Excitement Builds

Sorry for the dearth of posts on my part over the last few days. As usual, the program book was more troublesome than I planned. But the files just finished uploading to the printer, so the hard part is done! Hopefully that means you'll be hearing more of me (and seeing more photos that I take at rehearsal)...

So there was some excitement at rehearsal on Saturday. Rehearsal of certain scenes had to be rearranged because our Pong (Joel Sorensen, right) had to dash out of Princeton to take the stage at the Metropolitan Opera! Turns out he was covering the role of Monastatos in the Met's production of Mozart's Magic Flute (conducted by James Levine), when he got a call that the regular Monastatos was sick and that Joel had to go on. So THAT's pretty cool, huh? I have to ask him what he thinks of the production - this one was directed by Julie Taymor (of Broadway's Lion King) and everyone I know either loves or hates the production. It's interesting how a certain directorial viewpoint can suddenly turn a traditional beloved opera into something controversial again.

Another fun thing on today's agenda is that Ray Aceto finally arrives (right). He had to come late to rehearsal in order to finish an engagement from Royal Opera, Covent Garden in London. So now we are finally complete! DJ (NJOT's Artistic Administrator) picked him up at the airport and brought him directly to rehearsals - how's THAT for some jet-lag!

So today's a pretty full day of rehearsals, from about 10am-6pm. Tomorrow we rehearse in the late afternoon and evening, but I'll probably swing by rehearsal and let you know how things are going. Too bad there's no WiFi there, or I'd publish directly from rehearsal, so you'd feel like you were right there with me!