Greatness at work

I just got home from the dress rehearsal for Doctor Atomic.  It opens this Wednesday and if any of my readers (lurking out there in the blogosphere) happen to be in London, GO SEE IT.  I've never seen a John Adams opera before, or any opera that made use of amplification and effects of this magnitude, but it really was an amazing sight to see.  I felt that the drama was very well-written and executed beautifully, and the singing was just breathtaking.  I have a huge singer crush on Gerald Finley now, which makes me one of the many, but he's such a consummate artist.  Such finely honed singing, so excellently crafted and finessed, and with the kind of diction that you usually hear on recordings.  As a point of home-turf pride, I was happy to see that Sasha Cooke turned out marvelously well.  Our Seattle Opera parents are bursting with excitement to have two former young artists on the mainstage at ENO, and now I can go there next week and tell them I saw her kick ass with my own two eyes.  Lots of good singing up on that stage, a few minor mishaps with the raising and lowering of shades, but I was absolutely riveted to my seat.  Another one of those days where I just love what I do for a living because it means I get to sit in the opera house and watch greatness happen.  

Katrina and I were sitting in Paul today, nibbling on french macaroons and almond pastry and quiche, and I was telling her about my most recent crisis of career/conscience/life.  At an audition last week, I suddenly found myself in an episode of Jeopardy, getting grilled about everything from where I went to school to what I studied and why, and whether or not I was finishing the doctorate and why did I start it and did I really want to be a singer.  Now everyone I've told this story to butts in at this juncture and says, "Um, did you tell them that HELLO you already ARE a singer???"  While I agree with them, that's not really the kind of attitude you want to throw down when hoping to be hired, so I did a lot of creative tap dancing to get out the door without offending the people on the audition panel.  When I mentioned it to my agent, they told me that the concern is not so much that I might be less-than-devoted to the profession of singing, it's that an opera singer might be too intelligent.  Read: more intelligent than the people directing/coaching/conducting them.  It's a very complex issue for me.  I've spent all this time and effort working on finishing this degree with both speed and success, I've managed to write and edit a dissertation while maintaining a full performing and auditioning schedule, and now that I'm on the precipice of finishing (the disser went to committee last week, let's hope they will have an answer for me soon) I have to effectively shelf my intelligence so that I don't scare the people I want to employ me.  Now no one wants to hire a singing idiot who can't put together two grey cells to get from stage right to stage left, but no one likes the smartest kid in the class either.  This has been a long-standing source of contention with my colleagues that's well-documented in this blog, so I won't belabor the point by expounding further.  Needless to say, I was pondering the duplicity of this philosophy at the opera tonight.  John Adams wrote some seriously hard music, and it makes me think that the people involved in that production are of serious musical cred to be able to pull it off successfully.  Would John Adams care whether or not the singers were too intelligent?  Or would he be grateful that they had spent twelve years in higher education so they could execute his score with expedience and accuracy and artistry?  Points to ponder.

Three days till the close of Flute.  Four days till I fly back to Boston, green money, and my sweet life in my sweet house with my husband and dog.  And six days till I fly to Seattle to start Midsummer.  Eeep.