La Monnaie Parsifal | Sssssss 2.0

Anna is a real champ. Now that Act 2 is "on it's feet" the snake handler is back and getting her comfortable with her scene. Holding a 5ft albino Tiger Python, weighing about 8 pounds. It was interesting watching her sing the beginning of Act 2 with the snake crawling up her arm.

After the jump, snake pictures close up. The wuss's need not follow. :-b



I have heard horror stories of sick singers lately. It's certainly gone thru the ranks here. Most of us have missed a day or two. I've had to mark all week and when we're working on the most dramatic Act it's a real bummer for everyone to not have Parsifal singing. It really is a different feel when a singer marks. You can't find the same impulses or feel like you are building anything. Fortunately no one pressured me to sing and let me heal up. Today I finally let it rip in the work thru of Act 2.

What I'm most interested in is the passivity Roméo has asked for is starting to feel comfortable in my body. I've had lots of talks with the dancers and performance bondage artists (most of which are yoga instructors) and they have been very helpful in letting go of "doing." They've also pointed out the difficulty in the process is mostly mental, a sore back is not necessarily a sore back. It's often your body freaking out because of 'crutches' being taken away, leaving your mind to bounce around and question itself. It's still very tempting to want to act a scene. At the end of the run of 2 today I again went up to Castellucci and said "I'm still waiting for you to tell me if I should be more expressive with my face. Hint hint." Roméo pulls up his shirt sleeve and shows me goosebumps all over his arms and says: "Don't change! The impact of the music is more when you give up."

One of the things that changed how the scene works is finally choreographing the "Amfortas…die Wunde!" monologue. I've had a few long (and tedious for them) rehearsals using very precise and symmetrical movement thru it. I confess to losing my cool a few days ago and having a divo moment with the chorus and administration looking on. Not knowing what to do with all the onlookers fueled all my self-doubt and I think I might've said a few naughty words as I was yelling out my discomfort. As I said to my colleagues, one of the reasons why I had no problem leaving jazz was because of how poor of an improvisational soloist I was. (And then years later in San Diego Opera's training program doing "Let's Cook Up an Opera" in the grade schools, improving a 10 minute opera to a situation the kids gave us, make me want to literally vomit daily. I hate improvising that much.) It was awful watching the entire chorus stand up and leave the rehearsal space cuz the tenor was having a meltdown.

Thanks guys. Beers on me.