Busy Week!

Last night's second performance of Evgeny Onegin went quite well. The Wednesday night crowd is always a good one, they say, and I believe them. The production had a mellow feel to it, and that extended to the warm, appreciative audience. Everyone sang their best last night, which is a good thing, because that was the performance for the DVD!

I'm still encountering problems with my Matthew Pena interview. We retaped the interview and put it into three different sections, but the shortest one still exceeds the MB limit allowed by blogspot! I'm thinking of putting them on my website instead, which will most likely not have the same limitations in size....Fast forward 2+ hours: OK, I tried that, no success...AAAAARGH!

In the meantime, let me tell you what a joy it is to work with this terrific cast. There's not a diva in the group! Everyone is very real, very honest and open with themselves and their work. Each one brings a sense of commitment to the role and to the drama and elevates the rest of the cast. I have been inspired over and over by these singers, and have been challenged to sing better, to act better, to think through my staging so that even more meaning can be brought to the drama. And I'm so very grateful, so blessed to have been given this opportunity, not only by Anchorage Opera, but by Shorter College who saw the value in this for me and allowed me to spend this much time away perfecting my craft and luxuriating in this glorious music. I am a lucky woman!

Having said that, I'm ready to be back at Shorter! I've rediscovered that teaching is my calling, and singing is my medium--not the other way around. I will return next Wednesday after Winter Break with renewed energy towards inspiring my students to apply themselves with discipline to this art form that they profess to love so much.

At the top you'll see more pictures of me with old friends, both Alaskan and Russian. The "red-haired" guy (it was dyed for the production) is one of Alaska's most gifted singing actors, and his cameo performance of the Frenchman Triquet draws laughter from the crowd every night. I have known and worked with John Fraser since the mid-1990s. The three ladies with me are all Russian women who moved to Alaska around the same time; the thing that makes them so unique to me is that I met them all in March 1992 in SIBERIA! And here they are, 18 years later, singing in the opera chorus in the same production with me. I love them all dearly and consider them to be life-long friends. They are Olga, Zlata, and her mother Natasha. The lady in green with John and me is Linda Bethon, who was in my very first Voice Class at UAA, also in the early- to mid-90s. Friendships run deep when the weather is cold!

Keep your eyes peeled for the next installment, and my apologies yet again for the lack of video, or perhaps I should apologize for my inability to manage the upload. I'm grateful to Matthew Pena for graciously talking to me twice about his background and career.