Playing catch up
It has been a long time since I posted any thoughts or happenings here. Guess it’s about time I did.
It’s been a busy year, thank God. After Cavalleria Rusticana, I participated in that amazing performance of the Verdi Requiem with Orchestra Seattle, the Seattle Chamber Singers and my dear friends and colleagues, conductor George Shangrow, mezzo soprano, Emily Lunde, tenor, Stephen Wall and bass, Brian Box.
I looked at the whole experience as a kind of return to life and triumph over the anguish and adversity of the past few years. Singing “Libera me” opens my soul to God and all who will listen. The text may be pleading with God for deliverance, but being able to sing and sing it well and with strength, is for me more about proclaiming the glory of God and giving thanks that I have come back to this place of relative health.
After the previews that I mentioned in the last post and the Macbeth performances with Seattle Opera. I did actually audition for the role of Lady Macbeth with West Bay Opera in Palo Alto. Didn’t get hired, but it was a good experience and I sang very well. Considering there didn’t seem to be any Lady Macbeth’s at the callbacks (a tenor friend was called back), perhaps I was just too late and they had already cast it. Soothes my ego a bit anyway, but then it was more about the doing than about the winning this time.
Later in the month, I went back to California and recorded the song cycle “Meditation at Oyster River” that my brother wrote and dedicated to me. I stayed with the pianist and his incredibly talented artist wife and worked like a dog on the piece for four very long, very tough days. But they made me feel very welcome and the music was tremendous and I think we produced a reasonable recording with which to market the songs to conductors (the piece is scored for soprano and orchestra). Hopefully by the end of July, I will manage to post the songs on my own website, but for now, they can be heard at: www.myspace.com/eleanorstallcophorrox
I participated just this past Friday evening in a concert at the beautiful Bloedel Reserve on Bainbridge Island with two other singers and a marvelous accompanist of opera arias and some lighter fare. It gave me the chance to be playful, singing “ I Can Cook, Too” from On the Town and “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man of Mine” from Showboat. With Puccini and Catalani in the first half and Broadway in second, I was having a grand time!
So now on to the next challenge – learning Franco Leone’s L’Oracolo for Willamette Concert Opera in October in Portland and Corvallis, preparing excerpts from Puccini’s Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica for an audition in November and looking for more opportunities to audition and perform. And hopefully having many more things to write about here in Musings.
Looking forward.
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