Mission accomplished

The Moravian Masterclass is over! Thanks to everyone, especially Tim Cheek, pianist, coach and personal savior. I accomplished my primary goal: master the Foreign Princess in Rusalka. I'll work on shaping it a bit more, and maybe give it a little more repetition, but once I get back home I'll be moving on. Probably Sieglinde next, or maybe Brünnhilde in Walküre. I had a wonderful time, made at least one new friend, and met some great people. If I'm free next year (and not still recovering from the debt of THIS trip!) I might even come back to work on Milada in Dalibor. The aria is sitting really well, and B and C just keep getting better and better (thank you, Sheri!) Pantelis Polychronidis, a friend from U. Michigan, is apparently playing masterclasses in Vienna--so I need to find out more, and maybe I can go see him! I'm currently in Kroměříž, which after two days I can ALMOST pronounce correctly... almost. I think it's the proximity of ř and 'sh' that makes it so hard. Small failure in the plan to trace my ancestors (it's raining like mad), but I'm hoping I might make it back in between the Salzburg Festival and meeting Graham in Vienna. Tomorrow: Mozart Requiem at the Karlskirche. I am really, really looking forward to it. Also, I'm open to the fact that I might cry. Another wonderful thing, and also slightly torturous: drafts of the headshots are finally online, and I have to pick the finalists for retouching. Almost as bad as going through recordings. :) Absolutely loving this trip, and the Czech Republic. It's a beautiful country, full of rolling hills and a patchwork of lush green fields. After seeing the land in Moravia, I instantly understood the appeal of Central Texas to so many Czech immigrants: it probably looked just like home. So excited about Austria! I might even look around for a coach to work with while I'm there. Need to keep working on "Pleurez" and polish it up some more. I'm kind of irked I didn't bring the Amelia scene with me, but I can probably dredge up all the words if I listen to it again and just write them down. I don't think I'm very far from having that and "Jak je mi" ready for auditions; maybe a month of working through it with my awesome coaches. Thank you, life and friends and Graham, for getting me here.

New puppy settling in!

So, we have a new member of the family as of last Saturday! His name is Dozer--because he's a stubborn puppy and he's going to be a BIG guy. Probably bigger than Graham wanted, but he and Cinnamon hit it off so well he was clearly the right choice.

I had originally applied to adopt the smallest of these boxer mix puppies, and I drove about an hour on Saturday to go meet him and see how he and Cinnamon got along, after the app got approved. But the lady whop had him went to the wrong place, and she wasn't going to come all the way out and wouldn't be back until Sunday... and since I couldn't come back, I decided to see how Cinnamon got along with the other boys in the litter. Dozer was the second puppy she met, and within about ten seconds of sniffing they were play-bowing to each other. I took him home around 5 on Saturday, and at first he was very nervous about the new surroundings--but by late evening he was coming out of his shell and not so scared! It's been a rough week adjusting my schedule to puppy needs, but we're getting there. He and Cinnamon are playing well together, and the real miracle is this: Cinnamon's crate destruction has just CEASED. One time I even came home after a two or three hour absence and went upstairs and she was still curled up in her crate when I got there.

I'm practicing a bit, finally, and learning four or five new songs for the Schubert Institut CD.

Scholarship and grant applications didn't go so great--I did manage to get an application in for funding from the International Institute. A long shot, but since it IS related to my dissertation, I have a grain of hope. It would be nice to go to Austria and polish half my first dissertation recital with top-notch coaches and world-class Lieder singers and pianists. That wouldn't suck. I can't wait for Ana Maria to get back so we can get working and send off the CD.

CEW app went awry--they called last week, a week after Prof. Sheil sent her letter, and told me they'd received no recommendations. I still need to call them and find out if that has changed--must do it first thing Monday. The past couple of days have been busy, and I keep forgetting to do it first thing in the AM. :p Self-sabotage much?

Dogs are curled up on the couch right now, with their little rear ends together. They make a backwards S. It's adorable.

One month in Ann Arbor...

School is keeping me busy. 9:30-12:45 in classes, and then this afternoon about 2 hours teaching and 2 hours practicing and working with my coach/accompanist on audition pieces for Sunday's audition.

Last Monday I sang at the "Vocal Arts Lab" - basically a group performance get-together for all of the voice and musical theater majors, scheduled about 4 times each term. Made a positive impression, since lots of faculty types were very complimentary afterward; Richard Swedberg made a point of introducing himself to me and chatting some, and making sure I was planning to audition for the spring opera. I think my favorite comment was "What a horn!" (I think that was Prof. Racine, who's current chair of the voice department; I was all in trouble with her for missing a meeting during orientation week).

I HAVE ELEVEN VOICE STUDENTS. Half hour lessons, thank grod. Though tonight I went over. This one undergraduate--from the liberal-arts school at UM, majoring in Latin & Caribbean Studies and Anthro--has a whopper of a voice... I feel sort of like I was handed a random pile of boxes with stuff in them, and I opened one up and there was a Stradivarius cello inside. I like my students, and pretty much every one of them has some issue or problem I feel like I can really help with.

Today one of my students said "This is my favorite class!" :)

I failed my Italian diction placement hearing and am taking an Italian diction class--and now that I'm working through the text of one of my Mozart arias, I UNDERSTAND WHY. And now I have the skills to really make it come alive.

I got to sing a Brahms lied with MARTIN KATZ. (I don't think I've ever heard the stormy piano interlude played with that much passion--and he was transposing at sight from a different key, and hardly missed a beat despite key changes and, well, Brahms!) Luckily someone dropped out of his art song class at the last minute, so I got to audition for him and jump in.

For my pedagogy class, we have to sit in on a number of lessons and write about them in detail. I asked someone in my class, who's a new MM student studying with Shirley Verrett... so I sat in on her lesson yesterday.

George Shirley ALWAYS says hi to me when we pass by each other around the building.

I have a bed, thank goodness. I still don't have any furniture in the living room other than the chair I'm sitting in and my little computer mini-desk... other than that, it's full of boxes and trunks and pillows and yarn and ironing in a big basket...

The tiny little office-nook has one set of shelves; the only thing unpacked and set in anything remotely resembling order? Music, of course. My scores and books, tossed up there in vaguely sorted sections, just so I can *access* things for myself and my students.

OMG. I'm here. I'm DOING this THING. And I LIKE it.