying to reach the note in the first place. I guess I just happened to be lucky that I managed to reach the high G note just when she called me to sing.
This is going to be a challenging piece, but I believe the harder the song is, the greater satisfaction one derives once you master it. Thus my goal is to put up a swell performance, despite the gruelling rehearsal schedule. Anyway, the intensive rehearsal is only going to be 1 week before the actual performance, not as bad as during "Madame Butterfly", where we had to practice 4 times a week 1 month before the production! So I guess I am going to enjoy this as well.
Our artistic director drilled us on our pitches today. She made each one of us sing a semitone, with the next person followed by the next semitone and so on. Then she wanted to separate the sopranos into 2 parts. So she determined the first sopranos by those who can reach up to a high G note. In the end 5 of us (me included) were chosen to sing the part of the first sopranos and the other 4 had to sing the part of the second sopranos. It is no easy feat, considering that most of the notes are high G! It is already hard trying to reach the note in the first place. I guess I just happened to be lucky that I managed to reach the high G note just when she called me to sing.
This is going to be a challenging piece, but I believe the harder the song is, the greater satisfaction one derives once you master it. Thus my goal is to put up a swell performance, despite the gruelling rehearsal schedule. Anyway, the intensive rehearsal is only going to be 1 week before the actual performance, not as bad as during "Madame Butterfly", where we had to practice 4 times a week 1 month before the production! So I guess I am going to enjoy this as well.
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