Friday, June 24, 2011

The Wonderful First Week!

Alright so after my long absence, here I am to ease your fears that I may have fallen off the face of the earth. It has been rather difficult to muster up the effort to write or post videos each night... I do have quite long and eventful days.

So the past 5 days have been so fabulous. I have been rehearsing scenes (opening duet from Nozze and the quartet from Falstaff), working in the chorus of Don Bucefalo, taking voice lesson with Brian Leeper, perfecting my Italian diction in Italian coachings, and attending Italian class every morning with my teacher Frederico.

The Italian classes are going very well. I have always loved learning languages and have found myself learning Italian easily by having experience learning Spanish and French. Our teacher speaks very little English during class and is animated and encouraging when teaching. Maybe I'll blog a little bit in Italian soon to show my skills :)

As far as the coachings and lessons, I am learning so much. The coachings are one of my favorite things; I have had two of them now. They basically consist of me singing repertoire or speaking my texts to an Italian voice teacher who does not speak English. They give pointers on pronunciation of texts and singing technique. For example, I'm working on having a brighter, more forward placement on my Italian vowels. My lessons, of which I've had two now, are just wonderful. Brian is a very talented professor of voice who is a perfect match for me here. Together we work a lot on technique. I always feel like I understand what he wants and how to achieve it. I feel I'm improving a lot even though the new elements of my technique feel strange to me now. This atmosphere here in Novafeltria is just so perfect though. I'm singing all day every day and not doing much else, so I don't feel distracted or rushed at any point. It is just so very beautiful. :)

The opera and scene rehearsals are going well also. I'm trying to work memory for those, but it's a tedious process. However, there's no time for just absorbing the texts for memory during rehearsals which is a change from my prior experience working on shows for entire semesters... Even in IOC, I felt there was more time... Gahhhhh :/

One exciting event was the witch festival here in town! It is a festival unique to Novafeltria in which it is believed that you should put a bowl of water outside your window where he moonrays will shine on it and give the water magic powers. To celebrate this night, the people in the town have a festival in he piazza and dress up like witches and wizards. There was music and dancing (and drinking vino)!! LOTS of fun :)

Also, last night was the young artists recital. I and 22 other member of the young artists division performed in a recital for the other members of the program, instructors, and citizens of this town. It went very well! There is a HUGE amount of talent here... I was performing up next to grad students some of whom had 10 years on me age-wise... But I felt very good about the performance. ((VIDEO TO COME!))

But overall, I'm having the time of my life. I live with Aly and Emily, and we have now stocked our kitchen with delicious Italian food ingredients and snacks. We cook everyday now and have made some delicious pasta dishes!!! I will miss all of the fresh ingredients here when I go back to the states like veggies from the town market, prosciutto cut fresh from the leg, and handmade pasta from the deli down the road. Actually... One of those pasta rolling machines may find it's way home with me... Haha :)

I send my love to you all, and know that I'm safe and having so much fun! I'm headed to Venice on Sunday for an excursion... So more to come soon!!! Ciao!

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The first weekend: Novafeltria!

So right now I'm sitting in bed still not used to this timezone.... it's already 2:39am. But! Now I shall tell of the past two days...

So on Saturday Aly, Emily and I took a shuttle from our hotel to the Rome airport at 10 30am. When we arrived there we had NO idea where we needed to go.. But then we ran into Ben Wright, another one of the Butler students. We ended up tracking down or group, and we ate some food at the airport and then tried to meet some of the singers who were there. Aly and I both met the other halves of our duet scenes, Eric and Ryan. And we met others, but I keep forgetting names :) so we waited in the airport for a good number of people to arrive so we could get on the buses to Novafeltria. We ended up leaving around 2pm, and we lucked out and snagged a group of bus seats that faced each other with a table between. I did a lot of sleeping while people took pictures of my apparently hilarious sleeping face... :) and about 4 an a half hours later we arrived in the town to a welcome party. After hearing from the mayor of Novafeltria and the director of voice here, we were served some local cuisine in the center of town near a beautiful fountain. After dinner we were shown to our apartments and settled in. I am rooming with Aly and Emily in the hotel Magda.

Today, we woke up, got ready, and headed to the center of town to meet up with Ben and Eric (who ended up rooming together!) for breakfast. After munching on some pastries from the gelateria, we headed to the teatro for our meetings. We had an introductory meeting where all the staff and students introduced themselves. There we also got general info about how things work over here. After this meeting, we had individual meetings for our operas and scene groups. Then we headed back to our apartments for a while. I bought the wireless password from the hotel and tried skyping Tim! Next, we had lunch in the hotel restaurant. I had yummy lasagna and a caprese salad. Then Emily and I took a trip to check out Ben and Eric's room. I took a nap in the evening and woke up, having missed the dinner that was planned as an option for members of la musica lirica, and Aly and I walked out, found Ben, and got some food for dinner. We then were met by those who had been to dinner together at the gelateria. We sat with some new people... Carlisa, Megan, Paige, and Luke. Then on our walk back to the hotel we met Matt, Michael, and Steven. Aly and I went over music before bed and hung out in the room. Now it's 3am... Wow... Time to sleep. Buona notte!

Friday, June 17, 2011

First day in Italy!

Buona sera! So I am staying up late in our hotel in Roma! We had a very long day of flying; and we got into Rome around 11am, took a taxi to our airport, and promptly passed out in our beds :) So after sleeping the day away, we hung out in our room till about 8 and decided to explore the area. We walked to a tobacco shop thinking we would find sim cards for our international phones, but the shop was closed. However, we did stumble upon a cute little restaurant where Emily and I ate pizza and Aly had some linguini. We also had some DELICIOUS desserts: vanilla pudding with strawberry sauce and chocolate cake with cream (infused with a healthy dose of rum!) So we dined the Italian way and talked for a couple hours over fantasic food. Then we walked back to our hotel and had some bonding time :) It is already 2:20am, but we aren't tired! That's what we get for sleeping all day. Lol. Well tomorrow we meet up with our fellow members of La Musica Lirica and take our bus ride to beautiful Novafeltria! Ciao!

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Here we go...

Alright so I made my blog. Hopefully I'll be good about keeping this up while I'm away. For now, I'm just trying to get prepared for this trip... music.. packing.. money stuffs.. but I know it will all work out. And hey! I'm still going to Italy regardless of how much music I polish or what I forgot to pack :)