St. Louis Auditions

Well, it is really rainy here in STL.  I am very sad that I can't go looking around the town today, especially going to Busch Stadium where the Cardinals play (they are my favorite baseball team) and to see the arch and all the other stuff I should do in St. Louis.

Anyway, I made it into St. Louis last night, and it just freaks me out that the sun goes down so early out here, in Kansas we are closer to the time zone change so it is still light out later than it is here.  With it being overcast, it is pitch black by about 4:45pm!  But, I stayed in a Best Western Hotel, and it is supposedly a non-smoking Hotel, which is what I need because smoke irritates my voice.  Well, at about 10 last night, I started to smell cigarette smoke and it lasted through the night; that was very annoying. At any rate, when I woke up I just had some phlegm problems, mostly from the weather changes, and luckily I didn't have a runny nose from the smoke - I would have been very mad if did.

I woke up about 5 hours before I had to sing, drank some hot water from the coffee pot, hummed for a long time, put on a green tie this time (I wore blue to the last one), and packed up and checked out.  Then I started driving with the Garmin's help to the Opera Theatre of St. Louis.  Well, luckily I'm super early to most anything I do, because this time the Garmin took me to the wrong spot.  Following the Garmin, I found myself winding my way through dirt alleys to a Franciscan Monk Seminary where I parked and asked the reception lady where the Opera Theatre is.  Well both of these are on Hazel Ave. but Hazel Ave. is only a few hundred feet long and there is a gigantic seminary where the theatre should be.  I later found out that there are two completely different Hazel Avenues in St. Louis.  She printed me off a map and I got to my audition - which was running early - just in time to sing a little bit and then it was my turn.

The facilities at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis were awesome.  Everything was brand new and the accoustics of the practice rooms were amazing.  I am not singing any arias from any of the operas they are doing, so I decided to sing Ecco ridente.  I like to brag that if I sing it all the way through like it is written with all the most challenging cadenzas, of the hundreds of notes I would have sang, 67 would be G4 or above (in layman's terms - 67 notes would be really high).  Well, there are so many ways to sing the piece and we had a time limit so I cut out some of the middle so in the end I probably sang between 30-50 notes at G4 or higher, but in any case - that is a lot of high notes.  Well, I sang it really well, one of the best times I have ever sang that aria.  Funny thing was that they were not ever concentrating on me, they were talking and typing the whole time - not loudly, but you could tell that they were thinking about something.  So, I finished my audition and now I am waiting to see if they want me to sing again.  We were given a sheet that said that they may want to hear you again if they still need to hear more to make their decision, and if so they would let us know later today.  So, with that said, all of us auditioning are out of the loop for the moment as to whether or not we're singing again, if we're singing tomorrow, if so what time, when will we find out, etc.  So, for the mean time, I drove to a Borders and am utilizing their free WIFI, so if you get bored, please facebook chat with me!

Anyway, as for who is auditioning and how many.  In short, I don't know.  But most of them are older than I am, and some significantly older than I am, but my young looks count for something I hope, plus I bought some new hair gel, so maybe that'll win someone's vote.  But, in the end, all of that is pretty trivial, it's all about how well you sing in Opera.  Musical Theatre is a little bit different in that aspect; but in Opera the musicality and performance of the music are what matters most.  Hopefully I gave them what they wanted to hear.

I will update again if my situation changes, but for now I will just be relaxing in a book store.