Modern Minnesaengers?

Yesterday we packed up shop and headed south about an hour to Erlangen for our last performance of Frau Luna. The theater in Erlangen reminds me of a dollhouse because everything is so small. But good things come in small packages: check out how beautiful the inside of the theater is!
























Frau Luna is a silly operetta in which a man from Berlin dreams of going to the moon in a hot air balloon. In the scenes in Berlin I wear this outfit, which is quite snappy, if I do say so myself.























As the story progresses, the man ends up falling asleep and dreaming of actually getting to the moon with a few of his buddies. When he arrives, he finds the moon sparkling clean, thanks to the moon cleaning ladies, as beautifully performed by the women in the choir in these fetching uniforms:

Trust me, they look even more ridiculous in person, especially when there are a dozen of us all together onstage.

Moon denizens speak a little different than those from Berlin; namely we purse our lips out and look like blowfishes sucking for air. Although it's not a very attractive look, it really can't be any worse than the costumes or fake metal wigs.
















And here is are arsenal all lined up backstage and waiting to go. Pretty high quality, huh?

























The cutest thing that happens on the moon is a performance by the moon calves, who live on the milky way. They use these little plungers and are dressed as cows with pink udder caps and do a dance that really steals the show. The people at the theater learned quickly that since there is no ballet this season, they had to be replaced with something equally cute, and these girls are absolutely adorable.


















I think we performed Frau Luna around 20 times and I am not at all sad to see this production come to an end. In my last post I wrote about disinterested directors and lackluster performances, and that seems to describe Frau Luna in a nutshell. So we say goodbye to the silly operetta and hello to Faust! And another silly operetta, premiering in April...

The Real Puppetmaster

When I was in college I didn't have a lot of experience working with a variety of directors. Usually the opera director at the school was the same person for every production and it became fairly obvious after a time who the director's "favorites" were after cast lists were posted semester after semester. I was never one of those favorites, so I never really had a chance to work closely with directors, or to realize what a profound influence they have on an entire production.

Since coming to Coburg I have worked with six different directors and another handful of choreographers, and am now starting to realize that the director is really the puppetmaster of this whole business of doing shows, for better or for worse. Although there are musical directors, set designers, costume designers, light designers, choreographers and many others who are all responsible for a part of the production, the director is responsible for acting as the glue that puts it all together, with the singers, to achieve a staged of version of their original concept.

Right now we are in beginning stage rehearsals for Faust and the director has a long-standing reputation at the theater as being very precise, organized, and direct. And the results of this are very provocative, intriguing operas that people talk about at the theater for years afterwards. I experienced my first glimpse of this organization and precision last night and was extremely impressed. We were a very large group of about 50 people and our director was able to stage two different scenes in the opera while holding the attention and interest of all involved for the entire three hours. And what's more, he was so specific about each movement we made and WHY we were making it, that the staging directions were that much easier to follow and internalize. I used to dread this first week of staging rehearsals because it usually feels like uncontrolled chaos, but with this director it seems that everyone knows they are in good hands and are willing to attentively follow his every direction without question.

I feel like sometimes directors come into a production with a concept for a show, but only general idea of what they physically want to see onstage, which makes staging rehearsals a complete nightmare because the director either relies completely on the choreographer to do the staging, or the singers are left to their own devices until the director sees something he can comment on. And dealing with large groups of people (like an opera chorus) is also another telling sign of the director's planning and organization. For several productions in Coburg the chorus has been plunked down onstage and told to stand, sit, congregate, or basically just fill up the empty spaces as moving set pieces without any kind of explanation for why we are there, how we contribute to the scene as a whole, etc. Granted, each singer should be responsible for a lot of this back story (we do have text to sing, after all), but a large group of people onstage needs a leader to unify the mass and give us a communal purpose.

What I find the most interesting about directors for operas is that the less interest the director takes in getting behind the actions and movements to reach for a deeper meaning, the less interest the singer shows in working for him. And the result of that mutual disinterest is a very boring show with lackluster singing and staging. Believe me, I am singing in a couple of these shows right now. But I doubt very much that Faust will be boring, and I can honestly say that I am looking forward to my next staging rehearsal with this director so we can all keep working together towards a great production and premiere.

Munchkins and Poppies and Cookies, Oh My!

(I'm not sure why the formatting isn't working tonight. Sorry about the wonky post...)

The premiere of the Wizard of Oz was tonight. Since one of my choir colleagues was playing the wicked witch of the west, my friend Verena and I thought it would be fun to bake witch finger cookies for a premiere present. Here is the dough about to head into the oven. Eeew!!













And here are the cookies out of the oven and decorated.
I don't think the people at the theater had seen this type of cookie before because they seemed pretty freaked out. But they taste terrific and were a big hit with our colleagues!
















Now to the good stuff: costumes! The choir's first entrance is in Munchkinland, so we are all dressed as teeny little munchkins. In this photo I am actually trying to keep the back of my dress from getting wrinkled while sitting down, but it turns out it looks pretty much the same as when I'm kneeling down as a Munchkin onstage!























In a little behind-the-scenes shot you can see that we Munchkins actually have longer legs than one may think. And you can see from my knee pads and slippers that the stage is not as squeaky clean as a Munchkin might hope...














In the Emerald city I get decked out in probably the most fabulous costume I will ever wear. Ever. It is so hideous in so many ways that it ceases to be hideous. It is also actually very comfortable, all the way down to my hand-dyed character shoes.





















The wig department also made green wigs for the chorus and we all have completely different hairstyles. I'm really pleased with mine. :)

























When Dorothy and the others happen upon the poppy field, they find the women of the chorus wearing these poppy costumes. We also have a white cape underneath that is exposed after Glinda makes it snow so Dorothy wakes up from her opiate coma. I'm not a huge fan of the black body suits that we wear under the capes, but luckily no-one really sees them because we're seated during the entire scene.









I think tonight's premiere went really well. We had a very full--and very young--audience, which was exciting. I was really happy with how the choir scenes went and I think this will be a fun show for us to do.

Joining the Club...

On January 1st, Bavarian law made it illegal to smoke in public buildings. This was a pretty radical thing for the Germans, particularly the Bavarians, since smoking seems to be one of the national pasttimes here. Personally, I was very excited for the law to take effect, especially because I'm not a huge fan of coming home smelling like an ashtray after an evening out.

However, some feisty, smoke-loving Bavarian bar owners seem to have found a way around this new law by forcing their customers to join a "Tabakkollegium" (smoking club), in which you sign a petition stating you are aware that the bar/restaurant/cafe allows smoking and you are a willing customer. Then you get a handy dandy membership card and can sit inside and smoke until your lungs fall out. I even recently saw a sign on the door of a bar that said, "Smoking club! Non-smokers also welcome," as if it was an afterthought to invite in non-smoking customers. And yes, I did say force, meaning that if you do not sign the petition and join the club, the bar will not serve you.

I "joined" this little club at one of Coburg's bars because it is frequented by theater employees more than any other place in town, and they serve AMAZING roasted potatoes with creamy quark (think cottage cheese but yummier) that I thought I couldn't live without. But after the law took effect, there were so many smokers who flocked to the bar that the non-smokers were punished with even thicker clouds of smoke and clothes that smelled as if they were dipped in ashes. I couldn't even really enjoy my potatoes.

Since I am still a "member" of this smoking club, I can go back to the bar whenever I want. But I think I'd rather find a place to eat potatoes where I can breathe freely. What I find really curious about this whole situation is that these bar owners have openly defied the law, which just seems very un-German to me. In any case, I hope that these little smoking clubs will be disbanded soon and we can all enjoy roasted potatoes in a smoke-free environment.

A bit of this, a bit of that.

Today was our second dress rehearsal for the Wizard of Oz. The process of end rehearsals and premiere preparations reminds me of the lyrics to "Another Op'nin', another show," which is my song at the beginning of Kiss me Kate and describes the weeks leading up to a premiere:
"Four weeks you rehearse and rehearse.
Three weeks and it couldn't be worse.
One week will it ever be right?
And out of the hat, it's that big first night!"
If you follow the timeline, right about now we are all asking ourselves, "Will it ever be right???" Hopefully the answer is yes, but our production is very complicated and still has a lot of kinks to be worked out before Saturday's premiere.

Right now the biggest problem for the choir is the microphone situation. We sing several passages from backstage and therefore have a monitor to see the conductor and a microphone for the sound to carry out to the audience. But since the sound guy isn't that familiar with the piece, all of our entrances sound botched or too quiet, we aren't synched up with the conductor (and therefore the orchestra) and it just plain sounds wrong. And the other choir scenes onstage are also not going well because we as a choir are mostly singing without microphones, which makes it difficult to match the volume and tone of the soloists who are all on mic.

To make matters even more complicated, we have a lot of costume changes and very strange costumes. In this show I am a Munchkin, a Tree, a Poppy, an Emerald City chick, and (the voice of a) Flying Monkey. Except for the Monkey scene, I have a different costume for each entrance and they are also a bit difficult to work around. And since we only get three dress rehearsals to do the show with microphones, costumes, sets, staging, and music, it's a lot of getting used to in a very short amount of time.

In between dress rehearsals for Oz, we are also rehearsing for our next opera, Faust, and a children's concert in which we will sing the Jungle Book. (Let me tell you, if I thought Wizard of Oz was weird in German, it's nothing compared to the Jungle Book.) And dashed in here and there are still performances of Kiss me Kate. We actually had a really great audience for Kiss me Kate last night, which is always nice.

When I am not at the theater, I am still knitting quite a bit. Now that my sweater is finished I am working on some top-secret knitting projects that I unfortunately can't show pictures of since they will eventually be gifted to people who may read this blog. :) But I am planning on starting a vest for myself and will show pictures of that when it gets going.

My new cardigan

Well, after several hours of grafting, seaming, and steam blocking, here is my finished cardigan! It is very comfy and cozy and I am pleased with the way it turned out. The arms are a bit shorter than I expected, even after steaming, so I might wet block it and see if that relaxes the ribbing a bit more. I think I may also buy a new sparkly pin to close it in the front. Maybe something with pearls on it...

Anyway, here is the back, including the grafted section that is a half a stitch askew. It is actually less noticeable than I thought it would be. And since I don't have to look at myself from the back, I really don't care anymore. :)

So, I definitely learned a few knitting lessons with this project, but all in all I think the few weeks of work were worth it. I think I'm going to take myself to H&M to go shopping for a sweater pin!

Grafting

I finished knitting the second piece of my pretty lace-edged sweater yesterday afternoon. According to the pattern, all I needed to do was graft the two pieces together using Kitchener stitch and sew the side seams. I learned to do Kitchener stitch when I knit my pair of socks and felt really confident with my skills, so I dove right in.

After about 10 stitches, I noticed that the grafted section looked weird. That's because K stitch only works if you only have all-knit stitches. If you have purled stitches mixed in, like you do in ribbing, you need another method. So, I carefully undid the grafting, and set off to search the internet for a tutorial.

Alas, I only seemed to come across others asking the same question as me.

So, by this point three hours had passed and I needed to get to work. At work I sat down with a piece of paper and started drawing out diagrams of knitting needles with knit and purl stitches on them, and then following the basic steps of K stitch, but switching the knit-wise and purl-wise stitches for the purled stitches.

Yes, I know I've lost everyone's interest at this point. Believe me, if my own beautiful, creamy, lacy, ALMOST finished sweater wasn't at stake, I'd be glazing over as well.

After several attempts, I finally constructed a feasable plan for grafting knitting in knit2/purl1 ribbing. And here it is!!! (if you don't do kitchener stitch, you may as well ignore this part)
(front needle) knit, slip, purl
(back needle) purl, slip, knit
(fn) knit, slip, knit
(bn) purl, slip, purl
(fn) purl, slip, purl
(bn) knit, slip, knit

When I finished my diagrams and came up with this pattern for ribbed kitchener, I actually hooted and jumped up and down in a circle. It's been a rough couple weeks for me in Coburg and I can honestly say that was the first wave of pure joy I have felt in that long.

Unfortunately, when I came home to try it on a swatch of knitting (I figured I'd test my methods on a wee piece of knitting before tackling the 300-stitch sweater), the pattern was half a stitch off. That means that the knit and purl stitches were offset just slightly so that the grafted piece looked askew.

Needless to say, I was pretty crushed.

But, knitting has taught me to be patient, bull-headed, and resourceful. So I returned to the internet to do more searching for grafting methods. In the next two and a half hours, I tried approximately six different grafting methods on my swatch knitting, and all to no avail. I also have e-mails in to the woman who wrote the pattern and some other prominent knitting bloggers who seem to know what they're talking about, and I even posted my quandry on the Craigslist craft discussion board. But this all may be in vain, because my research also revealed that when two pieces of knitting are not going in the same direction (mine were knit towards each other, meaning my open stitches are in different directions), ribbing will always be off by a half a stitch.

So, if this is really the case, it seems I am left with a few options:
1) bind off both pieces of knitting and sew them together. I actually tried this option on my swatch (being bull-headed is both a blessing and a curse, really) and it left a really lumpy, non-stretchy line through the swatch

2) bind off with the right-sides facing using a three-needle bind-off. This will leave an unmistakable seam all through the work, but the ribs will be uniform and not offset.

3) use the method I developed myself and block the finished sweater so there isn't a lot of stretch to the ribbing to hide the offset row. This seems like the most feasable option at this point.

It is at times like this when I remember why knitting scarves was so appealing...

Let the Sun Shine In

I had a bad week last week. Drama at the theater reached new heights as the whole debacle surrounding my casting and un-casting in Faust played itself out. It was very frustrating, and in the end neither my colleague nor I will be singing the role, and as far as I know is still uncast.

But what really turned my week on its head was my computer's "fatal system error" last Friday. Apparently I did something that my computer didn't like, meaning that Windows XP decided it didn't want to play with me anymore. Thankfully after just one day, the local computer shop in Coburg was able to restore it nearly to its pre-error state. What I didn't realize is how dependent I have become on my computer for everyday communication. I am now very used to talking on the phone, making video calls, sending and receiving e-mails, and using the internet as an integral part of my every day life (not to mention health and well-being). It is VERY nice to have my computer back and to be reconnected with the "outside world."

The sun has been shining for about four straight days now and my living room is the perfect place to do enjoy its gentle pre-spring rays. As the sun makes its way across the sky in the afternoon, it casts a lovely warm light onto my couch, where I have been doing quite a bit of knitting lately. It feels really great to feel my cheeks getting warm and hear the birds chirping and frolicking outside my window. When theater drama is making me crazy and I need a little serenity, there's nothing like some sunshine and a great knitting project. :)

I am currently working on a lace-edged cardigan using the leftover beige yarn from Joe's Christmas blanket. I found the pattern online and it will have a single closure at the front, making it look somewhat like a shrug. Here are a couple pictures of what I've done so far (taken in this afternoon's sun on my couch, no less!) Hopefully I will have some pictures of the completed sweater up soon!

Wishy Washy

About a week and a half ago the General Music Director at the theater approached me after a performance and asked me to sing a solo in an upcoming opera. It's a fairly small role, but Gounod's Faust is a beautiful opera and it would be a great resume-builder. I said I would be happy to sing the role, but I told the GMD that I was flying to the US for a week in March and would not be available to rehearse during this week. I wanted to make sure he knew because I already heard that the director for Faust was already peeved that he would have to go a week without the chorus (we get a week off in March because of all the extra rehearsals and performances we have had to do so far this season). I asked him to tell me either way if that was going to be a problem, but in the meantime I would get to work learning my part.

Since I never heard back from him either way, I just kept practicing and figured if I wasn't going to sing the role, he would have told me by now, especially because staging rehearsals begin on February 25th. Well, when I arrived at rehearsal tonight one of my alto colleagues came up to me and said that the General Music Director offered HER the role in Faust just this afternoon. She told him that she was under the impression I was singing the role, but the GMD told her that I had turned the role down because I was going to have to miss a week of rehearsal.

What??

Anyway, my colleague is also planning on leaving town for the week in March, so it looks like the director won't want to work with either of us and the theater may very well have to pay a guest singer to come in from out of town to do the role. Who knows. As far as I know, though, I am not going to be singing the role that I had originally been offered. Oh right, but according to the GMD I turned it down anyway, so the last 10 days of extra time I've spent practicing to learn the role was my mistake.

The other women in the choir were really angry when they heard the story. However, they also said that this is a fairly common occurrance at the theater and that the bosses at the theater are horrible at communicating and often do such back-handed things when casting for shows. But of course, this was the first time it has happened to me, so I was naturally upset.

In all honesty, I'd rather have a week in the United States than a solo role in Faust anyway. I just wish the GMD had been more direct with me and had kept me in the loop before asking one of my own colleagues to sing the same role without giving me a head's up. And also, I wish he had been honest to my colleague instead of feeding her a story about me turning down a role that I accepted. Sigh.

American Food

Yesterday I bought a jar of peanut butter from a store called "Welt Bazar." It is an international food store that stocks food from countries around the world. I really like to shop there because they normally import directly from the country that makes the products, meaning I can get exotic spices, sauces, noodles, and so much more and know they are authentic. The funny thing is, they don't import food from the United States. The peanut butter I bought was from the Netherlands and the saltine crackers I got to eat it with came from the Phillipines. Which made me wonder why the store didn't import anything from the US.

One reason may be is that a lot of Germans assume they know what American food is because they have eaten at McDonalds or bought "American style" food from a German grocery store. For instance, I was at the grocery store a few months ago with a friend of mine looking for crackers (for those of you who don't know, crackers are a very American snack and Germans rarely eat them.) She led me to the potato chips aisle where the small selection of buttery, fatty, greasy German "crackers" was. But I wanted natural crackers without all the salt, fat and added flavors, which were actually over in the organic food aisle. When she saw what I had picked out, my friend told me, "but THOSE aren't crackers. Not American crackers, anyway..." And this friend has never been to the United States, or traveled to another country. Other "American foods" like donuts and muffins are also available around Germany, but they taste very bad and not at all like what you would find in the United States. It seems to me that the globalization of American businesses like Starbucks and McDonalds has lulled many Germans into thinking they know all about American food. But they would be wrong.

Since starting my job in Coburg I have cooked for the choir ladies a number of times. Each time I try to make something that I think tastes great, but is also typically American. And when I show up with savory cornbread muffins, creamy peanut butter cookies, or a steaming hot apple pie, they usually react two ways: 1) they scarf down everything I bring in in record time and 2) they wonder outloud why what I brought in isn't sickeningly sweet, fatty, greasy, etc.

This makes me sad, but also a little angry. Over the last year I have made banana bread, brownies, oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, cornbread muffins, blueberry muffins, apple pie, cranberry stuffing, molasses cake, and sweet potatoes and have received rave reviews. But at the same time I still hear pointed comments made about Americans and their unhealthy diet of hamburgers, french fries, and cola. I'm not saying that the brownies or cookies I brought in were necessarily healthy, but they also weren't any worse than the pastries and treats you can buy from typical German bakeries. And the Germans, who are masters of beer, bratwurst and pretzels, can't exactly boast that their national dishes are the foundation of a healthy diet.

I would really like Germans to cut us some slack when it comes to food. Although our country is probably more than a little responsible for our world's rising obesity problem, it doesn't mean that every American is that way. And just because a label says "American style" does not mean that the product inside resembles in any way what you would get in the United States.