A Day of Madness

“A Day of Madness.”  That is the subtitle for a famous play by Beaumarchais called “The Marriage of Figaro,” on which Mozart built his beloved operatic masterpiece.   As stage director Matt Boresi helped me introduce our performance of Figaro this past Tuesday at Carthage, he cited that subtitle of the original play as a regrettably apt description of what he and I and our beleaguered cast have experienced in mounting this important work.

First of all,  even under the best of circumstances, it was almost ridiculously ambitious for us to undertake Figaro within the frustrating restrictions of opera workshop-  which meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday, one hour each day.   It’s an enormous score and plenty challenging,  especially for young singers who are pretty much brand new to the world of opera.  And even though we abridged it,  that process in and of itself was complicated.  One choice I made early on – which in retrospect appears to have been a colossal error in judgment – was to keep the specific abridgments in rather fluid state.  That is, I was anxious for us to do as much of the score as time and energy would allow-  so I thought we would begin with everything absolutely essential and add to that if we found that there was time to do more.  In my head that made sense,  but in reality that scenario just made the singers uneasy and may have even discouraged some of them from polishing and memorizing their music, for fear of spending time on something that might end up on the cutting room floor. At any rate,  just arriving at a final official abridgment was hard-  and just as difficult was the matter of bridging any plot line gaps (created by the musical cuts)  with dialogue.   Just days before the first performance,  we were discovering gaps that still had to be covered-  and our poor Barbarina and Mina (our two narrators) were being handed more narration to memorize within a week of our opening.  (I could not be more grateful for the good job they did.)  So this was already an incredibly taxing challenge.

And that’s before we began to be hit with a succession of unanticipated blows.   Our Susanna,  Olivia Wallace, came down with a serious throat infection and was placed on very strict week-long vocal rest by her doctor-  three days before we were supposed to open.  With no understudy and no time to teach the role to anyone else,  we had no choice but to postpone our performances.  (We eventually scheduled a makeup performance for Tuesday evening, May 10th, at 6:30- the only time that Siebert Chapel was free and our entire cast was available.)  Then came a cascade of other misfortunes:  one of our baritones underwent nasal surgery and had some complications ….. one of our lead sopranos hurt her foot and was on crutches ….. and another principal singer suffered a concussion two days before our performance.   If it hadn’t been so worrisome,  it would have almost been funny.  In some ways,  the crowning confirmation that God didn’t want us to perform The Marriage of Figaro was when we walked into Siebert Chapel on Tuesday afternoon to find that there were four major leaks from the skylight in the ceiling (we were experiencing torrential rains) and four ugly white buckets set up right in the midst of where we were about to perform Figaro.   “Day of Madness” indeed.

And for me personally,  there was one other mishap that I didn’t even tell the cast about.   In every spare moment I could find over the last few days,  I had typed up the supertitles for Figaro– a massive job but one I did not want to inflict on any of our singers,  who were already stressed out enough.   I finished the titles Monday morning, only to realize that I still had to prepare a carefully marked score for the student who was going to operate the projector and advance each slide at the correct moment.   So Tuesday morning I got up one hour earlier than normal and arrived at Carthage by 5:50 in order to xerox my entire score – and then mark it with cues for when each title was to be projected.   This was almost as huge a job as typing the actual titles,  and I worked frantically for the first two hours I was at the radio station (I had interviews after that) and for much of the rest of the day as well.  (The most comical moment came when I was doing a last minute coaching of our Figaro and Count – and tried to play the piano with my left hand and listen to them sing while writing in my score with my right hand.  I’m famous (or is it infamous) for my multi-taking,  but this was ridiculous.    But at least I got the score finished up (and it was so massive that I had to use two separate three ring binders) and thought we were ready to go.  Unfortunately,  we experienced all kinds of trouble hooking up the projector to my laptop-  and when we finally had that problem rectified, another problem became evident:   I had written the cues in the score by using the numbers of each slide ….  thinking that this would be a way for the projectionist to be able to keep track and make sure that the correct slide was on the screen.   But when we went to project the titles,  the screen changed and those numbers were no longer visible-  and the projectionist would have no way of knowing which number slide was being projected and whether or not he was “on” or “off” from where he was supposed to be.   I knew right then and there that there was no way we were going to be able to project the titles without running an enormous risk for rampant errors-  and in that instant I realized that all of the hours I had spent typing and xeroxing and marking the score had been for nothing.  No titles.  I can’t even put into words how maddening this was.

The dress rehearsal the day before – our one and only opportunity to have a complete run through of the piece – went poorly,  and as Matt and I spoke to the cast afterwards,  we could see how emotionally battered and almost traumatized they were.  I think most of them had the distinct feeling that we were about to serve up the worst operatic catastrophe since the Paris premiere of Tannhauser.  Fortunately,  Matt has been doing this for a long, long time and he was certain that the next day’s performance was going to be better.  We just had to give the students a chance to catch their breath, emotionally and mentally regroup,  rest,  and do whatever they had to do to bring their own preparation to where it needed to be.  He actually sent them home right then and there,  saying that he and I would take care of moving all of the props and furniture out of the chapel ourselves ….. so they could just get out of there and start to feel better.

Scarlett O’Hara was right:  Tomorrow Is Another Day.  The performance that our singers delivered on Tuesday was truly astonishing – well beyond even what Matt in all his optimism had expected.  Both musically and theatrically,  the singers found energy and focus and commitment that we had not yet seen.  They were interacting with one another as their characters-  bringing the story alive to a remarkable degree.   And the best moments of the performance was truly sterling …. among the best operatic moments ever heard during my Carthage tenure.   The path to that success was a rather harrowing one- and I really hope it’s never repeated-  but I hope and trust that we emerged from the other side of it with a better understanding of what the art form of opera requires from us – and what amazing things we are capable of doing and achieving even when we find ourselves in the midst of what feels like the Book of Job.

(most of these photos were taken by one of our most talented sopranos, Angela Yu.  She was not actually part of opera workshop this semester,  but when we realized how sick Olivia was,  I asked Angela if she would be willing to learn the role of Susanna in case Olivia was unable to sing the performance.  Angela graciously agreed-  and actually sang the role from offstage for our last two rehearsals while Olivia – still on vocal rest – mimed the role onstage.  I so appreciated Angela’s willingness to help us out as she did.)