Haven’t written the last couple of days for a variety of reasons:
1. Have been crazy busy since getting back from New York. Rehearsals have been going full-throttle.
2. Sang poorly at the Belvedere’s and couldn’t figure out why.
3. Saw someone I haven’t seen in a long time in New York the day of said bad-singing-Belvedere-day, and I needed some time to digest.
4. Got sick and therefore, got answer to said Belvedere debacle.
Today was the annual OTSL Memorial Day picnic, something I so would have wanted to attend; but, alas, I am lying here in my bed, helplessly witnessing this stealthy little snake of a virus slither from my sinuses to my bronchi. While I am greatly relieved to be over the head cold portion of my illness, it comes at the expense of my poor lungs and my voice, which are, as always, rendered completely useless for about four days.
I have a room run of Cosa tomorrow afternoon. I’m fine with “walking” it, but I don’t even have enough voice to mark. Would they bring in a cover for a situation like this? Eek, I don’t want to stress out some poor, already over-taxed young artist over some silly rehearsal that I can’t sing. Or maybe it would be a good opportunity? I don’t know, if they called me in to do something like that, I’d be freaking out. But that’s just me 
.
So, after the whole whirlwind which was getting myself to New York last minute to do the Belvedere’s, I didn’t advance to the Vienna round. And I’m not surprised, given the way I sang. That day was cursed. First of all, I was taking what was supposed to be a direct flight from St. Louis to Philadelphia (was easier than flying into New York for a variety of reasons), but midway through the flight, the quivery voice of our flight attendant announced that we would be making an emergency landing in Columbus, OH due to a medical emergency on board. Well, that was a first for me. Turns out there was a very young little boy who was having some kind of asthma attack. And what can you do? You can’t bitch, you can’t raise your fists at the airlines, you just have to deal.
Unfortunately, that put me in Philadelphia an hour and a half later than I had expected to arrive, which meant I went to bed too late, which meant I didn’t get enough sleep, which meant I was tired for the audition in addition to compromising my already fragile immune system. On top of this, when I arrived at the Met, my pianist was no where to be found. The auditions were moved to a different location, but security didn’t know that, which sent me on a wild goose chase through the less-than-easily-navigable Metropolitan Opera House. I did eventually locate him, but my focus was pretty much gone, as was my breath, and my audition suffered as a result. I’d like to think that I’m enough of a veteran of the audition circuit that things like this do not have to mean life or death, and I do think that sometimes they aren’t, but for some reason on that day, I just couldn’t get it together. I started with Zartlichkeit: top notes were surprisingly fine, but low notes? Where were you? It was so weird! Was it allergies? Fatigue? I don’t remember an audition where this happened to me–usually it’s my high notes, or middle voice that get foggy, but my low register almost never suffers! ‘Twas bizarre. So then, they asked me for Lulu, which ordinarily, I would have been thrilled to sing, but given my vocal issue, I was sent into crisis management mode. Just. get. through. it. Kiera. Case in point, it wasn’t my best day, by any means, and I guess the Belvedere people happened to agree, as I got my nice little rejection email telling me that I was not “qualified” to go to the Vienna round. Ah, translations can be so unforgiving.
In the end, I guess I’m a little relieved. As I said in past postings, I’m tired, and the thought of having to get into Berlin, only to hop on a train down to Vienna two days later to deal with all the, forgive me, BS that comes with singing competitions, was exhausting in itself. Maybe I self sabotaged without even knowing it? Hmmm…
Of course (and without getting too personal), I must be frank with myself and with you that I was also distracted for other reasons: I was seeing for the first time in three years (since we broke up) my ex-boyfriend. It was an entirely serendipitous meeting–he was flying from Indianapolis to London with a 24-hour stopover in New York, which just happened to be Tuesday, the 20th. What are the odds? Despite the fact that I really felt like I was focused on the audition on the days and hours leading up to it, how could my mind not have been wandering to this other (much more stressful) rendez-vous?
What can I say? Sometimes life happens, and it’s messy and it’s disappointing, and, then you get sick.
