Believe it or not, this is my favorite photo from the big snow storm which left Racine and Kenosha under 9 inches of new snow. I snapped plenty of shots of snow-laden trees, plus a fun photo of the Carthage Abraham Lincoln statue covered in snow. But the shot you see above is my very favorite image from the storm – because it shows the cast of “The Elixir of Love” at our last dress rehearsal, which was that very evening… with 15 of 16 cast members present despite all that Mother Nature could do to make that impossible.
We always knew that Thursday was going to be a very complicated day, thanks to the snow- but it became still more dramatic right around 3:00 that afternoon when an email went out from the Provost’s office, canceling all Carthage classes from 4:00 on. It is extremely uncommon for that to happen, so it confirmed that this was in fact a dangerous storm that had to be taken seriously. So all classes from 4:00 on were canceled (including all choir rehearsals) but for me the million dollar question was whether or not we would be allowed to go ahead with our dress rehearsal for “The Elixir of Love.” Were we doing a shorter and simpler opera, I might have felt a little more comfortable with the notion of canceling- but in fact I felt like canceling that dress rehearsal would have been a sure recipe for catastrophe – or at least a night of worried sleeplessness. I immediately called the Provost, who reassured me that the decision or rehearsing or not rehearsing that night was entirely up to me, as it was for coaches with their various athletic practices or other groups with their meetings. If Matt and I thought we should rehearse, we were welcome to proceed accordingly.
The decision was an absolute no-brainer, and I immediately sent out an email saying that we were having rehearse, in spite of the class cancellation, but that if there were students off campus who did not feel like they could get to rehearse safely, they should consider themselves excused. In some settings, that kind of statement might be interpreted as “All Right! I Don’t Have to go to rehearsal tonight! Party Time!!!” But not the students in our cast. Not that they all just arrived from the monastery or convent – they are a fun loving bunch – but they have been impressively serious when it has come to working on this score, and I knew that they were probably even more anxious for this dress rehearsal to occur than Matt and I were. And I was quite certain that every one of them would make a supreme effort to get there.
And of course, most of the cast members live on campus and were already there- and at least a couple of the off campus students were on campus and planned to just stay around and not even attempt to return home. (Like me. I didn’t even think about going home before rehearsal- and when I called Kathy to ask her if that was okay, she beat me to it by insisting that I stay put. So I did.) Nevertheless, I knew that it was truly wicked out there – beautiful but wicked – and as rehearsal time approached and I saw how empty the hallways of Johnson Arts Center were, I started wondering just how many of our singers were going to be able to get to rehearsal- and if we were missing any of our principals, what would we do about that? By the time I was heading to Siebert at 6:20 p.m., I was a bundle of nerves, worried that what needed to be a seamless run through with our B Cast would disintegrate into a jumbled mess with 2/3 of the cast missing.
And then I walked into Siebert and saw the beautiful sight of 15 singers getting into their costumes, readying themselves for what turned out to be a splendid dress rehearsal. We were missing only one singer, who did not feel like she could get to rehearsal safely (and I certainly didn’t want anyone to feel like they were endangering themselves by traveling to campus) but otherwise it was all hands on deck. And I’m not sure I can quite explain the special sort of energy that was in that room. Certainly part of it was that it was the night before our first performance, so we were feeling the heat of the fire. But I think there was also this odd sense of battling the elements – of huddling by the hearth as the blizzard winds were howling outside – of forging onward despite nature’s fury – “Take that, Old Man Winter! We’re STILL Singing Our Opera!”
And that’s exactly what we did – and if anything, that night’s rehearsal built upon the excellence of the previous night and took the production to a still higher level. Everything went tremendously well- and almost more important than that was the sheer sense of fun and energy with which everyone performed. It was as though there was no place on earth that any of those students would have preferred to be – not even in front of a fireplace, sipping hot chocolate.