As I mentioned in my last post, I am currently in the privileged position of being in a rehearsal room every day making opera. We open next Tuesday. However there is still a question mark hanging over proceedings about whether the show will make it that far without a nationwide lockdown. This uncertainty has provoked a new, unexpected psychological battle for myself and fellow cast members, as we try to get to grips with memorising a score we may not perform.
In opera, we are almost always expected to arrive to the first day of rehearsals with the score fully memorised. In these Covid-days, where we are trying to rehearse in as short a time period as possible, that has become even more vital. When memorising a new opera, your best hope is often a midi file, where you can sing along to the wordless interjections of your fellow cast members in electronic form. If you’re lucky, you might have a piano score to take to a vocal coach - but this is not a guarantee. This makes the business of memorising rather more difficult than say - La boheme - where you at least might have heard some of the tunes before! It requires a huge amount of motivation, and that motivation normally comes in the form of an impending deadline: opening night.
So what do you do when that deadline might not exist?
To be honest, it’s been a struggle. A few weeks before the first rehearsal of this production, I wasn’t even 100% sure I was going to be allowed back into the country without quarantine. Needless to say, the score did not get memorised as soon as it should have - I kept putting it off, telling myself that it would get postponed. Eventually, with the first rehearsal inching ever-closer, I managed to spend a painful and punishing three days force-feeding my brain with the music. It turns out that potential humiliation in front of colleagues at a first rehearsal is enough to motivate me, even if I never get to humiliate myself in front of an audience on a first night.
We then move onto the next paradox of this pandemic: getting excited. Is anybody allowed to get excited about anything any more? By the end of March I felt like every time I looked forward to something, it got whisked away at the very last minute. So I stopped looking forward to things, and decided to take more pleasure in the here and now. Part of me feels that this isn’t actually a bad way to live your life, but it could potentially deprive the rehearsal room of a certain energy. I have been trying to find new ways to get excited about making work that is focussed on the process, rather than the eventual completion / sharing.
So far, so good. Although I was so determined not to get excited that I forgot to invite anyone to the opera and now its sold out.
It’s pretty exciting to be working on a sold out show in Covid times. Oh look, there I am getting excited. Let’s hope it’s worth it.