Brian Dickie

Dress rehearsal day - Carmen

Dress rehearsal days tend to be pretty quiet - kind of calm before the storm syndrome.  And today has been pretty well just that.  But I had an early start after a late night as it happened - breakfast with a dear friend from London, Julia Maynard, who runs a first class stable of singers at the excellent London firm Intermusica.  Our Sesto, Renata Pokupic, is managed by her.  And she is off this afternoon to New York where another of her young people, Iain Paterson, COT's Don Giovanni of last year. is making his Metropolitan Opera debut on Saturday.  So it has not been much more than a glimpse of Julia though we did stay up somewhat late after last night's performance.

Otherwise a feature of the day has been a master class by Julie Gunn, concentrating on one of my "hobby horses", the study of the song repertoire which I consider to be of great importance in the development of opera singers.  Here she is left with Ashleigh Semkiw who is brave enough to tackle Richard Strauss' Amor from the Brentano Lieder.

And finally Andrew Patner's La Tragedie de Carmen lecture was at lunchtime.  And he had a good turn out of intrepid opera lovers braving the truly awful weather today.

UK hospitality

Our good friend the UK Consul General in Chicago gave a super party yesterday. Owen Wingrave and Tito  were the operas to celebrate.  And here you see a nice group in this spectacular apartment high up overlooking Lake Michigan. Here you can see Matt Bohler (part of him) Robin Leggate, Ken Cazan, Rebecca Caine, Brian Anderson, Jane Glover and Crystal Culvey, our company manager.  I am grateful to Tony Stewart for the photograph.

This afternoon I will be down at Wingrave rehearsals eventually before the performance preamble which also includes an audition and the first of our Opera Underground performances.  This means an excursion to The Gage at 6.30.  All in a day's very pleasurable work.

Owen Pix

It is late - but here is Steuart Bedford this afternoon working intensely, as he always does, with this wonderful Owen Wingrave cast.  There is more to come but that's it for now!

Back loaded day

I have had a comparatively quiet morning with some office chores but generally calm.  This afternoon things will hot up a bit. Steuart Bedford is back from San Diego where he has been conducting Peter Grimes and he will now be devoting all his time to Owen Wingrave.  I will be there for some of this afternoon as they do a final review of Act 1.  Then there is a short trip to a cigar club (I do not smoke I hasten to say) where one of our Board members holds court regularly, and most effectively drums up support for COT.  And we then have the Pre Dress of Carmen at 5.30. 

From there I will be off to the British Consul General's place for a party he has so generously arranged to celebrate the visits to Chicago and COT by a number of British artists - these of course are Jane Glover, Steuart Bedford, Robin Leggate and Rebecca Caine.  Most of the casts of Tito and Wingrave will be there as well of course.

Then back to Carmen before zooming north a little to another Board dinner, this time for the Owen Wingrave cast.  I will probably post some pictures of Wingrave later this evening.  But there is not a lot of time to spare today - I will do what I can!  Reading this through I already feel breathless.........

A visit to Owen Wingrave

With all this Carmen stuff going on I have rather neglected the Owen Wingrave rehearsals.  But I managed to spend an hour with them this morning.  And here they all are, rehearsing a dinner scene with Ken Cazan (in blue on this side of the table) in charge.  I will not confuse you by attempting to identify the rest.  It will all become clear as the production unfolds during the next two weeks.  But they are a happy bunch.  What more can one ask for?

And this afternoon and evening was Carmen on stage with orchestra for the first time.  There are two more of those tomorrow.  And the Dress rehearsal is on Thursday - then we should be all set.  Between the rehearsals we had a finance committee meeting  via telephone conference call.  This is never a satisfactory way to conduct business....it's sometimes good to see one of the participants showing emotion - like holding his head in his hands.  And that does not register by audio alone......

More fun tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Piano Dress photos

There is a small collection of pictures from the Piano Dress yesterday up on my photo site.  The lighting was  beautiful in the theater - but a pain in the neck to photograph!  Anyway with a bit of work they are now more or less respectable.

After a late night at a delightful dinner with the Carmen team as guests of one of our youthful board members, I was out of the house again by 5.45 am to make my way down to the WGN studios in the Tribune Tower.  I had a whole half hour in conversation with the delightful Rick Kogan to bang on about the virtues of COT.  I was home again by 7.15......

Today is Tito 3 at 3pm. 

There is too much to get done!

We were here today with the piano dress rehearsal of Carmen.  And then a series of social events which  mean that I get nothing done here.  I will make up for it somehow tomorrow so please be patient.

Meanwhile there a small handful of pictures from this afternoon.....they are on my picture site.  And just one here.  It has been a long day with little time for getting this done.  And tomorrow morning I am at the WGN radio studio at 6.15 for a live appearance on Rick Kogan's show.  So you will forgive me for signing off now.  It is after midnight!!

I will be back up to speed tomorrow....maybe!

Sitzprobe this evening

The little orchestra that Marius Constant contrived for the Peter Brook adaptation of Carmen which opens next week is a miracle of compactness.  We heard them for this first time this evening in the theater and a remarkably effective arrangement it is indeed.  And Alexander Platt welds his little band into an instrument of many colors.

Tomorrow we get to the piano dress stage - really the first time to see all the physical elements in place.  And it will be a rich source for pictures.  You should find them here and on my photo site before the end of the weekend.

I had a somewhat odd day having risen early in Washington to get a 7.20 flight from Reagan Airport; a blue line train in to Chicago after a punctual arrival; a casting meeting for 2010 young artist assignments; and then a quick dash up to Evanston with Roger Weitz to have a short session at the School of Communication of Northwestern which comprises an odd assortment of different disciplines, including theater.  It has been really hot today and most of the students decided to go to the beach instead of coming to class.  So we had a small turn out.  But those who were there were lively and interested.

And when the warm weather comes everyone turns up in the street in the city.  Below you see the crowd in Millennium Park around 6.20 this evening as I arrived at the theater for the evening rehearsal.

Lovely evening with the German delegation

The German Ambassador in Washington, Klaus Scharioth and his wife, were wonderful hosts this evening for the Bertelsmann Foundation's evening here in Washington.  Also presided over with her usual grace by Liz Mohn, it was an altogether delightful party.  And I had the pleasure of sitting between our hostess Mrs Scharioth, and the remarkable Diana Aviv, President and CEO of Independent Sector, an immensely influential coalition of corporations, foundations, and private voluntary organizations that works to strengthen America's nonprofit organizations.

The consensus however was that the entertainment provided by the singers, all finalists in recent Neue Stimmen competitions, was the real highlight.  Bertlelsmann's Katrin Mann had put together a terrific program which she introduced fluently.  The singers were also incidentally COT people, one present and two past.  The present one was our Annio, Paula Murrihy, and the past ones were Rinat Moriah who sang Hero in Beatrice and Benedict in 2007, and Jonathan Beyer, a former young artist and now a member of the Pittsburgh company.  You see them here after the show - and they were superbly accompanied by the Georgian pianist Nino Sanikidze, Head Coach of the Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program at the LA Opera.

I have an early start back to Chicago tomorrow.  And a full day including another excursion to Northwestern.  It seems to be higher education week for me.

Home thoughts from the Nation's Capital

I am in D.C. But always in touch of course.  There was a particularly nice communication from a Tito enthusiast this afternoon. I am sure he would not mind my sharing it with you:

I loved the show.

In particular:

girl on girl action --- always a crowd pleaser
dork-y eye wear -- super fashionable
latin -- always good to brush up
girls twirling -- made my heart go pitter-pat
boy girls / girl boys -- sex is over-rated, gender too
chorus upstairs -- better than my noisy neighbors

So there is something for everybody .  Except perhaps for the super serious types.  But who knows? -  maybe even they secretly enjoy it!