First premiere of the new season

Last night was the premiere of La Boheme at the Landestheater, kicking off the 2007/2008 season. The house was packed for the performance, the singers were in good form, and the premiere party following the opera lasted until the wee hours of the morning. Tonight there is a play premiering in the Reithalle, our 100-seat theater, and another play premieres in the big theater Wednesday evening. Then on Saturday is the Frau Luna premeire, the first operetta of the season. Needless to say, most people at last night's premiere party deserved a glass or two of champagne after all that rehearsing!

I've been able to actually get quite a bit accomplished in the last week between dress rehearsals and staging rehearsals. My red lounge chair came and looks just as wonderful in my living room as I hoped it would.



I also bought a nice flower print to decorate the entryway to my apartment. I think it really cheers up the space, don't you?

After the chair arrived and my painting had been hung in the foyer, I was able to put a "done" stamp on my little apartment, leaving me even more time to play Domestic Diva. I was able to finish up this purse I started knitting after I left Seattle.


I've also been playing more in the kitchen recently and baked some very tasty banana walnut bread using the fresh walnuts I dried and toasted myself a couple weeks ago. The women in the choir really liked it and told me that banana bread is not common in Germany. I also had my friend Verena over for a home-made pancake breakfast yesterday (it was her first time eating American pancakes--how fun!) and today I made my Grandma's famous raisin walnut cookies for a party I'm going to tonight. I think my oven is just terrific and feel kind of sorry for the waistlines of all of my friends and colleagues who will undoubtedly be sampling my baked goods fairly often. :)

I know I've been writing a lot lately about being a "Domestic Diva" and that sometimes I spend more time discussing baking and decorating than life at the theater. Some of you may wonder if I'm actually getting any "real" work done at all! Well, since I've been here for almost a year and most things at the theater to me are familiar and part of my routine, I don't always have new and exciting things to share. But the fact that I'm happily settled into an apartment and am continuing to bake and knit is a sign that things at the theater are going well and I'm not too stressed out. And isn't that what most people look for in a job? :)

One Year Later...

One year ago today I left Seattle with the hope of finding work as an opera singer in Germany. My original plan was to sing for a handful of agents, to wow them with my well-prepared arias, and to be invited to sing for various theaters around the country, which would (naturally) result in securing a solo contract to begin in September 2007. Well, that's what I kept telling myself, anyway. In reality, one year ago I didn't know what I was getting myself into, my knees were like jello and when I got on the plane for Germany I felt like a scared little kitten about to be thrown into a lake!

Isn't it funny how things turn out? I think Willie Nelson said that if his life had turned out the way he'd planned, he never would have had the chance to do half of the amazing things he has done in his life. That is definitely true with my journey to Germany a year ago. If my original intentions had indeed become a reality, I never would have received this great job in cute little Coburg last December. I wouldn't have dozens of performances and a handful of productions already under my belt at the start of this season. And I wouldn't already feel like a real part of a community like I do here.

I think one of the reasons I can look back a year later and be grateful for a job in an opera chorus as opposed to my original intent of securing a solo contract is because I've had time to come down off my crazy graduate school high. The pace of my life has finally returned to normal. I only have to work one job in Coburg and that job rarely feels like work. I have the chance to look around and observe the lifestyle of singers both in the chorus and as soloists and learn about the ins and outs of a theater. Most importantly, I am grateful I ended up in a town where after about nine months, I've been woven into the crazy little community of the Coburg Landestheater. I guess looking back a year later, I guess the scared little kitten landed on her feet after all.

Our Open House "Grillfest"

Just a short note before I start the real post. The pictures in all of my posts are pretty small and not very detailed, but if you want to see a larger version, just click on the photo and you'll get a full-sized version on your screen. :)

On Sunday evening the Landestheater hosted its annual open house. This year's theme was a "Grillfest," meaning beer and bratwurst stands were placed outside the main entrance to the theater and guests could snack while they mingled with the theater employees and listened to some live performances.















In this white tent there were tables and benches set up so people could escape the late summer sun, which brought out a very good crowd. The live entertainment outside included a tango group and other vocalists singing musical theater and operetta hits for a very enthusiastic audience.















The real purpose of the open house is to advertise the events of the upcoming season. The second premiere of the season, Frau Luna, is about a group of people from Berlin who fly to the moon in a hot-air balloon. So, the theater arranged a hot-air balloon and flew it around the city with a large Frau Luna banner. There were also helium balloons for the kids and lots of flyers and posters available to the public of all our upcoming premieres.















Inside the theater there were several "preview" performances excerpted from some of the upcoming shows. The new employees of the theater were also introduced and interviewed and each gave a short solo performance. And the intendant also answered questions from the audience, which was definitely an interesting experience.

This is the ceiling of our theater. Pretty, huh?















This is the Spiegelsaal (mirror room) where you can enjoy drinks and mingling during the intermission of our performances. And if you think the inside is gorgeous, you should see the view from the windows!

Domestic Diva in Germany

I love making things from scratch. Whether it's designing and constructing my own custom gingerbread house or spinning my own yarn and then knitting a purse, it's always a very satisfying feeling for me to make something from "nothing." I sometimes even like to call myself a Domestic Diva. However, living in Germany has made me re-examine my diva status with regard to the wonderful world of baked goods.

Baking in Germany has intimidated me for a few reasons. I have to admit the main reason is familiarizing myself with German baking ingredients. Remember those days as a teen when you experimented in the kitchen and ruined every other baking project because you didn't read the recipe right or mixed up the ingredients or amounts? I was so glad to leave those experiences behind (for the most part) and now feel pretty confident that I can even improvise when needed to avoid any baking disasters.

Here in Germany you won't find baking soda, baking powder, brown sugar, shortening or vanilla. I still haven't figured out how leavening works here, but there are little packets available called Vanillazucker (vanilla sugar) that apparently work kind of like American vanilla extract. I have also heard from a German friend of mine living in Seattle that flour and sugar are milled differently in Germany, making the texture and weight of baked goods different. If the ingredient difference wasn't bad enough, the metric measuring system, particularly the use of weighing ingredients for baking, really made me reconsider my diva status in the kitchen.

But after living in Germany for almost a year now, I recently decided that I need to come to grips with my fear of baking. I already cook really fun meals for myself every evening (as opposed to during graduate school when I used to eat cereal for dinner a few nights every week), and my friend Garrie says I've switched my mentality from "eating to live" to "living to eat." So to slowly ease myself into the world of German baking, I decided to try baking chocolate chip cookies in my German kitchen using some of my American baking ingredients I smuggled in from Seattle last month and some German ingredients.















The cookies aren't poisonous, but they definitely don't taste like my normally delicious chocolate chip cookies, either. The flour and sugar in Germany are indeed different, and I think in my next recipe I need to use Urzucker (raw cane sugar) for brown sugar and then normal white sugar. In this recipe I used only the raw cane sugar because from the texture, color, smell and consistency, it looked like a nice blend of white and brown sugars; however, the raw taste of sugar kind of overwhelms the normal cookie flavor.

Since that endeavor wasn't a total disaster, I now have my eye set on another cookie recipe or maybe a bread recipe using walnuts. Yesterday a choir colleague of mine gave me a shoebox full of walnuts that had been gathered that afternoon. Before moving to Germany I had never seen a walnut tree dramatically drop its fruit onto the ground, which is actually quite shocking if one falls on your head! The nuts come in green shells, which normally break with a cracking noise when they fall from the tree (onto the ground, that is. If they fall on my head it sounds more like a thud). Apparently after you gather them, you're supposed to lay them out on a windowsill and let them dry before you try eating them. I decided to lay them out on a wire baking rack and let them sit in the afternoon sun to help the drying process along. Anyway, I'll let you know how my second recipe turns out!

Apartment Pictures

On Friday morning I finished the last of my painting and now my little apartment is almost totally finished! I thought sharing a few pictures might be fun, so let's take a tour, shall we?

This is the front hallway as you come in. I painted the walls a pale pink, which I think coordinates nicely with my "wall o bridesmaid" photos. It just so happens that my four bridesmaids dresses are either pink or red--go figure!















Taking a left from the hallway brings you to my bedroom. My fatboy beanbag chair now lives in here next to my closet. The closet will eventually even have doors, once I take the broken ones I got back to Ikea... It's a long story, don't ask. This room was painted a nice creamy mocha color to help me relax and unwind at the end of a long day.



















One of my Grandma's quilts and a Rosie the Riveter poster really brings a bit of Americana to my German apartment.















At the end of the hallway is my living and dining area. That is my little dining nook in the corner to the right.















And this is my living room. Hey look, I'm sitting at that desk right now!!















Eventually this red lounge chair will be sitting on that fun beige shag rug, thus completing my decorating efforts in the apartment. Not too shabby, eh?

By the Numbers

Over the summer I wondered how many performances I actually did during the 2006/2007 season. After going back over my calendar from when I started at the theater, this is what I came up with:

Trouble in Tahiti (3)
Der Bettelstudent (4)
Martha (4)
Falstaff (9)
Hello Dolly (17)
Jesus Christ Superstar (22)

Total Performances for 2006/2007: 59

Wow! I guess time really does fly by, because it sure didn't seem like I did that many performances last season! This year's performance numbers should be interesting because I will be at the theater for the whole season and won't be taking a large amount of time off like I did for last year's Young Artist Program in Tacoma. There is also a chance that I will be performing in a show as a soloist that the chorus is not involved with.

If some of you are wondering what my performance schedule was like before I got this job (i.e. when I was still in school), I averaged less than 10 performances per year, including voice division recitals and/or masterclasses where I would only sing one song. Quite a switch, huh?

Since the theme of this entry is numbers, I also calculated that I sang for 13 different auditions last season, including three in Coburg. Honestly, I hope that's the busiest audition season I ever have, because that really seems like a lot of audition stress! I also flew between Germany and the United States 7 times (3 1/2 round-trip flights) in the last year, and lived in five different apartments (not counting my hotels and hostels for auditions and fun traveling). Whew, what a busy year!!!

Now here's a little quiz in the spirit of my numbers-themed entry for my faithful blog readers. How many different cities have I visited in Europe in the past year? To help you along, my definition of visit entails actually looking around, not just switching trains or planes there. :) You can leave your guess as a comment and I'll announce the closest guess AND a list of all the places I've visited in my next entry. Happy counting!

Do you really need your MTV??

As most of you know, I moved into a new apartment at the beginning of July. Now that I've been back in Coburg for two weeks, I'm pretty much settled in and unpacked. After I get the rest of my walls painted on Friday I'll send some photos along of my little German home. I'm hoping it will tempt some of you faithful readers enough to come visit me! :)

Anyway, the whole experience of renting an apartment in a foreign country has been very interesting so far and I thought I was all through with moving details...until I checked my mail today. Inside a sweet green envelope was a letter from the German government saying that they noticed I had recently moved apartments and wanted me to re-register all of my radios and televisions.

Huh?

Apparently in Germany you have to pay taxes on any radio or television that you have in your home. The price list is shockingly high: 5 Euros/month for each radio and 17 Euros/month for each television!! No joke. If you suppose the average household has 2 radios and 2 televisions, that's a whopping 528 Euros ($734 American) each year! Luckily I don't have to pay these taxes because I don't have a TV or radio (thank heaven for my laptop!) But when you think about it, that's quite a financial investment to make for top-40 hits on the radio and reality television!

In theater news, we are getting closer to our first two premieres and are now completing the staging process and moving onto the main stage for rehearsals. The rehearsals definitely have a different tone when you have a clear view into the audience where (hopefully) a houseful of people will be watching each evening. The level of excitement is also rising as we go in for final costume and wig fittings and see the completed sets. Although it seemed we were off to a fairly slow start the first week, I realized today that within a month we will have two shows in performances and at least two more on deck--whew, things are really rolling along!

Finally, to all of my lucky visitors this fall, the theater is adding extra performances of Jesus Christ Superstar in November! That means in addition to my cozy apartment and exceptional baking skills, you will also be able to enjoy a performance of JSC in English! :)

Dancer vs. Set Piece

The first two music theater premieres this season are Frau Luna and La Boheme. The pieces are different in many ways, and the role of the chorus in each is definitely no exception. The story of Frau Luna takes place first in Berlin and then on the Moon and the chorus is active in both locations. The chorus is divided up in the Berlin scenes, acting as moving scenery to enhance the real action taking place onstage by the soloists. However there are also several choral pieces, particularly when the action moves to the moon, in which the chorus sings long song and dance sequences. These numbers really spotlight the chorus as a whole and the soloists are more in the background.

La Boheme, on the other hand, takes place in four different scenes over four acts and the chorus is only in the second act. In this particular production the chorus acts exclusively as a moving set piece, setting the atmosphere for a lively bar scene. The chorus is even mostly hidden behind a beaded curtain for the duration of the 25-minute act, spending that time standing and mingling with one another.

Staging rehearsals for the chorus can last between 2 and 3 hours each. When we are rehearsing a scene in which the chorus is basically a piece of scenery, the time can really drag along. The director often places each chorus member one at time. In the case of the La Boheme staging, it took over an hour to place each person in their spot for the beginning of the second act, which in real time plays out to about 20 seconds. But thankfully the rehearsals for Frau Luna involve a lot of concentration and participation, making the time fly by. Yesterday and today the women's chorus learned a dance number involving brooms and by tonight's rehearsal the piece looked polished and performance-ready. This kind of progress and visible accomplishment is really exciting and makes dealing with the slower, scenery rehearsals a lot easier.

First day back

Today we kicked off the 2007/2008 season at the Landestheater. The day was a mixture of greeting returning colleagues, meeting new ensemble members, and reviewing the material we learned last spring before the break. I have to say it is nice to be a returning singer and not the new girl anymore. I felt a sense of security and belonging when I walked into the theater and everything and (most) everyone was familiar. My colleagues are pretty much the same as when we parted ways seven weeks ago. I think we all look quite relaxed, with some sporting new haircuts and others deep tans. Apparently Italy, Spain and Greece were hot vacation spots for a lot of people.

I found it interesting that every person I spoke with took a real vacation. No-one just sat around at home for seven weeks and tended to their garden. Most were way busier than I was and did really wild tours that lasted up until late last night! The interesting thing to me is that no-one was boastful about where they went and what they saw. It isn't bragging here that people take extended vacations and treat themselves to trips to new and exotic places. In the United States, I think we have been hard-wired to believe that exotic vacations are only for the rich and taking lots of time off is only for the lazy. That is definitely not the case here in Germany, thank goodness!

My own summer break was very fun, although I didn't get much of a tan. :) I stayed with Joe in Kirkland and in addition to exploring the Eastide of Lake Washington and playing around a lot in Seattle we took great weekend trips to Olympia, Salem and San Juan Island. I also went with my parents to visit my Grandpa and Aunt in Spokane. It was great to visit with so many friends and family and see so much of the Northwest. I am always in awe of how beautiful Washington is when I return after being away for an extended time. There is so much beauty in this area and I already miss the trees, mountains and water (and the people, too!) But now I'm back here in Coburg to work and that will be nice, too. I just hope I get to have a lot of visitors this season (hint hint!!). I can host people in my lovely new apartment and get reduced tickets to the theater... :)

FREE PATTERN: Curly Purly Flower

This Curly Purly Flower Pattern is a great way to use up small amounts of leftover yarn. This pattern is suitable for beginner knitters who would like to practice casting on, stockinette stitch, and decreasing stitches (purl 2 together). It is also a quick knit and can be made from start to finish in about an hour.

MATERIALS:

-One 16"2.5mm circular knitting needle
-Waste dk/fingering/sock yarn (about 15 grams)

-Tapestry needle

*PATTERN:

Cast on 105 stitches (I use the knit on method, not long tail).
Row 1: knit
Row 2: *purl 2 together, knit 5*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Row 3: knit
Row 4: *purl 2 together, knit 4*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Row 5: knit
Row 6: *purl 2 together, knit 3*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Row 7: knit
Row 8: *purl 2 together, knit 2*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Row 9: knit
Row 10: *purl 2 together, knit 1*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Row 11: knit
Row 12: *purl 2 together*, repeat between stars to end of row.
Repeat rows 11 and 12 until you have eight stitches left on the needle.
Bind off on a knit row.

FINISHING:

As you have been knitting, you probably noticed that your project has a tendency to curl around on itself. After binding off, you will notice that the flower practically forms itself, with the knit side facing out and the purl side peeking out at the top of the petals. Form the flower into the shape you desire and then using your tapestry needle, weave in any ends and secure the position of your petals.

IDEAS:

One way to use the Curly Purly Flower is to secure it to a hairband. I like how festive it looks when my hair is just pulled back in a simple bun.

Another way to show off your Curly Purly Flower is by decorating another piece of knitting with it. For this basketcase purse, I knit an i-cord with a couple leaves and sewed them and the flower onto the purse.

MODIFICATIONS:

You can easily modify this pattern for your own needs. For example, if you use a heavier yarn (like worsted-weight) the flower will be larger and make a bolder statement.

Also, instead of binding off the last stitches of the flower, you could attach a strand of green yarn and knit 2 together until you had four stitches and then proceed to knit your i-cord directly onto the flower. After your i-cord is the desired length, you could string a piece of floral wire into the i-cord and then put your new flower into a vase. And no watering would be necessary!

If you make a Curly Purly Flower please send me a picture by commenting to this blog post!

* Please enjoy this pattern, but don't sell it or the flowers that result from it. Thanks! :)