Part 5: Köln

Köln!

The added benefit of having visited a city before is that when your friend texts you and says she’s running late, please camp out at the Starbucks, you know where she’s talking about and don’t have to freak out about finding it. So I sat myself at the Sbux – always a welcome sight, that big green lettering that signals consistency – and checked my email. Kristi picked me up, we were both sufficiently aghast at two NOT SO YOUNG people trying to reach each other’s larynx with their tongues. Gross.

We had an easy evening with a little supper – can I just take a moment and rejoice in the arrival of salad back in my daily diet? Much to the dismay of my relatives, I don’t consider potato salad to be real salad, nor potatoes with sauce to be a vegetable, nor corn, nor cooked cabbage. I need something green, leafy, that recently came from a living plant – and then settled in to watch Gilmore Girls in our pyjamas.

The medicine started to work and I was no longer totally paranoid that I wouldn’t be able to make it through my audition in one piece.

The next morning, we had breakfast and prepared to send me off to my audition. Kristi is a singer, so she knows there are certain weirdnesses we have about our routine. What we eat, when we shower and the like. I made my way on the U-bahn to my audition, getting there about the time I was supposed to, finding my way into the Bühneneingang, the pianist (who immediately shipped me into the Garderobe so I could warm up and change). This took forever. And were I not careful, I would have been completely freaked out by the sounds of a very youthful coloratura warming up in the next room. Singing every piece of repertoire I own. Every. Single. One. But when I saw her in the hallway and realized that she was auditioning for the studio program, I couldn’t help but feel a little warmth in my heart for her. It’s so hard to start out in this business, and even harder to stand among other singers. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The pianist rehearses with us for a little. She doesn’t know Ann Trulove, but I doubt this will matter. We get to the stage, the dramatic soprano sings through one excerpt from Onegin, and then the stage crew ships us into a rehearsal room way up on the higher floor. All of us. And the Intendant, who is terribly friendly, wants to know if it’s okay if we all just sit together. All of us. In the same room. For the duration of the audition. I think most singers would rather pull out their own eyelashes one by one than do this. There’s no time to calm yourself. There’s no opportunity to have your own private freak-out. There’s only sitting and waiting while someone else sings. But of course, no one wants to be difficult, so we all just nod and say sure it’s no problem. The Russian bass goes first – what a voice on that one! He gets the lecture about how he’s too young to be singing such old men, and he’s very respectful, he simply says this is what he’s getting hired to do. Then the little girl, who sings Cunegonde and then Blonde, saying that she does sing the Queen but will sing Blonde instead, so that we are not compared to one another. The Hungarian dramatic soprano behind me says, under her breath, “there’s no comparison, trust me.” She’s a piece of work, very sassy. So then the young one gets offered a spot in the studio program and leaves, all a-twitter. The dramatic soprano gets up and sings Butterfly. The Intendant asks her to sing Elisabetta (Don Carlo?) as well, and she asks if we can trade out so she can rest for a moment. I say sure, and he asks to hear my Queen. At this point, I’ve been sitting for nearly 40 minutes, haven’t sung a note in more than an hour, and I’m just trusting that I feel good.

I’ll tell you now – I totally killed. The Queen was fierce. He asked for Musetta, who was at her best and most seductive, and then he asked for Cunegonde, just because he likes the piece. And I pulled out every Blanche DuBois I had in me for that piece. When it was all said and done, he said he was so happy to hear me and was I working on Konstanze and which Donizetti do I sing and oh by the way, I do really enjoy singing Zerbinetta, at which his face totally lit up and he said he would have to look and see what he could put together because he would really like to have me there. Omigosh. It’s nearly 3 now, two hours after the audition started, three hours after I got to the opera house, Kristi picks me up and insists I tell her every single detail over lunch. I absolutely inhale lunch at this little Bio-café (bulgar and mushroom vegetable sauce, yum!) and then we spend the afternoon celebrating with tea and Kuchen. Yum.