Opera Idaho

Rochelle Bard

Dear Opera Idaho friends,

I have often wondered from the stage what you are thinking. After performances, I seek out people I know in the audience and pick their brains on what they thought about everything from the sets and staging concepts to whether they noticed that I tripped on my costume. I imagine you might wonder what we are thinking too. Opera Idaho’s new Executive Director Mark Junkert has asked me to share my side of the story as I prepare to sing the title role in Lucia di Lammermoor in a few weeks. I hope you find it enlightening and I am open to your questions if you would like to participate in this blog.

It’s the night before I leave my hometown of Boston for Boise and I’m mostly packed. I had big schemes this time to be packed early so I could get a head start on organizing boxes for our move into our first house, which is happening on the day of Lucia’s opening in my absence! But first things first. The butterflies started today. I was doing some shopping with my sister Nicole getting some last minute travel items and it occurred to me that I’m a little nervous. Nicole asked, ‘Is it packing, leaving, singing Lucia, or being memorized?’ I laughed and said, ‘Yes!’

I have performed Lucia before, along with Christopher Bengochea as my leading man Edgardo. This is my favorite role, right next to Violetta in La Traviata. They both have vocal fireworks, desperate sadness, and illness (one mental, one physical), but both are complicated. It is a daunting task being responsible for representing someone like that to you as an audience, because I have such respect for the character that I want to make it as emotionally jarring for you as it is for me. So that’s one butterfly that’s inhabiting my stomach today.

Another one is memory. Our job as professional singers is to arrive prepared. We have all heard horror stories about singers who aren’t prepared. I was covering a role once upon a time and the principal soprano was not prepared, using her score up to the last dress rehearsal. She wasn’t fired, but I was certainly sweating thinking about standing in for her at the last minute with no stage time under my belt. All was well and my lesson was learned. Don’t be that professional that isn’t prepared, even if you’re famous, and don’t be that young cover that couldn’t step right in without notice. But here’s the question I always ask myself. How to you know you’re really memorized? Most of the time when I am practicing, I’m playing the piano and singing and looking straight at the music. In coachings and lessons, I usually have my score open so I can take notes. It isn’t until you start staging the opera that your memory is really tested, so the first few days are always the hardest. You can quiz yourself on the words, but that’s not the same as being able to do it while other people are singing and the director is telling you how many steps to take on a particular line. Yes, I have performed this role before, but I have sung four new roles since then. I really think there is a statute of limitations on how much one’s brain can really hold! I am a genius at blocking out extraneous information when I’m memorizing an opera…so much so, that I forget people’s names and I can’t remember the day of the week.

The last butterfly has to do with singing for new people. I have performed in front of large audiences many times, but it is far more challenging to sing in front of a room of singers in plain daylight! Its probably equivalent to the feeling of doing your first presentation in front of your fifth grade class when you were little. This particular nervousness will cease about half way through our first sing-through this weekend and it will be replaced with excitement. Its an honor to be able to repeat roles with new directors and conductors and colleagues.

I know for myself that nerves stand for how much I care about something, so they’ve become friend not foe. The stakes are high and this is why I’m a singer.

Rochelle
www.RochelleBard.com