vacation!

My school schedule continues to amaze (and exhaust!) me. Next week is "mid-winter break," a phenomenon which is new since I was a student (not all that many) years ago. Instead of a three-day weekend for Presidents' Day, schools take an entire week off! Normally, when I'm on my regular schedule, and my husband suddenly has a week off in February, I think, "How silly. They just finished Christmas break, and in another month, they'll have a week off for spring break!" However, now that I'm teaching full time and playing after-school rehearsals, I feel a need to express my relief and gratitude for these precious days off, for a variety of reasons.

First of all, Alec and I are going on a real vacation! Granted, it's only 4 days long, but we'll be flying to New York next week, and while I'm there, I won't be doing a single audition, lesson, or coaching. I'll only be hanging out with friends, going to a Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra concert, looking at Art Deco buildings, and hanging out with my lovely husband, who I feel like I haven't seen in a month! It will be heaven!

In the three days before and one day after we return, I'll be learning an entire opera role plus one scene. First, I'm singing Tisbe in La Cenerentola in April, and our first music rehearsal is a week from Saturday (yikes!). Of course, with Seussical in full swing (the week we get back to school is production week), Cosi previews, traveling to auditions, and teaching, I haven't had time to learn the role yet, and it's a lot bigger than I thought it was! Happily, we are singing it in English, and I don't anticipate learning it to be too much of a problem. I'm a quick study, and it's Rossini, after all, not Schoenberg. Still, in retrospect, I'm glad that I'll be singing Tisbe in this production and not the title role, as I had originally hoped. These things have a way of working out.

Secondly, I'm being considered for a role in an opera next year with the Seattle Early Music Guild. It's only a small role, but it's in a great opera run by some really great people, so I'm thrilled, and keeping my fingers crossed! They gave me a scene to look at, and I'm having a coaching on it on Monday.

In short, I have my work cut out for me, but I'm still on vacation! Yay! :)