One does want a hint of color

          During an interesting work lunch hour conversation the other day, I got thinking about a couple of things that I'm grateful for having been raised with. This mainly came up because of articles about the desperate and terrible backstabbing in the social spheres of suburban moms . Why is this relevant to my life currently? Well, it's not really, but B and I would love to own a home some day, and if my mother continues to give us so much stuff, we are going to need more square footage than we can afford in an increasingly expensive city. I found myself recently asking my cousins which Boston suburbs their friends live in where they do not want to kill themselves. They actually came up with some ideas, so that is heartening.

          In the article linked here, (and there are more of its ilk, according to my co-workers) the narrator moves from Jamaica Plain, (where I live currently), to the greater Boston suburb of Wayland after her twins are born. She then catalogs the deceit and one-upping that take place on the regular in her new town. Everyone has a distinct persona and caste in her perceived social strata of the suburbs.  She writes about new moms in this generation being away from their families and needing to seek out support systems for themselves and their children, which is fair enough, and there is a big theme here of women feeling judged more than ever before on their child-rearing decisions.  But while I understand that she's doing an exposé on these social groups, it seems she was already clearly fascinated by their intricacies. To me, it seems she was in the mindset of fitting in and/or making a name for herself ahead of her relocation.  This all requires more energy than I could muster for people with hierarchical social agendas.

          In my mind, when you fall victim to shallow and competitive social circles, there's a prerequisite for that: it's called giving a shit. You can only fall prey to people's judgement if you care too much about it. I'm not excusing how these other women behaved, but I suspect that had this woman stayed in Jamaica Plain, she would have felt judged too- it just would have been based on what organic market she chose to shop in for her children, and what yoga studio she went to. Sometimes people are going to judge you anyway, and your only choice is not to care. I have good friends whose hearts I can take with me no matter where I choose to move.  And I believe a community can always be made without the harshness of a Mean Girls mindset.

          And here's where Mother's Day comes in for me this week.  For escaping this particular brand of caring, I can take almost no personal credit. The accolade in this case can mostly go to my mom. I may not have been exactly on board with her fashion or social choices as a child, but I can safely say that my mother, probably partially consciously, but mostly just because of her living example of eccentricity, contributed to self confidence in her progeny. When she showed up at my elementary school to pick me up in vintage fur coat, beret, knee socks, and clogs, she may have only had an inkling about the example she was setting. But while some other moms in my suburban Connecticut hometown wore their matching designer sweatsuits to attend coffee and the gym together, my mom was too busy to give a crap. 

Ice skates swapped out for clogs in this photo

          Aside from the fact that my mom worked fulltime running a business, other contributing factors to her sense of self were that she is slightly older than the other moms, and grew up a few minutes away. So in addition to just being busy all the time, she already had a group of friends in neighboring towns and perhaps a more established sense of self. She also came from a generation that dressed up a bit more, and you would be correct in assuming that as a child, I was perpetually overdressed because my mother remembers a time when you wore a hat and gloves for train travel. The other fact is that she is just a bit odd, that one.* She just likes her vintage fur coat collection and you weren't going to stop her from wearing one- even in downtown New Haven with the threat of Yalies pouring red paint on her. She probably didn't often stop to think that her zealous accessorizing habit, for example, was actually teaching her daughter a valuable lesson, but I'm sure she's aware of it on one level. And the idea of playing subtle mind games or dancing around social topics like the women portrayed in the aforementioned article is completely foreign to her.  She has never been one to mince words. If she loves someone, she will do so fiercely and make no bones about it, and if she doesn't understand someone's particular worldview, she will accept that that's just who that person is and that's fine. Her ability to care about others is great, but her ability to care about others' judgement is not. And we'll give my dad some credit for accepting her weirdness and also not giving a flying poo about what the community at large thought of his somewhat colorful wife, (also, he's had his moments himself...) For all of this I am quite grateful.

Last day of school in second grade.  While the other kids wore t-shirts and things they could run around in, can you guess which one I am?

          So as we approach Mother's Day, this is one big shout-out to my mom. Thanks for not giving a shit, in the best of ways.

*I know, I know, some of this oddness is probably hereditary.  

An Actual Ukrainian Picnic

          So, the blog has a new look.  You can thank Ben Guilfoy for his design help and my mom for that classic photo.  She really does seem to be mastering new technology now.  And by that I mean, she went to Staples and had them scan the photo for her...  

          This is a real Ukrainian picnic, not the kind my family and I always joke about that involves cleaning the whole house; dusting, scrubbing the floors, taking down the curtains, and beating the mattresses and rugs.  The woman on the far right is my great-grandmother, Anna.  This is in Ansonia, Connecticut, not actually Ukraine, but it's with people from the "old neighborhood", (all Ukrainians).  My grandmother is not in this picture but she was about 13 years old at this time.  And funny enough, even though my grandma and I didn't grow up in the same town, this field is less than a half a mile from the house I grew up in where my parents still live.  

          My immigrant great-grandparents didn't have a lot of money, and my great-grandfather asked his wife if she would like him to save up and buy her a pearl necklace like the ones her friends were wearing.  In reply, she said she already had her pearl.  He's the baby right there in her arms- my great-uncle.  Sadly, he was killed serving in WWII.

          I have only vague memories of my great-grandmother, who lived to age 93, but I've heard a lot of good stories about both of my great-grandparents.  My great-grandfather worked in a factory and when he came home in the evening, he fed and played with the kids while she did her sewing.  My great-grandma was a talented seamstress and she said the sewing work she did for others in her lifetime could have filled an entire room.  So, they were a relatively modern two-income household out of necessity.  While her work was technically domestic, she still used it to earn money.  It's funny how we pretend that women always were contained to their own domestic spheres, and that men had no hand in the household, but it was really only after the 1940's, when more women had the chance to replace men outside the home, that people started really getting their feathers ruffled about that sort of thing.  Like so many trends in history, people become upset by change and hold on to some imaginary ideal in the wake of it.  Poverty made it a necessity for women and children to work in factories through the nineteenth century after all, but WWII seemed to make people hyper-aware of this homemaker ideal that probably didn't exist so strictly before.

          From everything I've heard, Anna was a pretty tough lady.  I seem to remember a story about her delivering a baby in their apartment building when the local doctor was unable to make his way over there.  She claimed that the women in Ukraine just gave birth right in the middle of their work in the fields, and when they were done, they would take a bale of wheat back into the house with them so they wouldn't waste a trip.  I think that particular anecdote gets more extreme with every generation it goes down though...  

          But really, after her father died, she had no choice at age 16 but to head to America.  She never saw her mother again but she still found a way to make a life for herself here and loved her adopted country.  She lost three children to disease and war and still managed to carry on.  With the help of my grandma, who taught her parents and their friends in a citizenship class, they all became citizens and were very proud to vote in America.  

          From Anna's account as well, the Ukraine had always been a besieged upon place, shifting between whichever country claimed to own it at the time.  This doesn't excuse the mess over there now of course.  In the face of adversity, I wish the Ukrainian people the kind of toughness my family had, although my hope for the future is that they won't need it.

“If you want to be a great receptionist, just get a degree in theatre"

          At the risk of coming off as new-agey or "woo woo”, this post is about one’s path or one’s calling. It’s about the idea of a job vs. a career. This is something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately for myself, but also something my friends and colleagues seem to have on their minds as well.

          Just what defines a career? I think of it as the thing that we work toward and define ourselves with. I think, for myself, that my reception position is my job, but my passion— the career that I work toward— is my singing, (and perhaps more and more these days, my writing). In a chat with a friend who is actually a published writer, he said he didn't consider his writing to be his career. His nine to five job is for a local newspaper. He didn’t think the writing, which is not his main source of income, was his career, even though it is more fulfilling for him and he considers it his passion. So if we do other things for income, or get caught up in other causes, does this mean we aren’t our passion somehow? It no longer is part of our personal definition? Why do we devalue all the things we do accomplish just because they aren't included in our idea of the dream? We all do it. For a long time I’d see a friend with a traditional traveling singing career and think; That’s the way it’s supposed to be. But just because we aren’t sitting at a typewriter in a beach house living the supposed life of a novelist, or showing our artwork at a gallery opening, or backstage prepping for a Met performance, we aren’t successful? Sometimes I think our “calling” is much deeper than that. It can bend and flex with our lives and our spirit.

          I have so many singer friends who do amazing work singing, teaching, fundraising, and marketing opera and classical music in Boston and beyond. On a regular basis, they are an important cog in the larger wheels that expose new audiences to what I consider to be one of the greatest expressive art forms. These colleagues are doing that whether they are the performers, rehearsal pianists, stage techs or administrators. They are doing this even if it takes place after their nine to five jobs. Some of them truly work their tails off with their combined weekly activities. For so many of us though— and this is the way of the artist— this isn’t good enough. That drive to constantly create and improve can sometimes be our worst enemy because it can make us unaware of all the good we do already.

          Just the other week, several friends did an amazing concert at a local church. The program had great singing and playing and a wonderful musical variety. It had its light-hearted, entertaining moments and its incredibly moving moments. And because they are professionals, they were paid as part of a recital series. Was it Carnegie Hall? No, although one of the singers has sung there. It was a small church even, but I know for a fact that several people in that room had never heard live singing like that before, and they were really delightfully surprised, as well as captivated.

          Another friend was recently quoting a famous tenor in a masterclass. While a student at BU, this friend remembers said tenor telling students that, there was no way of telling, they may all be lucky and make it as opera singers full-time. (And there were likely few singers in that class that day who suspected they might not make it as full-time, in demand performers.) But he also said he knew opera singers who were in finance, education, HR, development, and the list goes on. He emphasized that these people were always opera singers even if it didn't become their main source of income someday. There are unlimited examples of this in artistic history. The composer Charles Ives was a high-earning insurance executive in Connecticut. His colleagues, I would guess, probably had very little idea of the impact and influence he was to have on American classical music and the American canon, all in his spare time. Phillip Glass was a plumber and Anton Chekhov and William Carlos Williams were physicians. I’m sure they had a rigorous schedule for creation and it makes me wonder when they slept of course. We can’t forget that accomplishment does take hard work after all, but our everyday triumphs, however small they may seem at times, are worthy.

          I worked with this fabulously talented and experienced conductor in Italy. He had an unbelievably deep understanding of opera’s music, language, and text. He conducted without scores in fact, because he had committed the major works so perfectly to memory. He quite memorably reduced most of us to weeping puddles with poignant, illness related stories the first time we staged the final act of Bohème. One of his other stories that I found very moving was about his own early career. One night he was talking to a group of us young singers at the local café. We all knew his uncle was a very famous conductor— a favorite of Maria Callas’. He was talking of his struggles as a young man to get work. He had since gone on to conduct at every major house in the world except the Met and LaScala, but at that time, things were looking bleak. His uncle told him; “Talent and skill are like a gem in your hand Joseph. You have a gem in your hand. I know it. I have seen it. Just because the world may not ever have the chance to see it does not mean it is not there. You will carry it around with you your whole life.” I think we get to choose every day whether that gem is a heavy burden or whether it is a shining light.

Losing my gym membership virginity

          If you are wondering about my progress and adventures at my newly-joined gym, I can report that I have been back to the gym— more than once even! And no, it was not just to use the spa or to get a massage, although I did that once too. I had my complimentary personal training sessions and the very nice man who was assigned to train me told me that I was the first person who really didn’t feel a need to know her BMI stats.

“But what if I refuse to hear those numbers?”

“Uh… really? No one’s ever done that before…”

          He summed up their overall impressions for me though and the results pointed to just a general flabby sloth which in no way surprised me. I really didn’t hate the training sessions either, (although I could barely sit on the toilet for two days after so many squats). I just don’t see myself shelling out a bunch of money for them. What I have been doing is getting on the elliptical and when you can space out to a sitcom for a half hour, it’s really not bad at all. Ideally this would happen two or three times a week, but let’s not get crazy here. If I make it to the elliptical once a week and then to an exercise class once, I’m extraordinarily proud of myself. As for the rest of the week? That’s what mall-walking is for. I try to convince myself that this all falls under the category of "me time", when I devote a moment to the care of myself, but that line of logic is hard when "me-time" could also mean taking some time away from the gym to say, shop or buy a hot chocolate. "Me time" can just be interpreted in so many different ways.

          In an effort to keep my mind open and try new things, I decided to try Zumba! I had been meaning to try it for a long time, but again, that registered trademark exclamation point really turned me off. Finally, a friend said she would go with me to my first class. Much of my Zumba! experience with friends so far is composed of my making incredulous faces into the mirror at them as I stumble through the choreography. It turns out several years of “Movement for Singers” classes have still left me with a surprisingly poor ability to follow and remember sequences, so I flail about enthusiastically until I can get back into the swing of things. Our smiley instructor seems to think any manner of ills can be made up for with enthusiasm, and if that gets my heart rate up, so be it.

          Now, I had heard up until this point that Zumba is quite fun in a sexy way, but I’ve discovered it’s sort of the 50 Shades of Grey of exercise classes. This is to say that it seems like Zumba is sexy if you’re a 50 year old housewife. It’s all about white people looking dorky as they wiggle their hips to a track of Latin remixes. And I’m certainly not above 50 year old housewives— most of them are probably in way better shape than I am anyway. (I will admit to being above reading poorly written smut though.) I’m sure there are instructors out there who can channel Patrick Swayze and make Zumba fiery, but there would still be people like me following along, trying in vain to channel their inner Latinas.

          Now, as for gym clothes, I believe it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who warned to distrust any institution which requires the purchase of new clothes. And in this case, I agree with him. I just really hate the idea that I have to buy special ankle socks to go to the gym, which are not useful for any other purpose in our chilly New England climate. My organic leggings with the holes in them and my pajama tops however, were not going to cut it any longer. I had to suck it up and go to Marshalls for some inexpensive gym threads. It is amazing how I really believed that this wardrobe update might be the key to my confidence in those full-length mirrors, but I assure you, I look just as ridiculous in my coordinated top and pants as I do in anything else.

          Perhaps in a few months, when I know what I’m doing a bit more, I can stop laughing at my own dance moves… but I doubt it. What keeps me going on a party dance floor is my unabashed confidence in my ability to shake it to late 90’s hip hop, dim lights, and not a lot else. I still remember the day when our movement teacher paused with trepidation before telling me that for my second year in grad school, she was placing me in the beginning class again. Someone else might have been shocked or deflated but not I. No hard feelings— I always had fun just the same.

Delayed New Year Thoughts

Since it's another snow day for some people in Boston, here is something I started on January 2nd:

          It's the second day of a new year today. It's a snow day. My office, which really is supervised by a highly empathetic group of people, is closed since we are expecting a 14 inch accumulation by tomorrow. The school where B teaches on Thursday is closed. It's the kind of day where you celebrate in the morning, full of nostalgia for childhood snow days. But it's the kind of day that can sometimes make the husband feel restless, and it's the kind of day that by February usually has me lamenting the "oppressiveness of winter". But today I'm sitting by a very brown Christmas tree- this one, while very beautiful at first, really didn't hold up well. I usually like to leave them up until Ukrainian Christmas, (January 6th-Epiphany), but I think we will have to ditch this one very soon.

         It still smells like Christmas in here though. It is warm. Even with the steady stream of snow falling, our landlord replaced our windows in this 1920's era build and they successfully keep the draft out. I made bacon and eggs and drank kefir for breakfast because despite my self-identification as sacrificing artist, we can afford things like expensive probiotic smoothies for my not-so-hot digestion. One of our big problems in this beloved charming apartment that we rent is that we have so many people in our lives who love us and want to shower us with representations of love, that we have too many things. This hasn't stopped since our wedding registry. I'm looking at the floor surrounding our tree and wondering where we will put all of our Christmas gifts. We've received some beautiful and useful gifts, including this ipad I am typing on. We also received a few bizarre ones, like a musical tie for B, several tons of coffee, and more black socks, (from my mother of course), than I have storage for. It seems absurd that just two people will need more space than this eventually, but that is where things are headed I suppose, and I don't yet know if that will take us to the suburbs or not. I guess that's ok.

          In my lap is a blanket that my aunt knitted for my grandma, which she made sure I received after my grandmother passed away five years ago. My grandmother's chairs, which I had recovered, sit in each corner of my living room.

          B shoveled the sidewalk this morning and is making a parsnip curry soup and the warm spice smell is amazing. I slept until 11:00 today. I know I won't always have this luxury, never mind this ability.

          These are the kinds of reflections I'm trying to make on this New Year. This past year, my musical and writing aspirations may not have gone as well as I would have liked. The health of my in-laws and my family has been on my mind a lot and I wonder if some of the problems of my having older parents in particular are going to show up earlier for me than my peer group. The frustrating politics of our nation currently have myself and many feeling quite helpless.

          Every night as we are going to sleep, B and I recap the day and play "Roses and Thorns". I had heard somewhere that this is a game the Obamas' play at the dinner table to talk about the day's pros and cons and since B and I both have always been drawn to the more poetic in life, we adopted it as well. The tiny amendment we made to it is that we only bring up one thorn for every three roses. Most of the time, our regrets as we finish the day have to do with the artistic work we did not complete. I want to sing more yes, but more and more I want to write and create more. B always feels he could have practiced singing more, or at least more efficiently. He has become more serious about pursuing his doctorate in the last year and I am very proud of the work he has done toward that end, but it almost never seems enough for him.

          Last night we watched a replay of Tina Fey's Mark Twain award ceremony where they talk about her years at SNL staying up until 2am, and carrying her sketches around with her for tweaking at a moment's notice. B and I felt immediately uncomfortable sitting on the couch like a bunch of laze-abouts. I am reading a biography of Joni Mitchell's creative journey. I have been obsessed lately with an interview she did for Canadian television, in which she outlines her constant desire to be an innovator and discoverer. I recognize this desire in myself as an artist who has always admired composers and writers who tread new ground above all others, but the lack of this in my own life's work is startling and frustrating. Both of these examples, as well as many other inspirational people have made me wonder what I've been doing with my time. To quote Tom Leher in concert: "I mean, by the time Mozart was my age, he was dead." Creation and art involve hard work, despite our current culture's idea that a talent-filled phenom is just born that way. Writing a significant body of something I can be proud of involves a regimented routine of just what I am doing right now- sitting, reflecting, and writing. It also involves seeking new venues for writing, which I have been meaning to do for some time.

          At the same time, while the husband and I make donations every year to organizations that support the homeless and helpless in our society, what have I done in the past year, aside from voting, to really advocate for the oppressed and needy? We, who really have been lucky our whole lives often forget that the ability to create and pursue our goals is in itself a luxury and it seems callous to watch the gap widen between the rich and poor and not do anything about it. I have also always admired Joan Baez, not just because my parents listened to her in the car all the time, and not because she was an innovator but because she used and still uses her voice for social advocacy. Even if it means volunteering money and/or time for a political organization making contributions toward change or singing for a retirement community every once in a while, aren't those at least meaningful in some way?

          So this year, I want to create more and help more. Let me channel my southern ancestry and say that y’all can help. If you like something I write this year, post a comment here and let me know if a post is slam dunk, (sports lingo- I get it sometimes!). Also, let me know if you think something is a dud. In my efforts to be more prolific, I expect more posts to be failures, and I will be embracing that. Hold me accountable. If you don’t hear from me for a while, give me a nudge toward a more creative 2014! This is a start toward one less thorn for me today.

Sound of Music LIVE! And the verdict is...

          For the The Sound of Music LIVE! performance last night, much like when I saw Les Miserables in the movie theater, I gave myself a pep talk about turning off my critical singer ears and tried to just go in with an attitude of enjoying it. I succeeded mostly! I thought the set was lovely, and the use of the cameras in what had to be an enormous soundstage was inventive and interesting. I felt uncomfortable when someone had a comic beat and there was no audience laughter, but that’s just a byproduct of this sort of mix of theater and television I suppose. What was more palpable was a sense that a lot of viewers were hoping everything would go smoothly, which is part of the fun of live television.

          First off, as I said in my first post on the subject, I am familiar with the stage version so I came to this with perhaps fewer expectations directing relating to the film than the general public might have. In the movie version, songs were omitted and added and rearranged so if you were hoping for a remake of the film, this was not that. I thought Carrie Underwood’s singing was good. Some of my more purist friends thought it was too belty, but it honestly didn't offend me. It was really her acting that was distracting. It fell flat and monotone and made me actually feel sorry and worried for her. That alone at least points to the fact that she seemed to be trying harder than say, Russell Crowe in Les Mis. One of her more solid moments—that reached anywhere near the emotional height the role of Maria demands— was her confrontation scene with Captain von Trapp, but even that toward the end began to come off as a list of lines about each child that she had to get through. The part that really irritated me was that their sexual tension and ultimate romance wasn’t earned and seemed too random. Even worse, her realization that the Captain returned her love later was totally without any readable signs of real surprise, relief, or joy.

          Underwood’s best scene may have been the emotion she showed when Audra McDonald was, of course, killing it in “Climb Ev’ry Mountain”. And who wouldn't tear up during that? Thank goodness they didn't write dialogue for Maria after that number. Let me tell you, Audra sang that shit, but she also had a very clear intention of making Maria understand what she had to do throughout that part of the scene. Without that, the second time through the song is just another verse. Making the words of these songs that we’ve all heard a hundred times fresh and spontaneous is what distinguished her and the other wonderful supporting actors in the cast. And take it from me, not every singer is a natural-born actor. I can tell you from experience just how many hours singers spend in a Conservatory setting working on conveying clear intentions from the beginning to the end of the song or aria. And Audra articulated as much in an interview beforehand:

          "Just focus on what Mother Abbess is really trying to do. And what she's trying to do is give Maria some serious tough love and kicking her out. She's saying no, you can't run from your problems. This is opportunity in your life knocking on the door saying here we are. Here is your life. This is your destiny. And I'm not going to let you run away from it because it seems scary. So if I focus on that I will be okay. If I focus on; 'oh this is a hard song, I hope I don't screw it up,' then I'll screw up."

          This kind of dramatic commitment is not spontaneously manufactured. Just as Audra says, it takes thought and work in advance to make it seem spontaneous.

          Laura Benanti and Christian Borle were both great as Elsa and Uncle Max respectively. I've always found the stage version to be more foreboding in its political implications than the movie, and they both contributed well to this sensibility. Bernanti, (surprise, surprise!) has actually played Maria in a Broadway revival and really outshone the leads vocally and dramatically. Lisel and Rolf proved to be good triple threats, negotiating well through the acting, singing, and dancing. As with any good production of this show, the kids were cute but I didn't get the sense that it was all about them either, which I prefer. Stephen Moyer was a decent Captain. I’m not familiar with his character on True Blood, but I thought his singing was good enough and he at least brought a decent amount of conviction to the character. Even if he wasn’t the most dashing man in the role, he was still acting circles around his romantic counterpart. It seems unfair to compare to Christopher Plummer but maybe if we could sense that Moyer secretly hated the family fun of it all too, earning his love would have seemed more worthwhile somehow.

          Overall, would I have cast someone else as Maria? Sure. But then, this particular production was viewed by millions of Americans last night. You can’t say the same for other modern adaptations of musical theater pieces. Lincoln Center’s performance of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel aired on PBS fairly recently and starred amazing singing actors Kelli O’Hara, Nathan Gunn, Stephanie Blythe and others. And I seem to be the only person I know who watched it— and loved it! Seriously, there isn’t too much footage of it online, but if you order the whole show, I will guarantee a more satisfying experience than last night’s muddled one, (Carousel's confusing anti-hero Billy Bigelow aside). Still, it’s no mistake that the network chose a Carrie Underwood and combined it with this ever-popular, multi-generational piece*. Last evening's performance ran on anticipation and controversy as much as it did on the multi-million dollar budget and I for one, have enjoyed the public discussion of the arts it brought about thoroughly. Hopefully, the hype it received can pave the way for more exciting projects like it. The public is abuzz and the networks should take advantage.

* We all know just how popular The Sound of Music is, but to me personally, nothing emphasizes this more than family reaction when I played Maria in a musical review. My grandmother kept the tape of the performance perpetually in her VCR so she could regale visitors with it. Did she ever show them my graduate recital? My performances in La boheme? Nope. Friends and acquaintances were always forced to watch me prancing around in a dirndl with a gaggle of kids singing "Do-Re-Mi".

We, the people of the theatre, call it "The Sound of Mucus"

          When you have an expertise in singing, you find that on days like today, when a remake of the stage version of The Sound of Music goes live for one night on television, people assume you are excited for it. I will not lie. I am excited for it, but maybe not for the reasons that people would think. The fact that the country is anxiously awaiting a musical theater piece, despite its age, is no small thing. Many are even DVR-ing it and having Sound of Music parties, as though it were a suspenseful sporting event. (No you say? Just my friends?) The piece after all is an American classic. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote songs that were so iconic, that Austrians came up to them telling them that they had sung “Edelweiss” as children, 'but in the original German of course'. It's amazing to see people so enthusiastically embrace a live performance of the stage version. What I am less excited about for tonight is the choice of casting.

          I, like many opera singers who started out as musical theater nerds, have a long-held love for The Sound of Music. I am lucky enough to have had a mother who exposed me to many classic American musicals so it was a distinct obsession at an earlier age as well. I can sing every line of course. I still remember being at the Cape with singer friends when we stumbled upon it on cable and stayed up until 2am watching it. And despite the fact that he hated the film, I still have a penchant for men dressed in Austrian garb because of Christopher Plummer’s Captain von Trapp. I was in the The Sound of Music in high school as Sister Margaretta and I still think the opening strains of the abbey music to be some of the most beautiful in all of musical theater. I know that just because I became a singer, I was not the only girl in America who dreamed of singing at the top of her lungs in the Alps someday.

          There are many things I have learned in my years pursuing a stage career though, (not the least of which is that dancing nuns are always hilarious). But one of these granules of knowledge is that it’s usually a mistake to cast a celebrity over an experienced professional in the field. I am not trying to knock Carrie Underwood, of American Idol fame for what she is. She can sing, but she is far from an experienced theatre professional. She is a country singer. She has established herself as a great country singer even, but in my mind, that qualifies her to maybe play Nellie Forbush in South Pacific or someone in Oklahoma. As the classic Austrian character of Maria, full of spunk and insight into the hearts of a struggling family? I’m not buying it… yet. So that decision alone just points to strange casting. Lately I’ve heard people say in her defense that she used to sing musical theatre. So did I, but I certainly would not be comfortable doing a live broadcast of the lead in a three hour musical! The only evidence I can find of her having done live theatre is the "Northeastern State University's Downtown Country show in Tahlequah". Again, not sold that she will live up to her predecessors Mary Martin and Julie Andrews vocally or stylistically, but maybe she will surprise me.

          Unfortunately, Hollywood and other like-minded producers would rather throw in a big name than find someone who actually does live theater for a living, and I think the public is poorer for it. Let’s take the example of my in-laws’ trip to New York a few years ago. They tried to get rush tickets to see A Little Night Music starring Catherine Zeta-Jones on Broadway and were at first disappointed that her understudy was performing instead that night. The box office worker told them; “That’s really for the best. Her understudy is much better.” Catherine Zeta-Jones is a beautiful movie star and all, and she did a bang-up job in the movie Chicago, but the NYTimes ripped her performance of Desiree in A Little Night Music to shreds because she was essentially playing her as Velma in Chicago. She lacked the heart that Desiree should have and her vocal stamina did not impress either.

          We have this American obsession with not only Hollywood celebrities, but also quick rises to fame. There’s no wonder a host of people through the years have asked me if I will ever audition for American Idol or The Voice. There are just so many ways to answer these questions. For one thing, that’s not the kind of singing I’m focused on. I didn’t attend New England Conservatory to sing pop music with a microphone. If I had wanted that, I would have gone to Berklee, which most people assume I went to anyway when they hear I studied music in Boston. (Newsflash: Berklee is a great school for pop and jazz, but not classical music. Newsflash: I sing classical music.) I sing recitals and opera, meaning a specific type of training that does not use a microphone, and therefore takes years of vocal and language study. If the cable networks created a reality show where at the end of a competition, a talented, studied, classical singer had an opportunity to sing in one of the best opera houses in America, then we could talk. In the meantime, the Metropolitan Opera Guild has been holding regional auditions for their annual competition for decades to the same purpose, just without the same size national audience. There certainly is no dearth of talented and dedicated classical singers struggling to make it in the professional world in this economy though, so any networks reading: feel free to create a reality series on the subject.

          But there are also inherent problems with this model of competition, particularly when the judges' panel is often made up of producers or one-hit wonders. Do I enjoy watching American Idol or The Voice on occasion? Sure. But for further discussion on how these shows are contributing to the idea that talent simply springs forth to impress us and doesn’t need work or even basic knowledge of the song lyrics or composer, see what Harry Connick Jr. had to say about the singers when he was on the show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QKZ_xp4va0

          I have always loved Harry Connick Jr. but now I love him even more for challenging these singers to be artists creating an emotional experience instead of just vocal fireworks. There’s a reason there was talk shortly thereafter about the network hiring him as a judge for the show. We have this knee jerk reaction to elitism these days, but a connection to text and working knowledge of their genre are what earn Connick and artists with decades-long careers when others are just a flash in the pan. A musicology teacher of mine said that she met Bruce Springsteen and he had a jaw-dropping music library as well as a staggering working knowledge of American folk, bluegrass, and rock traditions. There’s a reason they call him the Boss…

          The show tonight will have some saving graces— the fabulously talented, Juilliard trained, and stage-experienced Audra MacDonald will be playing the role of the Mother Abbess, even if she is arguably a bit young for it. I saw her live in Porgy and Bess in Cambridge before it went to Broadway and it was honestly one of the greatest performances I have seen in the last few years.

          Now all this being said, as my one friend points out, at least Carrie Underwood will be doing all of her own singing, unlike the old Hollywood model. So again, I will give her a fair shot. When I was young, I discovered that Marni Nixon did all the singing voices for movie versions of The King and I, West Side Story, My Fair Lady, and An Affair to Remember. And she imitated each actress’s speaking habits surprisingly well. She must have been some sort of troll to not have been put on the silver screen right? Not so. She also played one of the featured nuns in the movie version of, you guessed it, The Sound of Music. Dubbing her angelic voice for musicals was simply something Nixon did, with no credit at the time, while she pursued her opera and concert career, (a fairly successful one I might add). So maybe she lacked “star quality” or a name, but she sure had the know-how. But then, sometimes the only thing separating an experienced, well-versed, non-celebrity from a star is a spotlight. Now that’s the kind of quick rise to fame I could get behind.