Commando Opera

"Lord, I pray you will give me some pants that won't split."

I was woken this morning by a nightmare. No, it wasn't the one where you discover you have no clothes on, or don't know the words to the opera you're performing. I've actually lived both of those, and well, it ain't all that bad. At least it wasn't for me. It might have been for the attendees. Hard to say.

No, this one was about my propensity to practice...a lot. In this dream that shook me awake, there was an old man standing on his balcony, directly across from where I was singing scales. I see him dancing around, miming like he's singing or something, and downright mocking me. I leaned my head out the window and asked him "What's yer problem?!" He then pointed to his watch and said "It's 8pm. You've sung enough! Please STOP!" I woke up in a sweat, and I'm not sure what was more troubling: him mocking my practicing or the fact that I had been practicing all day and didn't realize it (something I used to actually do. My wife would take the kids to school at 8am. I'd start singing at 9. The next thing I know I hear the car doors slam and they are returning from school, it's 4pm and I had never even brushed my teeth or gotten out of my pajamas, much less eaten lunch).

I guess i tend to be a bit obsessive.



I'm sure my neighbors are happier these days. I manage to keep the vocalizing under 2 hours on any given day. And I mean ANY. Today, day after a show I sang close to an hour working and re-working the Adorno. It's kinda pathetic.

Whatever. I'm a singing addict. So sue me. I'm in good company.

I finally got out of bed and was delighted to have people send me a link of CommandOpera doing a quick blurb on my schedule. And despite a temptation to mis-read it "Commando"Opera, I managed to get it right this time. Funny how I read things more clearly when they are about me.

His retelling of my coming season is a bit ... er ... long. And it finally occurred to me, I'm working WAY too hard. I just got my calendar out and counted the days it said "At Home." Gulp. Don't tell me wife this, but that number in the next ENTIRE YEAR is under 35 days. As in, November of 2011 when I have given myself a month and a half off to learn my first Ghermann (Pique Dame; Hamburg). I was a bit taken aback when La Cieca referred to me as a "singer without a home" or something like that. Now I understand why my mother worries so much about my itinerant life.

Reading a Times article on my colleague and friend, Brandon Jovanovich, I was struck by the final line:

“The worst part of this job is being away from my family,” he said. “Sometimes it feels like I’m raising my kids on Skype.”

Happy !@#$^ Halloween kids. Daddy misses ya. Someday, this is gonna change. Yeah. I'm working too hard.....