Wolf Trap Opera

Participating blogs are listed below – links will become active throughout the day on February 9.

Where and How We Do What We Do

• The Barns at Wolf Trap via Clef Notes
• Arts Management in Reverse at Adaptistration

Focus on Repertoire

• Zaide at Roger Evans Online 
• Turk at Musical Perceptions 
• Dream at Dramma per musica 

Marketing and Fundraising

• Why Wolf Trap Needs Members at Katya’s Nonprofit Marketing Blog 
• Zaide Production Choice Becomes Marketing Hook at Butts in the Seats 

Our Young Artists and their Careers

• The YAP View via Houston Grand Opera
• Overview of 2010 FYA Roster at Miss Music Nerd
• The Career Pyramid at The Omniscient Mussel 

Interview Fun

• Operagasm (Instant Opera, Artist Profiles, Audition Advice and More) 
• The Mind of the Airstream Diva (Books, Music, Daily Life)
• Does The Fat Lady Still Sing? at The Next Hundred Pounds 

WTOC Colleagues

• Whack-a-Mole at Rahree
• Studio Artist Photo Gallery at the Melear-o-sphere 

There’s a point each summer when folks – patrons, colleagues, friends – say, “What’s wrong? You haven’t updated the blog in OVER A WEEK!”

It’s like the crazy Christmas season years ago when my husband and I decided we didn’t have time to put the requisite tens of thousands of lights on the house. A worried stranger knocked on the door and asked if we were all OK – thought that because we hadn’t decorated the house, someone must be sick.

We are all fine here at WTOC, but this last week was a struggle. No surprise – we saw it coming. Ulysses performances, Instant Opera week at Theatre-in-the-Woods, Steve Blier’s residency and Pursuit of Love recital, and the approach of Boheme tech week. It was all marvelous, but it consumed all available waking hours, with no time to tell about it!

This is our day away from the theatre, ceding the stage to Pat Benatar and Blondie. We reoccupy tonight at 12midnight, and it’s nonstop from there till Saturday. I offer in these few quiet minutes a catch-up posting.

SpongeBob, Princesses, Scooby-Doo, Captain Hook, and Harry Potter…

If our singers ever doubt that they’ve come to work in a National Park, those thoughts are erased by their first trip out to the Children’s Theatre-in-the-Woods. They hiked along the stream every morning last week, and presented 5 world premiere operas written by the children of the Theatre-in-the-Woods and brought to life by the Wolf Trap Opera Studio. These amazing singers were armed for improv battle by Your Friend and Mine Jim Doyle, joined by Pianists Grant and Jeremy, supported by Super Judy and Super Amra, and cheered on by coach Eric.

Pursuit

Steve worked his magic (and no, that’s not a euphemism) last week, and brought a slightly atypical program to The Barns. The Pursuit of Love wasn’t structured like most of Steve’s recitals – rather, it gave each of its four singers a chance to sing a complete set/cycle of songs (by Villa Lobos, Grieg, Granados, and Gabriel Kanahane), and then featured all of the singers in quartets. In the midst of an intense rehearsal week he also found time to chat with our donors and lead a master class with some of the Studio Artists. And, of course, the journey home (a needlessly epic 12-hour trip from Vienna to New York) yielded the annual brainstorming document with ideas for next year’s recitals. Six of them. (Six ideas, not six recitals. Even though I tried:))

Joining the Bohemians

We are now exclusively on the Boheme train. A few shots from the last room rehearsal and this link to the promo will have to do for now! More tomorrow. I promise.

I’ve blogged before about my visual incompetency. I yearn to see with the detail and texture with which I hear. It’s a lifelong quest.

Tomorrow I will sit in awe of two of our performing artists (mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and pianist Jeremy Frank) as they revel in a challenge to respond to paintings by Cézanne, Chagall, Daumier, Bonnard, Monet, Lawrence and Degas. They’ve chosen songs by Libby Larsen, Henri Duparc, Fiona Apple, Claude Debussy, Charles Ives, and Elton John; and they’ll perform the music in front of projections of the artwork (courtesy of the Phillips Collection in Washington, DC.)

If you’re a fan of ours in the Vienna, VA area, and you’re interested in coming to this mini-recital at 1:00 pm tomorrow (Thursday, June 11), drop us an email at wtoc@wolftrap.org, and we’ll reserve you a seat! (Reservations required)

(A fly-by visit to my office a few minutes ago reported that the Mark Chagall / Fiona Apple pairing is a marvelous thing:)

Last night’s Road Trip! concert left me speechless.

The paradox of blogging is that the stories that defy description are the very ones that demand to be told. Tweets and posts don’t feel like strong enough vessels to contain an evening filled with such beauty, humor, talent, and generosity of spirit.

The full house at The Barns was treated to twenty-two songs ranging from the batty (At the Mardi Gras)…

…to the heartbreaking (Haunted Heart)…

… the witty (A Summer in Ohio)…

… the jazzy (Sugar in the Cane)…

… and the… well… uh… indescribable (courtesy of Arizona Lady).

And of course, none of it would be thinkable without Steve Blier at the helm. Bravi, amici.

To tide you over, sample some lyrics that await you at The Barns…

All New York’s a stage,
And all its men and women are very bad actors.
How they rant and rage, for food and drink and money,
For those are the factors.
Out of the Bronx and Yonkers
Rushing to earn a wage –
He must be strong who conquers
On the Manhattan stage.

Yippi-yi, away out west in Jersey,
I declare these are the thoughts I thunk,
Yippi-Yi, if Jersey looks like this to me,
Either Jersey or me is drunk.

Nightmare, daymare,
Feelin’ older than the gray mare.
Lost my lover in the blue, blue grass.

Can’t get Indiana off my mind,
Anywhere I chance to roam;
The music on the Wabash that I left behind
Calls me back home.

I could have a mansion on the hill,
I could lease a villa in Seville,
But it wouldn’t be as nice as a summer in Ohio
With a gay midget named Karl, playing Tevye and Porgy.

Song der Prärie…Lied der Prärie..
Horst du es klingen, ein Rauschen und Singen?
Ja, das ist der Ruf der Prärie!

From east coast to west… in two hours. Ride along.