There’s nothing quite as exciting or satisfying as life’s unscripted adventures, and I just experienced a real doozy. The occasion was the convention of the National Opera Association in Portland, Oregon- a gathering of singers, teachers, conductors and impressarios from across the country. At some point last year, my department chair – Corinne Ness – received an email from the organization, inviting people to propose presentations. She was going to make a proposal and suggested that I do the same, if I was interested. At first I imagine that the only thing they would be interested in was something heavy and scholarly, such as “comparing the operatic librettos of Cavalli and Cesti.” (I’m yawning just from typing those words.) I could have tried to go that route, but my heart would not have been in it. I decided instead that I would only propose something with which I felt a strong personal connection – and something which I thought had the potential of being helpful to someone on a very practical level. And that’s when it occurred to me that I could talk about Carthage’s Marriage of Figaro production from the spring of 2012 and how we did some creative tampering with both the score and libretto. And if I laid that against the backdrop of other operatic tampering both now and through history, I would have something that was personal with some intellectual weight.
Well, they liked the idea and invited me to come, and the presentation came together fairly quickly and easily – although believe it or not I was still shuffling and polishing it the morning of my presentation . . . even creating a couple of new slides and swapping out certain photos barely a half hour before showtime. And as much as I wished that Kathy had come along, I was SO glad she wasn’t there that morning because I’m sure it would have absolutely freaked her out to see me refusing to leave well enough alone. (And having her freak out would have made me freak out even more.) It brought back memories of the year I was the intern at Luther Valley Lutheran Church. On most of the Sundays when I was preaching the sermon, dad would glance over at me during the pulpit hymn and would see me frantically writing in my tablet and crossing out entire paragraphs. . . adding stuff to the sermon that I would begin delivering in just a minute or two. Crazy!
Leading up to the presentation, my nerves were doing a strange ricochet between worrying that nobody would come – or worrying that anybody would come! The “anybody” fear went back to the fact that everyone in the audience would be a bona fide opera person, including some people who know even more than I do. I got a clear sense of that Friday afternoon at one of the master classes I attended where one of the clinicians mentioned the name of American soprano Judith Blegan. At that point I heard someone sitting right behind me whisper to themselves “ah, the best Sophie ever!” You know you’re in the midst of a lot of operatic know-it-alls when the people sitting around you remember an American soprano who sang her last performance more than 20 years ago. It was intimidating to think about those kind of people listening to my talk. . . especially because I was going to be talking about how we messed around with “The Marriage of Figaro” in ways that some people might find highly objectionable. (“There may not be a field that exceeds opera when it comes to people so fiercely holding to their opinions of what’s right and what’s wrong.”) And because of that, I almost hoped that nobody would come to my talk. (It was the earliest presentation of the day- I didn’t know a soul there- and there were two other things going on at the same time- so it was certainly possible that nobody would come.)
And then I realized how horrible it would be to have put all of this time into putting my presentation together . . . and come all that way (for pete’s sake, the airline tickets cost almost $700!) . . . only to speak to an empty room. And at 8:55, with only Corinne and the technician there, I started wondering if that’s what was going to happen. I even started considering whether or not I would still give the whole presentation- especially the part where I would say “Carthage College is a small liberal arts school located on the shore of Lake Michigan. . .” etc. (How weird would that have been!) But then . . . thank the Lord! . . . a stranger walked into the room – and another – and another . . . until a nice sized audience had gathered.
Then . . . disaster! Well, almost. Just as I was about to begin, we realized that the projector was losing connection with my laptop, and the first slide of my presentation would appear on the screen for 5 or 6 seconds before vanishing, to be replaced by the Dell logo plus the words “looking for signal” right below it. With an actual audience waiting for me to start, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or both. To think that my original plan was to do my presentation with nothing more technologically advanced than a ball point pen- and now the thought of having to do it without the computer made me want to weep! But then, somehow, the connection settled down and a minute or two after 9, I was rolling.
And as I began talking, I found myself feeling as comfortable as if I were speaking in front of my opera workshop students at Carthage. . . or the men and women I lecture to in Adventures in Lifelong Learning. It was a roomful of strangers (except for Corinne) but we were all there because we love opera. And that’s all I needed to know. And because things were laid out clearly and cleanly in the Keynote program (thanks again, Dimitri) I could take the energy I would usually devote to keeping my piles of stuff from toppling over and concentrate on making sense. And I think I did! 🙂
Maybe the best sign of how well it went is that I was really sad when it was over- and also felt not an iota of regret. Instead, I felt like I had really given my all to this brand new venture – my whole heart and soul – which made the success even sweeter. And later on, as if to commemorate it, while killing time at the Portland airport waiting for my flight home, I bought a small magnetic plaque with these three simple yet powerful words: MAKE YOURSELF PROUD. I am going to hang that plaque in my Carthage studio, not just as a reminder for my voice students, but also because I need a reminder of that as well. . . that life’s most meaningful and lasting triumphs have nothing to do with cutting corners or taking short cuts, but in Digging Deep and GIving Our Very Best. Nothing feels sweeter than that – nothing else even comes close.
pictured above: This is one of the slides from my N.O.A. presentation. The photos show Bob Petts, Josh Hamm and Nick Huff, singing Figaro’s act four aria- which we converted into a trio.