A Program

As my season gets off to a start, one of the very first projects I focus on is a short US recital tour in October and November - the very same recital tour that Myra and I were about to rehearse for when she went into labor the other day. The tour culminates in a very exciting event - our Carnegie Hall recital debut in Weill Hall. Much of my focus on the blog over the next two months will be focusing on the preparation for the recitals. Below is the program:

HENRY PURCELL

If music be the food of love (vers. 3)

If love’s a sweet passion

I attempt from loves sickness*

There’s not a swain of the plain*

Not all my torments

Sweeter than roses

*realizations by Benjamin Britten

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo, Op. 22

Sonnetto XVI – Sì come nella penna e nell’inchiostro

Sonnetto XXXI – A che più debb’io mai l’intensa voglia

Sonnetto XXX – Veggio co’bei vostri occhi un dolci lume

Sonnetto LV – Tu sa’ ch’io so, signor mie, che tu sai

Sonnetto XXXVII – Rendete a gli occhi miei

Sonnetto XXXII – S’un casto amor, s’una pietà superna

Sonnetto XXIV – Spirto ben nato, in cui si specchia e vede

INTERMISSION

BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Winter Words, Op. 52

At day-close in November

Midnight on the Great Western (or ‘The Journeying Boy')

Wagtail and Baby (A Satire)

The Little Old Table

The Choirmaster’s Burial (or ‘The Tenor Man’s Story’)

Proud Songsters (Thrushes, Finches, and Nightingales)

At the Railway Station, Upway (or ‘The Convict and Boy with the Violin’)

Before Life and After

arr. BENJAMIN BRITTEN

Come you not from Newcastle?

Little Sir William

Last Rose of Summer

The Salley gardens

The Ploughboy

Memorial

9 years ago today I was a brand new resident of New York City, having moved here two weeks before from the town where I grew up. I woke up thinking I would be starting another day of my new life at Manhattan School of Music, and woke up instead, like the rest of America, to a changed world.

And now, 9 years later, this is the view from my apartment tonight:

Pregnancy and Giving Birth

In January, during my sojourn in Düsseldorf, I was emailing back and forth with my manager and Myra, my pianist-partner-in-crime, about the program for our upcoming recital tour this fall when Myra sent a very short email saying: “Nick, I need to talk to you…please call me…”

I thought: Oh dear – this can’t be good news. What is she going to tell me?

I called Myra via Skype later that day and asked her what was up. “I’m pregnant, I’m due in mid-September,” she told me in a rather hesitant and worried voice. She poured her heart out to me about how she didn’t know if she could do a recital tour that started so soon after the baby was born, how she felt like she might be letting me down, and how she wondered what she should do. I told her that she most definitely not letting me down in the slightest, and that it was her decision to make. I also told her that of course I wanted her to do the recital tour, I told her that I thought of us as a chamber duo, and that of course I wanted her to share the experience of a Carnegie Hall debut recital with me. I also told her that, first and foremost, I was so happy for her and was so excited for her family. It provided a strange opportunity for us to reaffirm why it was that we wanted to keep working together and what was special about our musical relationship and our long friendship. I told her that this was great, exciting, and wonderful news. And I left the ball in her court.

After thinking about it for a couple of weeks, she eventually came back with her decision that she did, indeed, want to play. I assured her that I had an alternative plan, in case the baby came late, and we adjusted our lives accordingly. We looked at the calendar and plotted out when we would start working on the program – we decided to start rehearsing as soon as possible. We ended up starting to toe the waters of some of the newest repertoire in March. When May arrived, we dove in head-first, taking advantage of the situation to ease into all of this music and slowly find things in it, letting it come to us, letting the layers peel back of gradually and of their own accord. I left for Marlboro at the end of June, and we agreed to keep rehearsing after I returned until the baby was born.

Since I got back from the London a couple of weeks ago, Myra and I stuck to our rehearsal plan, and every time I would email her to schedule a session, I would jokingly preface the email with, “Are you still pregnant?” Myra would write back that, yes, she was still happily pregnant and that we should meet at 12:30 the next day.

After debating whether or not to try to pack in another rehearsal this last week, we eventually decided to meet once more this past Friday at 1:00. As I said goodbye at our previous rehearsal, Myra said to me, “We should try to get in as much as we can before the baby comes, since she seems to be taking her time…” I agreed and left, looking forward to our next rehearsal. When I walked in the door on Friday, I started to head towards the piano when Myra told me that she didn’t think we could rehearse that day. I looked at her and asked her if she was all right. “I think it’s time,” she said. So instead of rehearsing, we waited while her husband fetched their daughter, Elie, from daycare. Myra offered me a ride down to Midtown, which I found perplexing, but took her up on. We piled into the car and I entertained Elie while Myra and Ed debated which would be the quickest way to get to the hospital. Around 1:30, they dropped me off in Midtown, and I wished her good luck and a quick and easy labor, if such a thing is possible. Then, somehow they made it to the hospital at the speed of light, because at around 3:05pm, Abigail Emma Huang was born.

Many congratulations to the Huangs on their newest family member!

Myra at our "rehearsal" on Friday moments before the new arrival!

(I made her smile for this picture...)

Flying Time

A friend posted the obvious on my Facebook Wall the other day: “Last blog entry, June 17th. Just saying - I don't get to see you, I don't get to read you.” Feeling justly scolded, I wondered to myself: where has the summer gone? Intense, mind-blowing, and action-packed, I realized I had been so immersed in music-making, I barely had the capacity to think about anything else all summer. In the last month alone, I have performed 9 different concert programs, 7 of them from memory. The list of composers I’ve performed this month has been thorny and dense: Béla Bartók, Alban Berg, Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, Robert Schumann, Alma Mahler, Hugo Wolf, and Alexander von Zemlinksy – so much for the typical “light” summer-festival fare. The constant study, rehearsal, memorization, performance, and travel all pulled me into a vortex in which the days sped by while I barely noticed the passing of time. All of the sudden – or so it seems to me – I am sitting in Heathrow waiting to fly home, and it is the end of August. I guess time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Shortly before I left for the summer, I met up for drinks with a friend and colleague who is an artist manager of singers at one of the big artist management companies in New York. We don’t get the chance to catch up often - our busy schedules and my limited time at home prevent that - but we finally had managed to carve out a moment to sit and catch up over a few glasses of wine. As we caught up, he asked me what my summer plans were, and I told him that I would be coming back to Marlboro. He raised his eyebrows and looked at me over the rim of his wine glass and said, “Oh? Wow! Really? You are?” He seemed surprised that I would be going back for a summer of rustic dorm-living and communal cafeteria meals at this point in my life. I chuckled and pointed out that that was, in fact, much of the reason to go back to Marlboro: to say hello to that inner child, to greet the perpetual student in all of us.

I understood that he didn’t really have a total and complete understanding of what Marlboro is – it’s so difficult to explain to people who have never visited. You don’t have to perform? No one is a student, while yet everyone is a student of a sort? You just rehearse? You share a bathroom? Yes, all of these things are true, and yet somehow they don’t sufficiently describe what Marlboro is. Marlboro is somehow more than the sum of its parts.

Seventy–five or so musicians convene at the little, elite, isolated musicians colony that is Marlboro every summer for 7 weeks. We live in dorms on the campus. We serve each other dinner in the cafeteria. We maintain a meal schedule that we joke bears a striking resemblance to the mealtimes at a retirement community (although, ironically, it is the oldest members – who are in their 70s – who complain the most about how dinner is too early). We throw napkin-balls at each other at meals. We relax over beers in the coffee shop after longs days of rehearsal. We climb the roof of one of the dorms at night and stargaze, discussing life, love and the pursuit of music. And more than anything else, we rehearse.

About a week into the festival, one of my colleagues and I were discussing the cultural adjustment from our busy, frantic lives in New York to our quiet, close-knit, think-tank situation in Vermont when she said, “You know? I think the roughest adjustment for me is that I only have myself to deal with here.” At first, I was surprised at her comment. For me, the only time I ever feel like I am a part of a community, a part of something larger than myself are the summers I spend at Marlboro. The rest of the time, I am running from concert to concert, hotel room to hotel room, spending countless hours alone. At first glance, the whole point of being at Marlboro is to play and interact with others, but the more I thought about it, the more I understood what she was talking about.

Coming back for a fourth summer, I had certain expectations about what my experience was going to be like. As I had pointed out to my friend over drinks earlier in the summer – I knew that the point of coming to Marlboro is to learn, to discover, to dig deep. But what I was unprepared for was how challenging it would be to be that open. When I first arrived, I felt like much of what I was realizing was how far I have come on my journey. I was able to see how much I had grown over the past years since I started coming to Marlboro. But having that much more knowledge and experience, not being a completely clean slate anymore, I found it hard to be open to finding the next level. My ego would rear its prideful and lazy head inside me, and I found that ultimately, I was in a constant battle with myself. As I eased into the pace of things there, I found myself praying every morning for the grace to be beginner again.

As the summer progressed, I found I was grateful I fought that battle for openness. Worlds opened up to me in rehearsal that I never imagined, and I felt myself discovering layer after layer of emotion, depth, and beauty in all of the music I was rehearsing. Through all of this musical digging, I began to see what a difficult balance it is to maintain both self-assurance and humility as we progress further into our “adulthood” and how challenging it can be to discern the difference between ego and confidence. Confidence, like true strength, is a flexible, open, eager, and wise thing. Ego is what is lazy, entrenched, closed, prideful, and deeply stubborn. Oddly enough, ego can look an awful lot like confidence at times and trick you into getting stuck.

The radio program, Performance Today, came for a few days this summer to do a feature on Marlboro and what happens there. They interviewed many of us and played many performances from this and past summers, doing an excellent job of painting an aural picture of what Marlboro is. The thing that I found so moving while listening to the interviews was hearing so many different generations of people talk about how they had found themselves at Marlboro. Marlboro certainly held the same special place in my heart before this summer began, yet somewhere along the way, I had forgotten that finding oneself is an ongoing journey. This summer was no exception in guiding me further along that path.

The World of Song

I spent yesterday immersed in songs – not Barber arias, not Beethoven 9’s, not Bach recitatives – only songs.

In the late morning, I rushed down to Jersey City to rehearse for a huge and exciting recital project that my pianist partner-in-crime, Myra, and I have started to dig into this past month. At the end of our rehearsal, we started to talk about former teachers that we had studied with over the course of our lives, reminiscing about the teachers who opened up the world of songs to us. After bidding her farewell for the day, I headed home to my own piano and began to sift through the pile of music sitting on my desk that comprises my various and copious assignments in song for the summer. I spent the rest of the afternoon deciphering Hugo Wolf’s incredibly rich and dense musical language, as well as reading some Zemlinksy and early Berg. Exhausted by dinnertime, I went out for a drink and meal with friends and then came home a bit more refreshed and a tad bit nostalgic. My thoughts were still drifting through the land of lieder, and I started to troll YouTube. My ventures led me to the video below, and I sat staring at YouTube screen with tears rolling down my cheeks:

The last time I heard this song in a live performance was two summers ago at Marlboro. It was part of a very long evening of various songs, and having been the first performer of the evening, I had the luxury of sitting on stage while the rest of my colleagues performed. I was really happy to see that the song was programmed – I think it is perhaps one of the most beautiful of all German Lieder. Having not heard the song in many years, my memory played a trick on me. Thinking it knew what was coming, being so well-versed in the land of lieder, my mind mistakenly remembered the final line of the song being: "Ich leb' allein in meinem Himmel, in meinem Leben, in meinem Lieb!" (I live alone in my own heaven, in my own life, in my love!). While that would be a lovely sentiment of sorts, I felt the wind knocked out of me when I heard the singer sing “…in meinem Himmel, in meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied!” (in my own heaven, my love, and in my song!”), instead. Hearing that final “t” of Lied, I was breathless, my eyes suddenly wet with tears, and the song was instantaneously and entirely changed - so much more powerful than I obviously remembered. I thought back to the last time I heard the song live, and it was back when I was a junior at the University of Michigan, in a studio class with my former teacher, Rosemary Russell. I worked with Rosie from when I was a nerdy 16-year-old teenager until I was a musical young man of 22. During those formative years, she opened my eyes and ears to the world of lieder and art song, feeding me as much repertoire as I could devour. She showed me the power of these little pieces, teaching me how each one was like a genie lantern that, once rubbed, yielded multitudes of magic.

Rosie passed away unexpectedly back in 2005. The last time I saw her was at a concert of songs and chamber music I performed in at Ravinia that she came to see that summer. After the concert, she joined my family and me for dinner at a nearby restaurant, and we talked in depth about the concert. We chatted at length about how much she liked the new songs that we premiered at the concert that night, where my diction could have been a little cleaner, how happy she was with the progress I had made since my college days of studying with her. At the end of dinner, we dropped her off at her hotel, and I gave her a hug, telling her that I would see her when I came home in the winter. She passed away before I made it back home that winter, and I still miss her dearly. Nevertheless, I still hear her voice inside my head, especially on days like yesterday and that moment in Marlboro, reminding me of the lessons she taught me that unlocked this universe of music and song.

--------------------------------------------------------

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, 

Mit der ich sonst viele Zeit verdorben, 

Sie hat so lange nichts von mir vernommen, 

Sie mag wohl glauben, ich sei gestorben!  

Es ist mir auch gar nichts daran gelegen, 

Ob sie mich für gestorben hält, 

Ich kann auch gar nichts sagen dagegen, 

Denn wirklich bin ich gestorben der Welt.  

Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel, 

Und ruh' in einem stillen Gebiet! 

Ich leb' allein in meinem Himmel, 

In meinem Lieben, in meinem Lied! 

----------------------------------------------------

I am lost to the world 

with which I used to waste so much time, 

It has heard nothing from me for so long 

that it may very well believe that I am dead!  

It is of no consequence to me 

Whether it thinks me dead; 

I cannot deny it, 

for I really am dead to the world.  

I am dead to the world's tumult, 

And I rest in a quiet realm! 

I live alone in my heaven, 

In my love and in my song!

 - Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866)

Ode-to-Joy-ing

"For a moment, death let herself go, expanding out as far as the walls, filling that whole room and flowing into the room next door, where a part of her stopped to look at the sheet music open on a chair, it was suite number six opus one thousand and twelve in d major by johann sebastian bach, composed in köthen, and she didn't need to read music to be able to know that it had been written, like beethoven's ninth symphony, in the key of joy, of unity between men, of friendship and of love. Then something extraordinary happened, something unimaginable, death fell to her knees, for she had a body now, which is why she had knees and legs and feet and arms and hands, and a face which she covered with her hands, and shoulders, which, for some reason, were shaking, she can't be crying, you can't expect that from someone who, wherever she goes, has always left a trail of tears behind her, without one of those tears shed being hers."

- Death with Interruptions, Jose Saramago

I posted this quote a little over a year ago, but on the occasion of my very first performances of Beethoven's 9th Symphony this weekend, it feels just to post it again.

It had been years since I had heard the 9th Symphony live, and experiencing it in rehearsal last night was quite overwhelming. As the orchestra and choir played and sang away, and as my heart started to pound at a quicker and more excited pace in my chest, I was reminded of the Saramago quote above. Yesterday, in our conductor-soloist meeting, Maestro Honeck kept pushing me to bring as much unbridled joy to my brief solo, and I almost felt as if I couldn't bring enough happiness, excitement, and jubilation to the two pages of music. Hearing the movement with full forces last night, I saw why. The music demands that we (both the audience and the performers) give in completely to hope, happiness, joy, celebration, and elation. It insists that we live completely in the positive for this one moment, which, perhaps, might not be a bad thing to aim for in every moment after, too.

On Being Out

Last October, after one of our performances of Falstaff in Glyndebourne, someone said to me (having spent an entire evening watching me manhandle Nannetta as I portrayed her lover, Fenton), “You are quite convincing as a heterosexual!”. While I know that they meant this as a compliment, and I laughed it off at the time, it touched on a sensitive spot for me. It is not the first time that I have heard a comment like that, and every single time I hear it uttered, I hear the same hint of surprise and awe in that person’s voice.

The moment has stuck in my memory as the season plodded onwards from my sojourn in England, and a couple of moments since have picked at it, causing it to repeatedly place itself in the forefront of my mind. A few months after the Glyndebourne incident, the pianist Stephen Hough wrote this blog post about gay pianists, discussing whether it was possible to tell a pianist’s sexuality from their playing. And then, a few weeks ago, this offensive post purporting that gay actors are not able to play straight was published in Newsweek.

There is a debate about whether a performer should come out – many performers argue that it is important to keep their private lives private so they don't interfere with people’s ability to suspend their disbelief and to buy into their characters more fully as an audience. On the flip side, many people argue that it is important for performers to be open and come out because of their profile, so that they can set positive examples for the rest of the world. I can see both sides of the argument, although (while I do believe in maintaining a sense of privacy) I very obviously fall into the latter camp when it comes to my own life.

I was debating this with a gay friend the other day, who was arguing for the other side, and pointing out that there is a bit of a price to pay in terms of career. I found that, while I would never say that my openness has ever concretely stood in the way of my career, I would say that it has had, in incredibly subtle and hard–to-describe ways, an effect. That comment after my performance in Glyndebourne would never have been uttered were I straight – it would have simply been noted that we had good chemistry and that I had given a convincingly passionate performance. I had to concede to my friend – when it comes to casting, it is important for people to think of the actor or singer in a certain way. In a way, the less a casting director knows, the easier it is to simply assess the artist based on their work. When it comes to my repertoire as a lyric tenor, most of the roles I would be considered for operatically are heterosexual romantic leads. I’m lucky to be in a position where there is nowhere near the same kind of competition and breadth of possibilities that face gay actors.

But all this has me wondering – does it matter? And I find myself vehemently thinking that it should not. Of course, an artist’s personal life and experience informs their artistry, but isn't the point of performing to communicate to as wide an audience as possible, to share part of the common experience of what it is to be human? I think that part of the beauty of music is that it expresses the inexpressible and the indefinable. It heightens emotions that are universally felt and can touch each and every one of us as humans. Why the need to put a performer into a labeled box?

There is a double standard – we easily suspend our disbelief when a 40-year old, white woman plays a 16-year old, virginal, Japanese geisha. We have no problems watching a pudgy, Italian or Mexican tenor wear dark make-up and sing Othello. We can watch endless hours of actors in their mid-to-late 20’s portraying angst-ridden, privileged high-school teenagers on the CW. We know so much about the personal lives of so many heterosexual stars. We know how politically left-leaning Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are and how many children they have had and adopted, we know that Renee Fleming is a divorced mother of two, we know all about Jennifer Aniston’s latest break-up – yet none of that seems to matter when we watch these people’s performances. Nor should it, really.

A young singer asked me the other day on Twitter: “is it harder for us gays in the opera world, getting gigs and such? Not to mention being a tenor and gay?” I wasn’t sure how to answer him in a tweet, but my initial instinct was to say no, it is not harder. That initial reaction is based in the way I try to think artistically – I attempt to be grateful for all of the experiences in my life, doing my best to keep my focus on what opportunities I have had, rather than the ones I didn’t. Yet it’s a question that has been posed to me twice before – once when I was interviewed by the Advocate, and once when I came out to my parents years ago. When I have mentioned this to people, they almost always laugh, saying, “but there are so many gay people in opera!” Sure, in some ways that is true, but more often than not, I look around the room on the first day of an opera rehearsal and note that I am the only gay person in the cast. And while I consider myself lucky to work in an extremely tolerant work-environment, it is a reminder as to why it is that much more important that I perform to the best of my abilities at all times. Hopefully that will show people that a person's sexuality really doesn’t matter – despite the fact that we live in a world and a society in which it seems to.

Barber 2.75

This past month of rehearsals has been a very special experience for me, and I am really looking forward to seeing what happens tonight at our opening performance. I have a feeling it is going to be a giddy, fun, and exciting evening.

I've been trying to figure out how to use my camera in low light - and not with much success yet. This crazy picture is the best that I could do while we were rehearsing in the theater. I know it looks like someone is singing an aria about seeing dead people, but it's actually Jenny singing "Una voce poco fa", if you can believe it. We've all got to start somewhere, right?


Hopefully, tonight's performance won't feel that blurry. I hope instead that we have sharp focus and bubbly energy, so that we can savor every moment we are on stage and show the people who come tonight a really fun time.

A huge toi, toi, toi to all of my amazing colleagues here in Portland. Thanks for the endless laughs, the great working atmosphere, and for helping finally figure out how to really enjoy singing Rossini.

Good Times

If you see the back of my left hand, you'll notice that there are two small wounds that are in a rather unattractive stage of healing at the moment. If I roll up my sleeve far enough, you'll see that I am sporting a bandage covering a much bigger (and slightly deeper) scrape on my elbow. Now, as much I wish I had some dramatic, violent, freakish stage accident story to tell, the truth is a fair bit more embarrassing. At our sitzprobe (our first orchestra rehearsal in the theater), I was chatting with some cast mates, and nearly missed my entrance for the Act I finale. I ran down the length of the theater and hopped up on the stage only to trip and skid spectacularly across half of the set.

What I find remarkable about this every time I look down at my very minor injuries is how relaxed I was when it happened. Rossini causes me stress. Full stop. I have never had an experience with Rossini in which I have not felt tremendous nerves and anxiety. As I have written time and time again here, it is some of the music that I find most challenging to sing. Part of that is the point of this music. In many of the Q and A sessions and interviews we've had here over the past few weeks in order to publicize the opera, a lot of what we have talked about is how virtuosic this music is. It is in the bel canto style, and it is meant to show off the virtuosic extremes of the voice. Virtuosity equals pressure – there is just no way around it. In the past, when I have performed Rossini, I've been anxious, on edge, nervous, and my way of dealing with it is to be hyper-prepared and have a humorless, razor-sharp focus in rehearsal. The idea that I was relaxed enough to be even a little distracted is mind-boggling to me and makes me smile.

My little injuries have gotten me thinking about how there has been a rather unique atmosphere in rehearsals here, though. While we have been working hard (and quite seriously - most of the time), everyone in the room has really seemed focused on the fun of what we do. In the various acting classes I took and theatrical experiences that I had at the theater departments at both Interlochen (back when I actually thought I wanted to be an actor) and the University of Michigan, I found there to be an incredibly conscious effort to maintain a positive energy in the room. It was constantly emphasized that the rehearsal room was a safe haven – a place to explore, take risks, and – most importantly - find the play (i.e. the fun) within the play. Most often in my experience, I've found that, while we are practicing a form of theater, there is little room for this kind of process-oriented, fun work in Opera. As singers, we have been taught during the course of most of our young artist programs the importance of showing up "prepared" on the first day of rehearsal. It has been drilled into us that we have to know every single note and rhythm, be memorized, and have fairly strong ideas about who the characters we portray are and how they should act. Many singers often refer to the first day of rehearsal as the "first day of school", but not with the excitement of students coming back to school after a summer of vacation. Instead, there are the sigh of having to deal with schoolmarms and the dread of preparing for an exam in their tone. From the minute that first rehearsal begins, the pressure is on. Every single "role preparation" discussion or session that I had in my training focused only on what and how much I needed to know for that first day of rehearsal, and, yes, those things are important – when a colleague isn't properly prepared, it can cripple a rehearsal process, making it excruciating. All the same, there are so many more layers to discover in order to make it a great run of performances, and there is a danger in the expectation to be so prepared for that first day – that we close ourselves off to exploring the myriad of possibilities and the fun that lie within the covers of our scores.

What has made this experience so unique is that theater-like emphasis on the positive that I felt when I was young has been really prevalent here in Portland. Our rehearsals have been filled with laughs, smiles, hugs, jokes, and just good fun. We've been blessed with a conductor and director who have both maintained a perfect balance between being being laid-back and focused and a cast full of incredibly supportive, positive, and very funny colleagues. All that has allowed us to find our ways through this piece and come together as a cast quite organically. Every rehearsal has felt like a building block, each run-through has felt like an opportunity, and every note that has been given has only been framed in the positive. It's always been, "why don't you try this instead and see how that works?" Never, "don't do that." It's been a very empowering and fun atmosphere, and I feel that our performances over the next ten days will be quite special as a result. Since our first day of school here, I have gone to rehearsal everyday feeling like the possibilities are limitless and safe enough to try different ones out each day, and it has felt like the pressure is somewhat off. At least, enough for me to feel relaxed and have fun with it – it is a comedy, after all, right?

Incidentally, I'll have you know that despite my sliding across the stage, I didn't miss a beat, and we made our way through the scene just fine, laughing at ourselves the entire time.

Rehearsing the Haircut

As our rehearsals in the the staging studio have wrapped up over the past few days, I managed to get a few snapshots (with the help of Jenny's camera one of the days, as mine was at the camera doctor) of some of my colleagues at work. I'm new at the whole taking-pictures-of-moving-people thing, and I happen to be on stage most of this show, so my pictures are a bit limited in in terms of what scenes I could photograph. Nonetheless, enjoy some tidbits of our rehearsals - we certainly have been!

Rosina

Rosina writing a love note to Lindoro (and maybe singing an aria)

Rosina and Figaro

Bartolo and Rosina fighting over paper and pens

Rosina two steps ahead of Figaro

Rosina looking mighty sure of herself

And now we move to the theater...

10 Seconds

The brilliant Rosina out here, Jennifer Rivera, just bought a new toy and has seemingly mastered how to use it in a matter of days.

Below is some of her handiwork, previewing our upcoming Barber over a few beers on our day-off:



If you don't follow it already, be sure to check out Jenny's fun and witty blog here.

Mission

"Portland Opera exists to inspire, challenge, and uplift our audiences by creating productions of high artistic quality that CELEBRATE the beauty and breadth of opera."

– Portland Opera Mission

As we began our first rehearsal for Barbiere on Monday, right before I sang my first notes in the opera, I looked up and saw that the mission of the Portland Opera was displayed prominently in the center of the wall, right above the conductor's head.

Never before have I seen an opera's mission statement, let alone seen it displayed in a rehearsal room. It wasn't even something that I had ever thought of. I mean, an opera company's mission is to produce opera, plain and simple, right? As I've gotten to know the building during this first week of rehearsal, I've noticed that the mission is displayed almost ubiquitously, serving as a constant reminder of everyone's purpose at the company.

On my walks to work this week, crossing the Willamette River, I've found myself still pondering the idea of approaching this profession as one of service. As a music student, I often felt selfish for pursuing a career in music. I watched as my closest childhood friends grew into adults and took their places in the world community, and marveled at their accomplishments. One dedicated her 20s to an organization called Operation Smile, traveling throughout the developing world helping children in need connect with doctors to get the treatment they were so desperately in need of. Another has chosen a career in promoting cancer awareness and educating communities how to better take care of their health. One is now a Psychiatric resident in New York at Cornell, caring for many mentally ill patients and researching the mysteries of how the brain works. One is a college professor who has dedicated much of his research to education policy. One used her law degree to provide legal aid to youth in need in New England. One is finishing her Ph.D. in anthropology, researching many of the mysteries of how we evolved to be as we are today. Educators, researchers, doctors, volunteer coordinators – it was easy to see how these people who have inspired me my whole life are giving back to society, each trying in their own way to make the world a better place.

As a young musician, it's really easy to forget why what we do is important. It's a tough world out there to get established, and we have to devote much of our focus to figuring out a way of paying the bills, carving out careers for ourselves. I'm not sure that many of us as young musicians ask this question of ourselves, but it is a topic that I have pondered much of my adult life. Over the years, I have come to feel that my personal mission is one close to what my colleagues and hosts here at the Portland Opera maintain. Music really does inspire, it really does challenge, and it really has the power to uplift us. In an increasingly secular, scientific, stress-filled, capitalist world, music feeds the soul, and I've really begun to feel that to be a musician is to choose a career of service – service to the human spirit. Each time I walk on stage, I hope to entertain, to move, to create a little beauty, and to help people ponder and revel in the richness of human experience.

I've looked up at that mission statement everyday this week in rehearsal and been so grateful to have that constant reminder of what is really important in our work. In a day where many are intimidated by the elitist aura that surrounds classical music and opera, it's refreshing to work at a place where we are reminded that reason we strive for excellence is not simply to be good or the "best", but because we want to give the best to the community we serve, and the community we live in, even if (as in my and my fellow castmates' instances) only as temporary guests.

Newbie

It became evident early on yesterday during our first day of school here at Portland Opera that all of my cast mates have sung The Barber of Seville numerous times and are all pretty much veterans at their roles. Listening to everyone's mastery of their arias and incredibly clear initial ideas about recitatives and ensembles, I felt a little awestruck and impressed at everyone's facility. As we neared the finale of the opera, and I wondered why it felt so unfamiliar to me, I was reminded suddenly of the fact that at my last performance of this piece (back at Wolf Trap in 2003), the power went out, and we were forced to stop the performance after the trio in Act II, making the grand total of performances that I have done of this piece a whopping 1 ⅞.

Needless to say, I felt hyper-conscious of my inexperience, particularly because this is an opera with a lot of performance traditions, many of which I can't say that I understand. But rather give into my insecurities, which contributed to my first-day jitters that I always feel at an initial music rehearsal, it occurred to me what a gift this is to be surrounded by so many experts. While my slate is fairly clean in terms of expectations, I will be experiencing this for the second time with colleagues who have incredibly rich and layered concepts of the story, their characters, and their relationships. By the end of the day, my apprehension had given way to excitement about the adventure that is to come these next five weeks here in beautiful Oregon.

Soli Deo Gloria

Last week, I was asked to attend a performance of Charpentier's Leçons de Tenèbres that was being given at a St. Thomas Church in New York City. Sitting in the dimly-lit, stone, Gothic church, listening to the sacred, angelic-sounding music and performance, I realized that it was the first time in a long time that I had been in a church at all.

My mind drifted as I listened to the music, my thoughts meandering towards church, God, and Eastertide. I grew up very actively involved in the Greek Orthodox Church as a kid. I spent many Holy Weeks serving as an altar boy, assisting our priest and reading many of the readings in the church liturgies and services. I attended Sunday School regularly, and I went to the church's Greek School every week. I participated in the church's oratorical competition, was president of the youth group, and danced in our Greek dance group.

As I grew up, for a wide variety of reasons and as many people do, I grew distant from the church. As one learns more about the history of the church, the history of the Bible, and the history of religion in general, it's easy to grow disenchanted with religion. I began to see religion as more of a political entity rather than one of faith, and as the power and voice of the religious right in US politics has risen over the course of my lifetime, it has become even easier to view it through that lens. The concurrence of Holy Week, the most important holiday in Christendom, and the seemingly unending string of scandalous revelations about the Pope and the Catholic Clergy didn't help matters much last week either.

The day after the concert, I was catching up on reading some of the blogs I follow when I read this post over at the Huffington Post. Reading Albert's entry and thinking back to how I felt the previous night at St. Thomas, I was reminded how my faith has always been kept alive though music. When I called to wish her a Happy Easter on Sunday, my mother gently tried to make me feel guilty (in that way that Greek mothers do) for not going to church last week, yet I didn't feel an ounce remorse, because after having spent the past month immersed in both the St. John and St. Matthew Passions, I felt like I had been celebrating Lent, Passiontide and Easter all in my own, more personal, and musical way.

In getting ready for tonight's performance of the St. Matthew, I've been constantly reminded how Bach's music demands humility and meditation. Whereas with other composers, I can put the score down for a while without feeling like I am losing anything by letting it go for a bit, in order to feel ready for tonight, I, a person who considers himself more "faithful" these days as opposed to "religious", have had to sit with this score daily, aside from practice, simply to study and absorb it. The Passion of Jesus Christ according to St. Matthew has consumed most of my waking hours for the past month. It makes me wonder – have those "religious" pundits on the 24-hour news channels who debate about gay marriage and argue about the latest church pedophilia scandal spent this much of the last month studying the Bible and pondering what it is to be part of a religion?

S. D. G. – Bach wrote this at the end of each of his Church cantatas, standing for Soli Deo Gloria: For the Glory of God alone. Whether it's for God, for music, for Bach, for the people in the audience who come to hear us tonight, or for all of those, it's that kind of humility and sense of service that I hope to carry inside me when we walk out on stage tonight.

Rossini meets Bach

Before our last concert of the St. John, one of my colleagues (who is also a close friend) came to my dressing room to say hello, saw my suitcase, rolled his eyes and said, "oh…you're one of those singers…" He was disappointed that I wasn't going to hang around for the evening and go out on the town to celebrate with him and his partner. But after so little time in my new apartment and being surprised to be spending an unexpected extra week in Chicago, I had decided to run right home straight after our last matinee. I made that choice for two reasons – firstly, because I was anxious to have some time to enjoy sitting on my new couch, and, secondly, because I knew that I had to get to work on my next two upcoming projects.

While being back at the CSO was an incredible, fun, and exciting opportunity, I lost a bit of time in terms of preparing for the two huge projects that are on next on my docket – St. Matthew and Il barbiere di Siviglia. While I have done Barber before – I haven't even looked at the score since 2003, and (as I posted the other day) this St. Matthew Evangelist will be my first. To make matters even more stressful, three days after my first performance of the St. Matthew Evangelist, rehearsals begin for Barbiere in Portland, leaving me just enough time to fly home, unpack, then repack, and fly off to Portland. So, while I have been trying to enjoy some time at home these last three weeks, I have been forced to keep my nose to the grindstone, so to speak. The morning after I returned home, sheer panic set in, and I dove directly into a daily routine with an intensity and total immersion that I rarely experience outside of my summers at Marlboro.

This process has quite literally felt like burning a candle at both ends – Rossini and Bach are two very different, almost opposite musical forces to contend with. Rossini is all about virtuosity, flexibility, and bel canto technique, the needs of the voice dictating the musical line and phrasing. Bach sits on the opposite end of that spectrum, requiring the singer to treat his (or her) voice like an instrument. Rossini requires ego, bravado, and showmanship. Bach has no room for such qualities, demanding humility, meditation, and selflessness. The one thing that both do require is a lot of practice.

As I settled into my working rhythm, my initial panic gradually gave way to enjoyment, and I started to notice that burning this musical candle at both ends was, much to my surprise, yielding numerous positive and unexpected results. Almost immediately, I found that rather than feeling like I was juggling two voices, my work with one composer would inform my work with the other. I discovered I didn't need to feel quite so rushed in Bach. I discovered that I could stand to be a lot more precise and clean in my approach to Rossini. I also discovered things that were non-musical, as well. One day, writing my morning pages, pondering my fraught and nerve-wracked relationship with Rossini, I found myself posing the question: Am I anxious that I won't live up to the music or am I more scared of what my colleagues and the audience might think? Considering an answer, I realized that whenever I feel nervous about Bach, it is because I am afraid I won't be able to do justice to the music. Disturbingly, I also became aware that my nerves about Rossini did not stem from the same source. Identifying that fear was incredibly liberating, and also allowed me to finally open up and take some huge strides forward with Mr. Rossini, as I applied my more Bach-ian psychological approach to practicing his music.

Normally, it's difficult to be this disciplined when I am at home – at times it can be exhausting, and it can be easy to feel blocked. But these past few weeks, I've really enjoyed myself and felt myself enjoying singing in a way that I haven't in a long time. It's been three weeks in which I feel there have been countless discoveries and technical growth spurts, making me very excited for the weeks to come.

Tenors, Bach and Passions

After my unexpected week back in Chicago, I still find myself in the land of Bach and the Passions – this time in the realm of St. Matthew. In a couple of weeks, I'll make my way through my first Evangelist in the St. Matthew Passion. When it comes to these two larger-than-life pieces, I feel like I've had the opportunity to discover each aspect of them in the perfect order. In college, my teacher, who loved these pieces dearly, pushed quite hard for me to begin learning them, hearing the possibility for them in my voice, but I never really dug in very hard without the impetus of an upcoming performance to force me to learn them. So, I bought the scores and glanced at them in college, but didn't really pick either of them up in earnest until my first St. Matthew Passion with Music of the Baroque a couple of years ago, in which I sang the arias.

The tenorial responsibilities in these passions differ greatly in terms of difficulty. All four roles (one tenor narrates the story as the Evangelist and another sings the arias in each) are challenging in the way that all of Bach's vocal writing is, but their challenges vary as does the level of difficulty. In both Passions, the challenge to singing the arias is the prolonged amount of time one has to wait before singing anything, as well as the fact that it seems that when Bach was writing the arias, he had two very different singers in mind, as the technical requirements and hurdles differ vastly from one aria to another. In the St. Matthew, the first aria and recitative are fairly high in tessitura whereas the second aria sits a lot lower. In the St. John, the differences are even greater. As in the St. Matthew, one aria sits significantly higher than the other, but the lower first aria is also quite dramatic and disjunct with the relatively heavy orchestration of a full string orchestra, while the much higher second aria requires not only some of the most delicate and controlled singing Bach ever demanded from a tenor (it is only scored for two violins and continuo) but also the utmost endurance. The phrase are almost never-ending, requiring incredible breath control and smooth, legato singing. The arias in St. John are perhaps some of the most technically treacherous music Bach ever wrote for tenor.

The challenges to both Evangelists are not just the normal vocal and harmonically challenging twists of Bach's vocal writing, but also the intellectual and dramatic challenge of narrating the story of each passion. In both cases, the Evangelist is responsible for the flow of the evening, linking the varied sections of each piece, and engaging the audience over a period of more than two hours. It's a lot of German, a lot of harmonically brilliant and strange recitatives, and a lot of storytelling. Vocally, the St. John is lower in tessitura than the St. Matthew as well as a bit shorter in length. I find the St. John Passion a bit more dramatic and direct, whereas I find the St. Matthew more meditative and longer, which, combined with it's much higher tessitura, requires much more concentration and focus as a result.

The order that I have had the opportunity to learn each of these parts has been ideal, and I am grateful for the chance that seems to have led me to these various circumstances. Beginning with the most manageable of the four roles, I was able to discover what the experience of performing one of these Passions is like. Then, by learning what seems to me to be the easier of the two Evangelists, I was able to make my first foray into telling this story and begin to get an understanding of what kind of responsibility that entails. Being pushed to learn the St. John arias so fast and in such a pressure cooker, now viewed through the luxury lenses of retrospect, was ideal. I was forced to look past the intimidation I felt when examining their technical pitfalls and rise to the occasion. Being with such a first-class group of colleagues inspired me to push through that intimidation, as well. And now, having had all of these experiences with both Passions, I feel ready to tackle what I consider the greatest challenge of the four - St. Matthew's high-voiced and long-winded story-teller.

Chicago’s Magnestism

After the mad rush of the Marlboro Tour and a concert of incredibly challenging Bach Cantatas and the Magnificat in Philadelphia the following week, I tried to settle into a comfortable routine of being at home for about ten days before hopping off to Chicago for some concerts with my good friends at the Music of the Baroque. I got off the plane in Chicago on a Tuesday afternoon and immediately felt the calmness of being somewhere familiar. It was so nice to know where to go in the airport, know the person who was picking me up, and just feel the comfort of being in the part of the country where I grew up. As diverse as my ethnic background is and as much of the world I have traveled these past 9 years singing, I am a Midwestern boy at heart, and there is a certain sense of hominess I feel in Chicago that I never feel any other place I work. As I stepped out of the airport, I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Part of my relief was the knowledge that after the Music of the Baroque concerts, I would begin a month off – my first chance to spend more than 10 days in at once in my new home, and to put my feet up and relax a bit. I spent my week in Chicago visiting with some very close friends who live here as well as friends who were in town to work. I also sang at a few Chicago high schools on my days off as part of an educational program that Music of the Baroque has. My educational colleagues and I drove from school to school, sharing many laughs along the way, taking the rather early class times in stride. Rehearsals for the MOB concerts were great fun, as I was making music with friends – we laughed our way through much of the rehearsals and just enjoyed working our way through three scores of rarely performed pieces by Handel (my favorite composer to sing).

After the concerts, I stayed for a few days to see a performance at the Lyric and to visit with my aunt, who lives nearby. I flew back home to New York on Thursday afternoon and immediately unpacked my bag. I was excited to get home, as I had just ordered a new couch and piano, which were to arrive on Friday. Once I had reorganized my place Friday afternoon and had enjoyed sitting on my new couch for a few minutes, I headed out to for a meeting with my manager. As I was making my way down to her office, my phone rang – it was my manager. "Nick – I have an urgent matter to discuss with you: The Chicago Symphony just called…" she said. "You're kidding…" I said.

It turns out that a colleague was not well, and had to cancel singing the tenor arias in the St. John Passion this week. After some decision making on both ends (I had only ever performed the Evangelist – not the arias), I had a flight booked to go back to Chicago and a rather pressing reason to park myself at my new piano to woodshed. Saturday, I repacked my freshly unpacked bag, and Sunday morning, I found myself flying straight back to where I had just been. At rehearsal on Monday, I saw a colleague who had just played the MOB concerts and who also is playing these concerts with the CSO. He smiled when he saw me, and said, "Long time, no see!" and I replied "This city is like a magnet – I just keep getting pulled back!"

The week has been pretty spectacular, despite the stress of learning these incredibly difficult and tricky arias and needing to get them up to a very high level so quickly. My colleagues are some of the best people in this repertoire in the world, and having the unexpected chance to sing with CSO again is pretty dreamy.

Browsing

Last Wednesday, after our train pulled into Washington, DC, and before the unfortunate drama of our poor soprano partner-in-crime falling ill, I was to meet one of my best friends in the world for lunch. I called to tell her that I was making my way from Union Station to our rendez-vous point in Dupont Circle, and she told me not to rush, because something had come up at her office and she was going to be a little late. Her delay turned out to be fortuitous, allowing me time to enjoy an afternoon of sunshine before the first blizzard of the week befell the east coast and take a leisurely walk down to 15^th and P streets where I could attend to an errand that I needed to take care of before I left DC – pick up a score that I needed for an audition that I had with a conductor the following week.

I was relieved to find that Musical Source was where I remembered, and that my memory had not failed me. I descended the few steps to the front door and walked in to the spacious store, filled with shelves and shelves of music, classical music softly playing on the radio. I breathed a sigh, enjoying being in this store that was designed for browsing and discovery. One of the people who worked there asked me if he could help me with anything. I told him what I was looking for, and he then directed me to a stack near the near the front of the store. I then checked the time on my phone and decided I had time to dawdle.

I walked over to the shelves that housed a lot of the music for voice and discovered a treasure trove of vocal chamber music. I perused scores for voice and harp, voice and flute and piano, new editions of Telemann cantatas, and Beethoven Scottish songs, my mind humming with new ideas. I found countless things I had never even heard of, fascinated to discover what all of this music was like, and I started concocting schemes to explore all of it and, perhaps, to program some of it. It felt electric and exciting. I took a stack of things that I thought looked good and interesting to the cash register along with my Beethoven score and paid. I had come in looking for one thing, and I left having spent well over a hundred dollars more than I had intended to and with a much heavier suitcase than I expected to lug home on Friday.

Once upon a time, we had places like this in New York, but alas, no more. As I (very happily) paid the man who worked at the store, I told him that I hoped that Musical Source would be around for a long time to come. I would never have even thought to look for any of the things I bought – I only bought them because I discovered them purely accidentally and could open the scores and peek inside to see if any of it looked palatable or interesting. As I left the store and headed back to Dupont Circle to meet my friend, I felt a bit wistful, sad that the only resource left to me at home, shopping online, will never feed me that same rush that I felt in the store that afternoon.

A Little Improvisation

So, my thirty day project has sort of fallen flat on its face since I got back to the States. I'm a little disappointed, but not surprised, as I always find it difficult to keep writing when I back home in the States. There is something about being in Europe – perhaps it's foreignness and the isolation that entails – that makes writing easier. Part of it has also been as issue of time. I've found it hard to carve out the time for the blog with these past two weeks' intense schedule. One special treat about this tour has been that I have been travelling with friends – something very special for me, being so accustomed to travelling alone all the time. We have shared countless laughs on this trip, and on top of our packed schedule of travel, rehearsal, and performances, I've found I've wanted to spend many of my free moments catching up with these friends from my Marlboro family and enjoying the company.

Wednesday evening, after arriving in Washington, DC, I was getting ready for a reunion with my 6^th grade best friend, when I received a text message with some sad news – my duet partner for the tour was letting us know that she was ill and would not be able to complete the rest of the tour. Wishing her a speedy recovery, we immediately went into crisis mode, trying to figure out how to make the show go on. After a variety of options were explored, it was decided that Lydia and I would replace the two sets of duets with two sets of solo lieder. Thursday was a flurry of scrambling to find rehearsal space and then rehearsing these new pieces, with barely enough time to iron my shirt for the concert. Before we knew it, it was time for the concert, and I found myself explaining the unfortunate circumstances and announcing the program change to our very understanding DC audience.

The last two concerts and days have been a blur, as I put my blinders on, shutting out the noise of my nerves about having so little rehearsal for such nuanced music as much as possible and narrowing my focus towards giving everything I have to putting on a good performance for the lovely people who have been filling these halls to see us and support Marlboro.

Marlboro Tour, Part I and II

On Saturday, the weather in New York took a nose dive into frigid temperatures, inducing me to set roots into my couch as I channel surfed all day on Saturday. By the time pre-concert-prep time rolled around, I found myself unwilling to uproot myself and brave the cold to journey down to Union Square for the first concert of our tour. It took me a while to get warmed up and energized, but once I saw the other, string-playing half of our touring company, I found myself both warmed and charged by our happy reunion. Assuming that the rest of New York City felt as I had all day, I was pleasantly surprised to see a completely packed theater filled with eager listeners on Saturday night.

The trip to Greenwich the next day was an easy, laugh-filled train ride away from the city. After our second concert, we were whisked off to a reception hosted by one of the donors to Marlboro, where we ate delicious food and sipped on exquisite wine. Our host asked us to speak a little about Marlboro to the group, and I found myself gushing about how special it is to me and how it revolutionized my relationship with music, helping me reconnect with my passion for music, reminding me why I fell in love with it. Unexpectedly, I found myself surprised as my voice almost broke with the amount of emotion that I was suddenly feeling, and I was reminded just how much of a treat these two weeks are for me.