A Roman Holiday...

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I will be spending my summer in buon Italia this year studying opera and the Italian language with the wonderful staff of Oberlin Conservatory!!! 

At an extremely bleak and dreary point during the polar vortex earlier this year, I did something daring. I found, applied, and auditioned for an Italian opera training program all online. This required sending in references, resumés, video taping myself screeching out some Italian opera repertoire, and writing essays on why I thought I would be a good fit for the program. After pulling all these loose ends together, I sent everything in, expecting to hear back in about a month, as I had been told. To my excitement, I didn’t hear back a month later, but I got an email of acceptance only three days later! So, to make a long story short, I will be joining the ranks of Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck and packing up my things for a Roman Holiday this Summer! I couldn’t be more excited and more nervous all at the same time. I will be living in an apartment in Arezzo on my own for the good part of two months, and I will be commuting to various places in Tuscany for lessons, classes, and coaching sessions, and then performing at Arezzo's Communal Palace (the location of the opera scene from the movie La Vie e Bella) at the beginning of July. I would covet your prayers for safety and for an alert, re-energized mind so that I can make the most of this amazing opportunity. 

To all two or so of you who faithfully keep up with this blog, I will do my best to write updates as often as I can while I am in Italy! Please stay in touch!

A Little Girl Who Loved Clowns...

Well, you’ve heard about my childhood opera phase, and how I’ve been a wannabe prima donna for quite a long time now. For nearly twenty years, to be exact. What you don’t know though, but to which I briefly alluded in my last post, is that before my opera phase, I went through a clown phase. That’s right, folks. I wanted to be a clown. Not just for Halloween, not just for a costume party, not even just for fun, but professionally. I guess the positive thing I can take away from this embarrassing fact is that I’ve always had professional ambition. I didn’t just want to be any old clown, I wanted to be in the big leagues of clowning like Bozo or Ronald McDonald. I had high hopes.

Just like my opera craze, I’m not exactly sure how this obsession started. I guess it’s just another mystery to add to the books I’ll eventually write about my weird life. At any rate, I was dead set on becoming a professional clown from the age of three until I was almost five. I wore a clown suit, rainbow wig, and clown nose every day. Just imagine it. A clown nose. Every day for almost two years. All of that mouth breathing. No wonder I had to have braces TWICE as a teenager. Anyway, I drove my parents crazy with my antics. I listened to circus music every day, rehearsed routines, watched circus videos, the works. And what’s most embarrassing is that I wouldn’t go anywhere without my full clown attire. One day (and my dad just loves telling this story), my dad took me to the grocery store, and of course, I was dressed in my clown suit and full regalia. Well, while we were shopping, a lady stopped us, took a look at me and said, “Oh, how adorable! Do you want to be a clown for Halloween, Sweetie?” And my dad, a mere shell of a man having been worn down by continual circus music, replied without missing a beat, “For Halloween?! Lady, she wants to be one PROFESSIONALLY.” And walked away, his little clown in tow. 

You may be wondering how this phase ever came to an end, and I can assure you it most definitely did. Although you may still find me rehearsing death scenes in my spare time, you will not find me in a rainbow wig and clown nose, folding balloons into little farm animals (thank goodness). What really ended the phase is quite hilarious and speaks volumes of the value I put on my individuality. 

It was Halloween, and I was almost five years old. Given my fondness for all things clown, my parents and grandparents decided it would be a great idea for all five of us to go trick-or-treating dressed as clowns. And my family went all out. I was their only child/grandchild, and I was still in those twilight years when every holiday felt like a special revelation. Have you ever just stopped and thought about how magical holidays were when you were a child? I’m not just talking about Christmas, but every holiday, every birthday, oh, and summer! Summer used to be full of adventure and discovery! The older we get, the more ordinary everything becomes. I wish I could recapture that magic. But anyway, back to my story. It was Halloween, and my entire family was dressed to the nines in clown attire. I’ve seen the pictures, and they really went all out with this idea. My dad even dressed up, and as I’ve already said, that’s a huge deal. But do you think they could get me to wear a clown costume that day? No. I refused. They had stolen my thunder, and I was not happy. I went trick or treating with a frown on my face and a rejected rainbow wig in my hand, and after that day, the clown phase virtually disappeared. No more clown suit, no more rainbow afro, no more clown nose and mouth breathing. I had retired and entered civilian life once more. My parents finally slept easy at night knowing that when they woke up, the first sound to grace their ears would no longer be the Ringling Brothers.

Now, I guess the clown thing didn’t completely disappear, because once I became an opera lover, the first opera to gain my young appreciation was I Pagliacci. The Clowns. So you see, everything comes full circle. Clowns will probably haunt me for the rest of my life, but not in the way that they haunt most people. Clowns are a skeleton in my closet, but not a boogeyman under my bed. But I guess I’m okay with that. So, now you know probably one of the weirdest things about me. I’ve almost completely resigned myself to the fact that I will never live this phase of my life down. I say almost because there’s still a small part of me that really just wants to nonchalantly pretend it never happened. But it’s really hard to just nonchalantly pretend that you’re not dressed as a clown in more than half of your childhood pictures. Anyway, not only am I telling you this because it’s funny, but also because it robs my parents of the joy of using this information against me in a blackmail situation. I’m going public with this of my own accord while I still have the chance. I was a childhood clown. There, I said it. Now you know.

Here's where it all began...

This was my opera birthday party cake. It's Canio, the sad, homicidal clown of Leoncavallo's famous opera, I Pagliacci. 

Stay tuned for the next post, if you please! 

A Little Girl Who Loved Opera...

So, I’m a little strange. Not many people know from an early age what they want to be when they grow up, much less end up accomplishing it. But I guess I’m an exception. From the grand old age of five, I had decided I was going to be an opera singer. 

I remember, with a twinge of embarrassment, little five year old me telling my mom I wanted my 6th birthday party to be opera themed and to have all my friends come dressed as their favorite opera singers (I assumed that every six year old had one, apparently). Well, I had that birthday party, and darned if I didn’t somehow get all those poor little girls to dress up as characters they knew absolutely nothing about while I insisted on changing my own costume twice throughout the course of the day because I couldn’t decide on just one opera character to be for the day. My mom, always a good sport, put on a fancy black dress and feather boa to become the Lustige Witwe, and my dad (who is notorious in our family for dodging all costumed events after having a scarring Christmas Tree costume incident in the late ‘80s) even donned a clown nose to be Pagliacci. I’ll never forget that birthday party, not only because my family and friends will never LET me forget it, but also because it was one of the most fun parties I can remember. I know that just speaks volumes of my popularity in college ,but oh well... the secret is out. I wasn’t a partier. Hard to believe, I know. And you were already imagining me as the wild and exotic type. So sorry to disappoint.

The more I recall my childhood memories, the more I realize just how strange I was... Am.... Whatever. I mean, what six year old do you know that tears up listening to Signore, Ascolta? What six year old do you know who actually even knows what Signore, Ascolta is, for that matter? And what six year old do you know that would rather watch an opera than the Disney channel? Well, to be honest, I wasn’t even allowed to watch the Disney channel... maybe that added to the weirdness. Anyway, I guess I was a morose little kid, but who could blame me when I spent all day rehearsing death scenes. I am, and always have been, a deep thinker (to a fault more often than not), and opera just seemed to speak to me as nothing else could. Opera is deep, intricate, and heartfelt. Opera makes beautiful art out of life’s darkest situations, and somehow, a little melancholy girl who really hadn’t experienced any of those dark situations herself but sensed and felt them deeply, grasped on to it and was enthralled. 

Now, I could go on and on with stories from my less than typical childhood, I could even go into the fact that for a couple years before my opera obsession, I was convinced I was going to be a professional clown (and dressed accordingly), but I think I’ll save the other stories for another entry. The bottom line is I was not your average kid. I was always dramatic, always in costume, in short, I was a ham. And what better place for a ham to end up than on stage... Now all I can think of is that scene from “To Kill a Mockingbird” when the little girl is dressed up in a ham costume. I never understood how they decided on a ham costume of all things or why ham was really pertinent to the storyline. If somebody reads this and has an answer feel free to enlighten me. Ok, sorry, rabbit trail. Bottom line, I was always a ham and I’m still a ham because almost 20 years later, I ended up an opera singer after all. 

God’s plan for my life took me on some pretty crazy twists and turns before I got to this point. For a while I was a competitive dancer, and after that I thought about studying law or politics, for a while I didn’t even really want to go to college, and for a while I wanted to change my major to Jewish Studies until my college voice teacher locked me in her office and talked some sense into me. I was always meant to be an opera singer, so she told me,  and I can clearly see that now. But in the midst of those late teen/early adulthood years, everything seemed misty and foggy, like one of those days when you can barely see ten feet in front of you to drive. Life seems to pull you in a million different directions and offer you a million different possibilities, so its easy to lose sight of what God has been leading you toward all along.Well, my sophomore year of college I got serious about music. I had finally made the conscious decision that this was what I wanted to do and what I was meant to be and I had to be committed to it. Everyone who has studied music in college knows that it’s way too hard and time consuming to be anything but 150% in. Anyway, now I’m a senior  getting ready to move on to grad school in the next year. Though my professional operatic endeavors have only earned me a grand total of $194 so far, I’m pretty darn proud of that $194. I’m excited about what the future holds, and if my passion for singing opera has anything to do with how well I’ll do in it, I think I might do pretty well. 

I hope this blog which relates my various musical adventures will help explain why I am the way I am through these stories from my hilariously dysfunctional childhood. I hope it will also prove entertaining (and maybe enlightening?)  for you all.  Stay tuned for the next entry!

                                        (I'm the one in the middle with the rose in my hair)