Tuesday, January 27th
I am lying in bed barely able to move as I threw my back out yesterday afternoon. While I do that every few years over something minor (this time a coughing spell), this one is worse than usual. I am doped up on various muscle relaxants and pain killers and trying not to move any more than I have to. If I'm on schedule, I'll be in misery for another couple of days, able to get around a bit by Thursday and Friday and be OK for the weekend. I may have to carry a cane and avoid stairs for another week or so. That's not easy to do in our house...Turandot was a significant success artistically. All the pieces came together and gelled properly and it was great to be part of a chorus backing up some truly fine singers with national and international careers in the principal roles. Veronica, the Liu, was our house guest during her time here and scored a major success with her arias. Roy, the Calaf, was a scream. His favorite activity being to turn upstage to the chorus and make faces at us and try to get us to corpse. I was in awe of Lori's Turandot. Her performance made reacting to her extremely easy. I'm going to see if I can collect up some photos and post them. Lush sets and costumes.
I feel I was a bit out of my depth musically with it all, but mostly because I was brought in so late to the process. Trying to learn the whole thing in two weeks (and the chorus is onstage about 2/3 of the show) was a bit much. I got the notes and vowel sounds down, but never did get the diction in some of the faster passages. Next time I do opera chorus, I do it from the beginning. Traviata starts rehearsal next week but I cannot do that one because of prior work commitments. They are doing Aida next January and I will sign up for that early. Maybe they'll let me ride the elephant.
I finished my promotion packet and it is on its way for review by the powers that be. I am keeping my fingers crossed. As I am not in a tenurable position and it more or less is just a courtesy title change, it should fly. At least I hope so as I don't want to go through that again. The next big work challenge would be recertifying in internal medicine. I've been away from some of it for so long that I'm not even sure I can do it. I'll have a long discussion with the bosses before embarking on that course.
Politically Incorrect Cabaret has two more rehearsals before it performs in February here and in Montevallo followed by a March date in Huntsville. It's in pretty good shape. I was going to pull my costumes out of storage today, but as I cannot move, that's going to have to wait. As long as it's done by Friday.
posted by Andy @ 7:30 AM
