Rehearsals begin!

We have begun! Yesterday was the first day of rehearsals for Turandot.

We started at 9:30am with a quick meet-and-greet session which gave everyone a chance to introduce themselves and also gave the staff time to explain the big things on the agenda. It sometimes really surprises me how small the opera world can really be. It seemed like almost everyone in that room has worked with everyone else at some point in their careers - it was really fun listening to them try to figure out when and where they knew each other from.

Anyway, as part of the introductions, Scott Altman (NJOT's Artistic Director) explained to the cast about the set up of the stage. We're doing a "concert staged" version of Turandot, which means that the orchestra, conductor, and chorus are always on stage; the singers are fully costumed and they act out the action at the front of the stage, but there are no big set pieces. So the singers have their backs to the conductor, which means that we have to have monitors to display a real-time video of the conductor so the singers can pick up his cues and tempos. This is a little unusual, so we're going to practice that this week... In the picture at the left, Scott explains to everyone what the set up will look like.

So yesterday was music rehearsal day, as is usually the case on the first day of an opera rehearsal period. Basically, all the singers sit around the conductor and pianist and sing through the whole opera to get an idea of what musical ideas the conductor has. On the right, we have a picture of Steven Mosteller (conductor - in the blue sweater) working on the beginning of Act II with our Ping (Anton Belov - on the far side), Pang (Jonathan Green - in the middle) and Pong (Joel Sorensen - closest to you).


The big thing on the agenda yesterday (at least in my world) was the photoshoot. We had photographers from the Princeton Packet and the Trenton Times scheduled to meet us at McCarter Theatre during the lunch break to take photos for some upcoming articles we have coming out (both scheduled for Friday, March 2). This was really fun we hadn't seen the costumes yet (designed by Patty Hibbert). On the left, Patty arranges the costumes during the shoot. (in addition to Ping, Pang and Pong, we have Stephen Lavonier as the Emperor and Barbara Shirvis as Liu). On the right is another shot during the shoot, this time also including Matthew Burns as the Mandarin. (and, by the way, yes that is me on the right holding up some lighting equipment).

So it was a long day, as you can see by Anton Belov's expression on the left. But it was a lot of fun, too, and we got a lot accomplished. In a few minutes I'm going to head over to rehearsals again and see what's going on today. Today starts the staging of the opera, so that will really be exciting.

More soon!