So, much to say, so little time!
We have been very busy here in Prague. Jennifer and I had our first rehearsal for our due recital with our accompanist which went well. All musical theater so, of course, I'm going to have a blast. That day and the next were officially days off so I tried to fit in as many sights as I could see through the haze of jet lag. I've never been one to get over jet lag easily so I just suffer through until I can sleep through the night and feel rested.
I visited the Jewish Quarter just north of the Old Town. VERY interesting. The Jewish Museum is actually a series of six sites all visitable on the same entrance fee. Four synagogs and two aditional buildings. The Jewish quarter was, of course, wehre the Czech jews settled and eventually became a walled in Ghetto. When the Nazi's occupied the city it was where the jews were imprisoned. Hitler allowed the Jews to collect Jewish artwork and documents with a plan of creating a Museum of the Extinct Jewish Race once the war was over. Eventually, these scholars were killed along with 90 percent of the Jewish population of Czecholslovakia but the work they did lives on today and is there for everyone to see. It goes without saying that the exhibits are fascinating and very moving.
I visited Praque Castle which contains St. Vitus Cathedral with in it's walls. Both are very impressive. The cathedral is famous for it's Hapsburg tombs and the famous Mucha Window. Mucha was one of the pioneers of the Art Nuveau movement. His work is very famous and we've all seen it without realizing it is him. Think Maxfield Parrish and you'll get an idea of what his work looks like. His themes are VERY nationalistic and dramatic. There is a museum in Prague dedicated to his work which I'm hoping to visit soon.
I discovered a fantastic vegitarian restaurant in the Old Town. YUM!
The Little Town which is at the bottom of the hill on which the castle sits is a beautiful neighborhood with lots of wonderful shops and picturesque architecture. It has been fun just to walk around and look at the streets and buildings and the people. Everything is clean and the streets are well kept. I wonder what it all must have been like before the fall of Communism. From what I've read, it was a very different place and I would be having a very different expereince if I were here before 1989. Tomorrow I am going to the Museum of Communism which should be interesting and will shed more light on what Prague was like at that time.
I have been obssessively studying my Polenblut score. Really we all have. We're all trying to get our words into our tiny Singer Brains and trying to remember the running order of the show and all our spoken dialogue. On friday, one of our Minders, Petr, (Very nice pianist who has been very patient with us crazy singers.) drove us to the venue in a 9 seater van in the town of Ceske Budejovice. Lovely, clean streets and beautiful, large town square.
The theater was an experience! The entire building smelled of cigarettes and body odor which made me feel queezy when we first walked through the stage door. The auditorium was TINY. It maybe sat 300 with one balcony and some very odd side balconies. The stage was very narrow but as deep, if not deeper than the auditorium itself. There was NO backstage space at all although, there was a large scene storage room off stage right. It was clearly a Soviet Era building. Utilitarian, ugly, and nothing artistically pleasing about it. We have an orchestra of eight FANTASTIC musicians (They are all very stocky, very Slavic looking gents who look like they'd be more at home driving a cab than playing in an orchestra. I would love to hear them play some Bohemian or Slavic folk music! I bet it would be fantastic!) including our Czech conductor who conducts from the piano and is a rock. He is the calm in the storm which is exactly what any good conductor must be. We were really struggling with words and staging throughout our orchestra run through but thank god we had time to study before the beformance the next day. The town is a three hour drive from Prague so it was there and back on friday and there and back on saturday for the performance.
The performace, by the way went well baring a few memory slips more in the spoken dialogue than in the music. You just have to see the humor in such mishaps and laugh about it. By our last performance, we are giving four in various cities, we should be AMAZING. We had a small audience and they seemed to like it. We are told that the audiences might be small, they might be huge, you just never know.
This particular theater seems to be very fond of contemporary foreign plays in Czech translations. In our dressing room I found a script for a play by Neil LaBute, probably one of his cycle of three Beauty Plays. I saw from the posters back stage that they have done works by Christopher Hampton, Martin McDonough and are currently diong a production of God of Carnage that is, apparently, a huge hit.
We had dinner after the concert, I had a fabulous lamb with mashed potatoes (very typically Czech.) and toasted our opening night with a VERY strong plum vodka. It really knocked our heads off! I can home and started having an allergy attack, the first real attack I've had since I got here, and took two Zyrtek and went to bed. They knocked my out and woke up at 115 this afternoon feeling better and more rested than I have since I got here! We had another rehearsal for our duo recital and I sang my best since we arrived so lets hear it for sleep!
We're all having dinner together tonight and then it's off to our next venue in Pisek with the orchestra for Polenblut tomorrow. Say a prayer for me and all my lengthy speeches! AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!
Jay in Prague
P.S. More to come about the quirky hostel where we're staying.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
They told me I could buy a car with a pair of Levi's jeans but no one's selling!
For those of you in my small but loyal group of fans who may not know, I am currently in Praque, Czech Republic at the American Yaro Music Festival. Arrived with six vocalists from Texas on May 24th and we'll be here until June 6th performing a cpncert version of an obscure Viennese operetta called Polenblut and giving a duo recital of Classic American Theater Songs. The operetta performances will be in various cities around the Czech Republic and we are based in Prague. We were met at the airport on monday by one of the Festival's accompanists. She took us by taxi to the church hostel where we're staying. It's very spartan with simple furniture and very, hard, army-cot-like beds. The day we arrived the hot water stopped flowing but that was fixed within 24 hours and all is well now. We have full kitchen privledges and there is a very nice grocery store nearby which happens to be in the same building as the metro stop.
The hostel doesn't have internet service but we were told by our Fearful Leader that "there are internet cafes on every corner.
HA! SHE LIED!!!!
Yesterday my colleague and I wandered around the Old Town look for these seeminly ubiquitous (sp?) internet cafes. There were none to be found! ANYWHERE! We searched high! we searched low! Finally, we spied one across the street from the Estates Theater where Don Giovanni was premiered in 1787. The front half is, indeed, a cafe but the decore is about two or three decades old and clearly hasn't been refurbished since. The computers are housed in a harshly lit back room. It is "no frills" written all over it and the faint smell of B.O. makes my eyes water but what can you do? I'm convinced this place is one of the last vestiges of communist Czechoslovakia. I'm sure it's riddled with hidden microphones and cameras! If I say or do the wrong thing I'll be whisked away and never seen again!
By the looks of things western capitolism is alive and well as represented by MacDonalds, KFC and Starbucks. The buildings and streets are beautiful in spite of western popular culture. Prague wasn't bombed during World War II so all the art nouveax buildings survived, but just barely. I have read that pre-1989, large beams were wedged between the buildings to keep them from falling in on one another. The buildings were black with soot and the general mood was very dark and depressing. Not so today! Everything has been cleaned up and repaired and the tourist industry appears to be booming.
There are a few buildings that give an idea of what things looked like before the Velvet Revolution. The National Museum is still rather black and you can see where the plaster has crumbled away and the National Theater is also black with soot. I hazzard to guess that it is also very run down inside. It presents Operas, ballet and plays and has the largest state subsidy of all the Nationally supported arts organizations. (Interesting side note: I noticed that Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County is playing right now...in Czech!)
In my wanderings I happened across the Czech State Opera House so I bought a ticket for about 35 dollars for Tosca tonight night. The exchange rate is amazing. About 19 or 20 crowns for every dollar so a 700 crown ticket is about 35 dollars for a really good seat. (I assume since it's the National Opera the singers will be Czech and I wouldn't be surprised if the opera is sung in Czech.) The exchange rate also makes food very inexpensive. a 200 crown bill is, what, 10 dollars? Not bad!
Yesterday, we had our first rehearsal with the conductor in a church in central Prague. I can't figure out what kind of church it is. Something about the Sacred Brethren? from what I can gather the Catholic faith has had a hard time here so it may be protestant. The sanctuary is square with a wrap around balcony and an organ on the second level. it is painted in shades of yellow and white and is equipped with very old wooden pews that are all scratched up and even have initials carved in them. The rehearsal went well. The conductor played the piano for the rehearsal and knows the Viennese operetta style very well. It's hard to explain what he was doing. Basically he was swinging the waltz beat, shortening the first beat of the measure and adding time to the second. We would probably refer to it as a jazz rhythm but I'm sure it's typical to the Viennese operetta style. this method gave the music a lilt and an elegance they don't even begin to teach us about in the States. I suspect our Flerdermaus's and Merry Widows are pretty sub-standard.
Today we rehearsed for our duo recital. Our accompanist met us at the hostel, she is a very attractive brunette who speaks very good english, and she took us to the appartment of a pianist friend of hers. It was located in a typical modern neighborhood off of a main street with a street car line. We went up a very dark, very institutional-looking stairway to the second floor and I'm not lying when I say I wondered if we'd been lead astray and were about ot be sold into white slavery! We were shown into what seemed to be a two room flat with a central vestibule. I wasn't sure where the kitchen was but it seemed the vestibule might also be the kitchen although I didn't see a refridgerator or a stove. There were shelves on two walls that heald dishes, a tea service dish towels. The piano was a very old Steinway that hadn't been tuned in donkey's years. In general the decor was VERY spartan and the whole place smelled very musty and old.
After the rehearsal I had intended to go tour Prague Castel but owing to my lingering jet lag and a blistering headache I got on the wrong tram! It was some time before I realized I was going AWAY from the castle and not TOWARD it. I finally change trams and came back down into old town but at that point I was EXTRA tired and my feet hurt so I found a starbucks and drank a latte. Sidebar: the barista give me a hard time because I gave her a thousand crown note which was all I had after my visit to the bankomat. Cashiers are famous here for giving you a hard time about almost everything. I just smiled great big and said, "SORRY!" I got a dirty look.
I'm going to try for the castle again tomorrow and also the Jewish Quarter which is on the north side of the Old Town. That's a saga unto itself so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about.
Talk to you, my small but loyal followers, soon!
P.S. I'm posting this without editing it. My appologies for typos and odd sentence structure.
The hostel doesn't have internet service but we were told by our Fearful Leader that "there are internet cafes on every corner.
HA! SHE LIED!!!!
Yesterday my colleague and I wandered around the Old Town look for these seeminly ubiquitous (sp?) internet cafes. There were none to be found! ANYWHERE! We searched high! we searched low! Finally, we spied one across the street from the Estates Theater where Don Giovanni was premiered in 1787. The front half is, indeed, a cafe but the decore is about two or three decades old and clearly hasn't been refurbished since. The computers are housed in a harshly lit back room. It is "no frills" written all over it and the faint smell of B.O. makes my eyes water but what can you do? I'm convinced this place is one of the last vestiges of communist Czechoslovakia. I'm sure it's riddled with hidden microphones and cameras! If I say or do the wrong thing I'll be whisked away and never seen again!
By the looks of things western capitolism is alive and well as represented by MacDonalds, KFC and Starbucks. The buildings and streets are beautiful in spite of western popular culture. Prague wasn't bombed during World War II so all the art nouveax buildings survived, but just barely. I have read that pre-1989, large beams were wedged between the buildings to keep them from falling in on one another. The buildings were black with soot and the general mood was very dark and depressing. Not so today! Everything has been cleaned up and repaired and the tourist industry appears to be booming.
There are a few buildings that give an idea of what things looked like before the Velvet Revolution. The National Museum is still rather black and you can see where the plaster has crumbled away and the National Theater is also black with soot. I hazzard to guess that it is also very run down inside. It presents Operas, ballet and plays and has the largest state subsidy of all the Nationally supported arts organizations. (Interesting side note: I noticed that Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County is playing right now...in Czech!)
In my wanderings I happened across the Czech State Opera House so I bought a ticket for about 35 dollars for Tosca tonight night. The exchange rate is amazing. About 19 or 20 crowns for every dollar so a 700 crown ticket is about 35 dollars for a really good seat. (I assume since it's the National Opera the singers will be Czech and I wouldn't be surprised if the opera is sung in Czech.) The exchange rate also makes food very inexpensive. a 200 crown bill is, what, 10 dollars? Not bad!
Yesterday, we had our first rehearsal with the conductor in a church in central Prague. I can't figure out what kind of church it is. Something about the Sacred Brethren? from what I can gather the Catholic faith has had a hard time here so it may be protestant. The sanctuary is square with a wrap around balcony and an organ on the second level. it is painted in shades of yellow and white and is equipped with very old wooden pews that are all scratched up and even have initials carved in them. The rehearsal went well. The conductor played the piano for the rehearsal and knows the Viennese operetta style very well. It's hard to explain what he was doing. Basically he was swinging the waltz beat, shortening the first beat of the measure and adding time to the second. We would probably refer to it as a jazz rhythm but I'm sure it's typical to the Viennese operetta style. this method gave the music a lilt and an elegance they don't even begin to teach us about in the States. I suspect our Flerdermaus's and Merry Widows are pretty sub-standard.
Today we rehearsed for our duo recital. Our accompanist met us at the hostel, she is a very attractive brunette who speaks very good english, and she took us to the appartment of a pianist friend of hers. It was located in a typical modern neighborhood off of a main street with a street car line. We went up a very dark, very institutional-looking stairway to the second floor and I'm not lying when I say I wondered if we'd been lead astray and were about ot be sold into white slavery! We were shown into what seemed to be a two room flat with a central vestibule. I wasn't sure where the kitchen was but it seemed the vestibule might also be the kitchen although I didn't see a refridgerator or a stove. There were shelves on two walls that heald dishes, a tea service dish towels. The piano was a very old Steinway that hadn't been tuned in donkey's years. In general the decor was VERY spartan and the whole place smelled very musty and old.
After the rehearsal I had intended to go tour Prague Castel but owing to my lingering jet lag and a blistering headache I got on the wrong tram! It was some time before I realized I was going AWAY from the castle and not TOWARD it. I finally change trams and came back down into old town but at that point I was EXTRA tired and my feet hurt so I found a starbucks and drank a latte. Sidebar: the barista give me a hard time because I gave her a thousand crown note which was all I had after my visit to the bankomat. Cashiers are famous here for giving you a hard time about almost everything. I just smiled great big and said, "SORRY!" I got a dirty look.
I'm going to try for the castle again tomorrow and also the Jewish Quarter which is on the north side of the Old Town. That's a saga unto itself so I'm sure I'll have lots to write about.
Talk to you, my small but loyal followers, soon!
P.S. I'm posting this without editing it. My appologies for typos and odd sentence structure.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
so my trip to the Czech Republic is closing in on me VERY FAST. We are in rehearsals for the operetta we'll be doing there and the memorization is freaking me out. I can't hurry it along, I know that, but it's hard to be patient with myself and not stress. It will all get tucked away in my head when it's good and ready and it will all come out of my head when it's good and ready. In the meantime, I'm going to carry my book around in rehearsals and if the other's don't like it then too bad. I need to stop stressing about it. Nothing is going to get accomplished by it. I just need to get over it.
We're in the midst of auditions for Title of Show. I think we have some options for guys and girls. I have never really been on this side of the table and I worry that I will upset my friends if I don't cast them. James goes through this all the time and I now know what it feels like up close and personal. I will say that I'm very happy that we have options as far as casting goes. We weren't sure going into the auditions how the chips would fall. I'm happy to say that I think we're going to have a wonderful cast regardless of who's in it, it's going to be great fun!
This is the first "show" I've directed. I've done the Crested Butte shows but those were musical reviews. This is my first "book" show. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do with it yet. For me it's a matter of just studying the script and seeing where my creative juices send me. I don't want to copy the broadway production but certain elements were so brilliant that I can't imagine not incorporating some version of them into our show. We're definitely going to do a series of projections for Monkeys and Playbills. I think we can use powerpoint, easy. My dear, funny friend Marianne Galloway has a collection of playbills numbering into the thousands that her grandparents bequeathed to her. She will let me borrow them so we can scan them and use the images for the projection sequence. YAY!!!!
There are several things I could rant about but it's late as I'm writing this and I want to go to bed. I'll start making a list and then I can address each point.
Just as a teaser, some of them are:
"What's up with girly gay men on stage, especially in Dallas?"
"The lack of customer service at any Wendy's drive thru."
"University music programs in general."
"the classical music 'business' and the disfunctional people who work within it. (I think I have to include myself in that group.)" "Am I the only one who didn't like both Next to Normal and Spring Awakening?"
We're in the midst of auditions for Title of Show. I think we have some options for guys and girls. I have never really been on this side of the table and I worry that I will upset my friends if I don't cast them. James goes through this all the time and I now know what it feels like up close and personal. I will say that I'm very happy that we have options as far as casting goes. We weren't sure going into the auditions how the chips would fall. I'm happy to say that I think we're going to have a wonderful cast regardless of who's in it, it's going to be great fun!
This is the first "show" I've directed. I've done the Crested Butte shows but those were musical reviews. This is my first "book" show. I'm not totally sure what I'm going to do with it yet. For me it's a matter of just studying the script and seeing where my creative juices send me. I don't want to copy the broadway production but certain elements were so brilliant that I can't imagine not incorporating some version of them into our show. We're definitely going to do a series of projections for Monkeys and Playbills. I think we can use powerpoint, easy. My dear, funny friend Marianne Galloway has a collection of playbills numbering into the thousands that her grandparents bequeathed to her. She will let me borrow them so we can scan them and use the images for the projection sequence. YAY!!!!
There are several things I could rant about but it's late as I'm writing this and I want to go to bed. I'll start making a list and then I can address each point.
Just as a teaser, some of them are:
"What's up with girly gay men on stage, especially in Dallas?"
"The lack of customer service at any Wendy's drive thru."
"University music programs in general."
"the classical music 'business' and the disfunctional people who work within it. (I think I have to include myself in that group.)" "Am I the only one who didn't like both Next to Normal and Spring Awakening?"
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