A couple of years ago I wrote a post titled “Loving the Mozart Requiem Isn’t the Same as Singing It.” My beloved Cherry Creek Chorale was performing the entire work, with orchestra, in the original Latin, and I was so excited about it. But when we actually started working on the piece I was pretty lost. I ended up investing in a professional recording with the tenor part being sung over the top of an actual performance, a move that helped tremendously. That performance was such a joy, on many levels. But boy, did I work! In the end, though, to stand up there and be so sure of my part was an experience I’ll never forget. I said in that post, “If I really love it, I’ll be willing to do the work. But the love isn’t a substitute for the work but the inspiration for it.”
So now I’ve volunteered to sing in a concert version of Mozart’s comic opera The Magic Flute. (Follow the link to the ticket sales page.) It’s a scaled-down version, with maybe 15-20 of us acting as the chorus. And we’re not doing all that much of the chorus parts—about 11 minutes’ worth all told. But man! It’s hard. We’re doing it in the original German, of course, and it’s very difficult to memorize (yes, we have to be off book) when you don’t really know what you’re saying, or singing. There are translations below the German, but the English words clearly don’t match the German words exactly. I never did really learn the words for the song “Balia di Sehu” that we performed a couple of years ago, and I worked and worked and worked on it. (See below for a fabulous performance at a big high-school choir conference, even though it’s very low-def video. The language is Papiamento, a mixed language containing elements of African, Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Dutch.) I’m just not very good at memorizing foreign languages. But I have to do it if I want to be in the performance. And this time it will be very obvious if I’m not singing it correctly since our group is so small.
So I’ve been trying to work on it every day, going over the words and music with my own plinking out of my part, and then trying to sing at speed with the recordings we’ve been given, and going over my German pronunciation with the recording we’ve been given for that. Our conductor wanted us to have it all memorized by tonight, but I’m afraid that I’m nowhere near that point. The performance is April 21 and 22, so I don’t really have all that much time left, and this coming Sunday is our first rehearsal with the orchestra. It will be pretty embarrassing if I’m not up to snuff by then. (I think Devin Hughes, the conductor of the orchestra with which we’re singing, the Arapahoe Philharmonic, must have some Mozart DNA in him somewhere.)
All I can do is all I can do! But as I’m writing this post I’m thinking that I can go around with the recordings playing in my earbuds as many times a day as I can stand it. Maybe I should set a goal of getting through all the sections a dozen times daily. The sections are all downloaded onto my phone, so I can listen anywhere, while I’m doing housework or going on my walk or working on clearing off the junk from the patio. Or folding laundry. I guess it’ll have to be my constant companion for the next couple of weeks. All so that I can stand up there on that stage for two performances. I could have just not signed up, of course. I have puh-lenty going on in my life as it is. But I want to do this. It will be a thrill. As I said about the opera choruses we sang in our final concert of the year last season, When would I ever get a chance to sing in a real opera? Well, now’s the time, I guess.
What about you? Is there something you’d love to do but it will take a ton of work? Are you going to go ahead, plunge in and do it?