What I Did on my Summer Vacation

September 8, 2007 - Okay, so first off, I didn't really have a summer vacation. Unlike when I was the child of not one, but two educators, summer was indeed a blissful, unscheduled sequence of days. Even when I did my brief stint in the special kind of hell known as a "9 to 5" job, there was still the sense of vacation being a set aside (and predictable) period of time that one was guaranteed by contract. If you had cleared it with your boss or supervisor it didn't matter what happened during the agreed upon time of your vacation, you were not expected to fix it. Ah, who would have thought that one day I would be nostalgic for a "9 to 5" job? I'm not really all that nostalgic for it, but the one element that increasingly gets lost in the life of people involved in the arts (particularly those involved in any kind of executive capacity) is the idea that you can actually a) take the attitude that no matter what happens during your vacation, you're off the hook or b) find a time in which your organization is actually not in any way in need of you. So, during this time of "back to school" which was almost genetically ingrained in me by those two aformentioned educators, I'm often left wondering where the summer went and if it actually has any impact on me any more. I think that most artist reach a point in their lives where they realize that our basic modus operandi is "We work when there's work". And we all hope that there will always be work, and consistent work at that, or otherwise we wouldn't be able to actually support ourselves as artists. And don't even get me started on the idea of retirement. That will be fodder for a later blog, a much, much later blog.

But enough of these philosophical musings. I'm sure you're all just on the edge of your seats wondering what's been happening here at Opera Vivente since the last post. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but if you're reading this, you're probably at least mildly curious. So. . .here's the scoop:

Design work for Alcina is virtually complete at this point. The carpenter has been given his first installment so that he can begin work on the set, the costume designer is in the process of getting measurements for everyone, the lighting designer is pondering options for creating light boxes (BTW as a sidebar you might be interested to know that a big part of being a lighting designer is sitting observing the wonderful world of light. I know a fantastic husband and husband team of lighting and set designer, and the set designer has often remarked that it appears his partner is not working at all until production week. But I digress), and I'm working my thoughts about blocking out in evermore detail. The conductor has already had individual coachings with several of the singers, and the chorus will have its first rehearsal on Monday. Speaking of the chorus, we're still in need of one more soprano, so if you're a soprano reading this and you're interested, send me an email.

The first production meeting for Tobias and the Angel has also taken place. This piece continues to challenge us all to think outside the box so be prepared for many things which you may not have seen at OV before: puppetry, abstract choreography, surreal lighting, self-illuminating fabric, well the list goes on. But more on that in ensuing months.

AND - here's my own personal point of pride at the moment - this morning I finished translating the last musical number of Orpheus in the Underworld. WOOHOO! Now to whip through the dialogue, a task so much easier since dialogue doesn't have a rhyme scheme, a meter, or any of those other annoying things mentioned in my previous post about translation. So things look good for the October 1st deadline that was put in all the singers' contracts.

Finally, singers continue to send in their materials to be considered for an audition. Since my blog about that whole ball of wax, the packets have been complete and professionally appropriate. Behold, the power of the blog! Just kidding, it might just be complete coincidence, but whatever the cause, it's very nice.

So that's about it on the OV front. I hope that all of you are transitioning into the "back to school" mode with a minimum of melancholy and regret. Perhaps a trip to the local 5 and dime (now there's a phrase that certainly dates me) to buy a new notebook, some colored pencils, a fresh tub of paste and a protractor will take the edge off. It always worked for me, but then again, I was kind of a "learning geek". Anyway, I hope this post finds everyone reading it engaged in something energizing, empowering, and enjoyable, and, as always, See you at the opera!

John Bowen

Nothing Happens in August and Nothing Rhymes with Orange

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - Okay. First of all my deepest apologies for the long hiatus since my last post. As you can tell from the title of this post 1) I've had tremendous difficulty reaching many of the people that I've needed to reach and 2) I've been immersed in translating Orpheus in the Underworld. But more on translation anon. First things first.

I'm pleased to report that I've found a carpenter who will build the set for Alcina for the amount that we had originally budgeted. His name is Lewis Shaw and in addition to his set construction skills (an excellent example of which is the Globe-inspired permanent facility at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival), he is also a fantastic fight-choreographer and one of the countries most sought-after crafter of stage weaponry. I've always been fond of working with "jack of all trades" types, being one myself. So, Lewis will soon be embarking on the realization of Milagros Ponce de Leon's curvilinear, Op-Art inspired set, and I can check one thing off my to-do list. Trouble is, generally when I check something off, I find that two or three items have been added to the bottom of the list in the meantime.

One of the ongoing to-do items is assembling the various text and graphic components for the graphic designer who is producing our season program. This is a fun-filled process during which singers who have not updated their bio or had a new headshot done in several years suddenly decide that they need to do so just after the print deadline has passed. A word of advice to all you singers out there. Get into the habit of regularly updating your bio and also updating your headshot at whatever point you feel it no longer looks even remotely like you. That way, when an overworked general director says that he needs your materials by such and such a date, you can just hit the attach and send commands and everyone is happy, happy, happy. Also, it's a good idea to have several versions of your bio so that you can adhere to any length restrictions that may apply. A bio of between a 150 and 175 words is a very usable thing to have. Much more so than the 800-1000 word CV detailing every prize, concert, scholarship, award, and performance you've had since you were 15 years old. Save that for your tell-all memoir that will be published either during a mid-life crisis or ideally, posthumously. Okay. Got that out of my system. But seriously, singers be prepared with this stuff. No one wants to have to work that hard simply so that you can be listed in the program. Moving right along.

My other rather time-consuming project for August has been the translation of Orpheus in the Underworld for our spring 2008 production. This is my sixth translation for Opera Vivente, and I find that every composer/librettist team presents a slightly different challenge. For Mozart, the Mt. Everest challenge is always those amazing ensemble numbers where several different singers are expressing often very different thoughts, ideas, emotions all within a tightly controlled rhyme scheme. Unfortunately, English is not overflowing with tons of words that rhyme and yet express radically different concepts, unlike say "amore", "rigore" and "orrore" in Italian. With Handel, the issue of when rhyme scheme is important or not always rears its head. Sometimes Handel is quite clearly using the Metastasian poetic forms to create structure in his music and sometimes he's just setting the text from a purely musico-dramatic standpoint. Rhyme scheme be damned in other words. For Signor Puccini, the revelation was that the melody clearly takes precedence over the words. Some scholars have even posited that Puccini might have written some of his greatest melodies well in advance of his librettist supplying the words that Mimi, Tosca, Pinkerton, etc. ultimately sing. When translating Le villi, Puccini's first opera, I just eventually had to accept that long, high notes were often found accompanying words like "the", "it", "and", because in the original Italian, Signor Puccini had those same long, high notes accompanying "la", "il", and "e". It's at this point that one realizes that opera in the vernacular is not just about a more direct communication between stage and audience but also about the insight into a particular composer's aesthetic values. Heady stuff, huh? But now, Msr. Offenbach is the composer in question. Well, there's a number of hurdles with this ribald piece.

Number One - French has no "agogic" accent. This means that a word can be accented on any of its syllables and still be technically correct. Okay, now before all you French linguists show up at my door with lavender-scented torches, beautifully carved battering rams, and explosive devices filled with molten foie gras, I know that I'm somewhat oversimplifying here. But after all, this is a blog not the entrance exam to the Sorbonne. So, taisez-vous, eh? Now the agogic accent thing becomes problematic for translators when composers take this lack of accent as license to set the same word in two different ways. For instance, the character Jupiter's name is set by Offenbach sometimes with the first syllable being accented, and sometimes with the last syllable being accented. Unfortunately, to English speaking people it's always JU-pi-ter, never Ju-pi-TER. This is but one example of the fun and excitement in which I've been engaged over the past month or so.

Number Two - Elision. Both French and Italian have this habit of sometimes using all the syllables of a word and sometimes "eliding" the end of one word into the beginning of the next word to make just a single syllable. Now there are rules that govern this kind of thing, and they are one of the things that upper-level French students sweat bullets over but they also make a translator's life most interesting when he's come up with a really great 8 syllable solution to a line only to find that a page later in the score, Offenbach has elided that same line of text into a 7 syllable line. Yippee!

Number Three - The "difference" between spoken and sung French. There's a legend that says that the many words in French that end with an unaccented schwa (that's the most common vowel in American English by the way, best heard in the ever more present word "duh") only voice that syllable when they are being sung, not spoken. Well someone should tell Msr. Offenbach that because he routinely usese both versions during the singing of these words. For instance, a chorus towards the end of Act I begins with the words "Aux armes" or "To arms". Well the first couple times around, Offenbach uses three notes for this phrase. Therefore I decided to translate it as "To battle". Well, I guess I needed to be knocked down a peg or two because a couple pages later, "Aux armes" is set consistently as a 2 syllable (and therefore 2 note) phrase. So there, we revert to "To arms" as the translation. Neato!

Anyway, these and other hurdles aside, the translation is progressing according to schedule and will be in the hands of singers by the October 1 deadline. I'm also determined to work in more consistent blogging during the last stages of translation so those of you who are eagerly awaiting each new post (I hold fast to the belief that you're out there) won't be disappointed. Best wishes to all of you during the last few days of the most inert month in the calendar, and as always -
See you at the opera!

John Bowen