Tag Archives: opera

Traffic Jam in Kathmandu

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I never thought I’d say this, but I actually miss Nepali traffic jams.

When I’m sitting motionless on the 405 freeway in Los Angeles, I occasionally flash back to my experiences in Nepal.  And I think, “driving would be so much more exciting if I were back in Kathmandu!”

I never expected to travel to South Asia until my good friends at Hope Partnership Nepal started telling me thrilling stories about life in Kathmandu.  And then in 2009, I had an incredible opportunity to create the Kathmandu Music for Peace Festival, funded by Davis Projects for Peace and hosted by the Kathmandu Jazz Conservatory. I felt so privileged to visit that beautiful country and meet such wonderful people. It was the experience of a lifetime.

But my first taxi ride in Kathmandu left me feeling a little shell-shocked! Suddenly, I was at the mercy of my taxi driver; I felt like I was trapped in a video game, with all kinds of vehicles whizzing past (and honking) as we careened around tight corners.  I winced whenever I saw five people hanging off the back of a bus, or a baby strapped onto the back of a motorcycle. I instinctively held my breath whenever I thought we were going to smash into a van, a building, or a cow.

Now, I first learned to drive in the concrete jungles of Los Angeles when I was 16 years old — and that was stressful enough! — but nothing could have prepared me for Nepali traffic.

And yet, at the end of my first week in Kathmandu, the traffic started to feel normal. In fact, I developed huge admiration for Nepali drivers! Driving is an art form, and they have mastered it.  We always got where we were going, and we never hit anyone else (well… we didn’t hit them very hard). Best of all, I never saw anyone get angry; there was no “road rage.”

Driving in Kathmandu can be terrifying, but it is never boring. So just occasionally, when I’m stuck on the freeway in L.A., staring at the same old license plate for ten minutes, I get a little nostalgic for scenes like this:

Valentine Playlist

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Buon San Valentino!

Dear readers, I made you a gift for Valentine’s Day. It’s a romantic playlist of amazing operatic love songs.  45 minutes of classic opera arias and love duets on YouTube.    I hope you enjoy it. Baci, Lindsay

 

Photo by Dragan Todorovic

1. Meine Lippen, sie küssen so heiß

2. Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix

3. En fermant les yeux

4.Trahir Vincent

5. Habañera

6. Che m’ami, deh, ripetemi!

7. Nessun dorma

8. O mio babbino caro

9. O soave fanciulla

10. Nedda! Silvio!

11. Winterstürme… Du bist der Lenz… O süsseste Wonne!

Voice Lessons by Kobe Bryant

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Everyone’s still talking about the Superbowl.  But I’m thinking about basketball, mostly because I got to experience my first Lakers game last week.

Since I’m a native of Los Angeles, it’s a little embarrassing that this was my first trip to see the boys in purple. But basketball tickets are more expensive than opera tickets! And I do spend a lot of time in other cities.

As a newcomer to the Staples Center, I was dazzled by the spotlights on the basketball court.  And I enjoyed seeing “my” team in action. But I was most impressed by the Black Mamba himself, Kobe Bryant. (Photo courtesy of http://ambasketball.com)

In fact, I learned a lot about singing from Kobe.  (Just by watching him play basketball!)  Here’s what I took away from the game:

3 lessons that opera singers can learn from Kobe:

1. Make it Look Easy

Kobe Bryant is an elite athlete.  He has extraordinary talent, and he has put in thousands of hours of hard work. But he makes it look easy.

And that is the kind of effortless athleticism that makes a great singer.  To be a professional opera singer, you need to train your body like an athlete, train your mind like a scholar, and train your imagination like a painter. But the greatest challenge is to pursue excellence in all of those areas without ever getting tense!

Kobe manages to stay relaxed under tremendous pressure.  If he were coaching a young opera singer, I think he might say: keep your standards high, but stay loose. Don’t worry about anything. Sing with the same confidence that you have when your team is 40 points ahead.

2. Have Fun

Of course, Kobe exudes confidence on the court because he’s actually having fun.  It’s obvious that he loves this game. That playful feeling is often lost by opera singers, somewhere around their third year of conservatory training, when they become obsessed with vocal technique and forget why they started singing in the first place. But to an audience — even the most sophisticated audience — there’s nothing better than watching someone who simply loves to play the game.  Never lose the joy.

3. Be a Diva

The word “diva” has some negative connotations, and with good reason! Nobody wants to work with someone who is demanding and self-centered, whether it’s on the stage or on the court.

But let’s be honest: it’s no fun to work with artists (or athletes) who have no personality, either. There’s nothing less exciting than an opera where every singer has exactly the same sound, produced in exactly the same way.  We can do better than that!

I’m a pretty cheerful person, but I don’t want my life to be entirely “drama-free.”  I’m not advocating selfish or unkind behavior; that is never appropriate. The first rule of the theater is to respect your colleagues! But I think that opera singers should live boldly. If you’re too frightened to “make a scene,” how can you ever produce a gran scena onstage?

It’s true that basketball stars’ salaries are inflated, and opera stars’ egos are inflated. But we do need stars.  We will always need leaders who have the audacity to take risks and, yes, the self-indulgence to say something original. That’s the kind of energy that makes magic, on every playing field.

Kobe is a bit of a divo, and that’s part of his appeal. He even speaks Italian, which definitely makes him more operatic. So I am grateful to Kobe for giving me an excellent voice lesson, and I hope you enjoyed it, as well. Ciao!

Beach Music

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I love falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing on the beach.

When I was growing up, my family went beach camping every summer, so I remember falling asleep to that glorious noise. There’s nothing quite like it.

And that “beach music” stays with me, even when I travel. But when I’m away from home for too long, I start to  miss my ocean.  I feel like my body is calibrated to the rhythms of the Pacific.  I can’t really appreciate the sultry, salty water of the Mediterranean, or the quick and nervous tempo of Atlantic tides.  I crave slow, powerful waves that take a full 7 seconds to breathe in … and breathe out.

We have had “bikini weather” here in Los Angeles over the past few days. On Saturday, the sky was so blue that I decided to hit the bike path in Hermosa Beach. The path extends from South Torrance all the way to Malibu, and it’s a little slice of Americana, all by itself. Everywhere you look, there are people having fun: roller blading, walking their dogs, selling sunglasses, sitting in outside cafés or playing beach volleyball in the sand. This is true beach city culture.  California cool.

And as I pedaled along the bike path, I tried to think of all of the operas that are set on beaches.  Oberon comes to mind immediately.  I once had the chance to sing Rezia’s aria to the ocean, “Ozean! du Ungeheuer,” while aboard the Queen Mary!  And how about Ariadne auf Naxos?  Ariadne has been abandoned on the Greek island of Naxos and sings her aria from a large rock.  Perhaps it could look like this?  And Amelia’s aria from Simon Boccanegra is also sung on a beach.

What is it about beaches that inspires people to sing?  There must be dozens of Italian and German songs that praise the sun and the sea and the sand!  And then there’s always the Beach Boys. 😉

Anyway, I think there should be more opera on the beach!   There are some logistical issues, and some acoustical issues, but it can work. In 2009, I sang at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, and we performed a full concert at a beach resort on the Big Island.  I sang Puccini under the stars with my feet in the sand.  It felt wonderful, and I later found out that the ocean had carried my voice down the beach, so that Butterfly’s aria could be heard half a mile away!

I now live on a hill above the ocean, and from here, I can’t quite hear the pounding of the surf.  So as I drift off to sleep, I’ll just have to imagine a beach opera.  Buona notte.

The Flying Medicine Cabinet

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Because I’m a singer, I am often asked how to get rid of a cold.

My personal remedy is very simple: SLEEP!  9 times out of 10, I can fight off a cold virus by taking a nap.

But when sleep doesn’t work, I do have some favorite products.  And since I’m a frequent flyer, I travel with my own personal pharmacy.

Some singers hoard antibiotics.  This is generally a bad idea. Always consult a doctor before indulging in the meds that end in -cillin and -mycin!

But what do you do if you get a toothache on the day before an important audition in Germany? Two weeks ago, I was preparing an audition when the left part of my jaw started to ache. An impacted wisdom tooth had chosen this particular day to get infected.

So I did what anyone would do: I sent a panicked text message my dentist in Pasadena!   He texted me a prescription for Amoxicillin.  (Hooray for technology!) When I got to the local Apotheke (apothecary), I simply handed my iPhone to the pharmacist.  She squinted at the screen and asked me in German, “Is this from a real doctor?”  I was able to demonstrate my dentist’s credentials, so I got my meds. The next day, I went to my audition happy and pain-free.

Of course, it helps that I speak German. I do not speak Russian (except for phonetically, which doesn’t help in a medical emergency). When my father broke his foot in St. Petersburg in 2007, I couldn’t find the word for “ace bandage” in my pocket dictionary. So I went to the pharmacy and mimed wrapping my leg with strips of gauze. Judging by the Russian pharmacist’s reaction, it was a very entertaining performance. He was giggling uncontrollably as he went to find the bandage. But that’s another story for another blog post…

Back to business. Here is my list of favorite cold remedies:

1. Tantum Verde (one of my all-time favorites, which I discovered at a farmacia in Rome)

2. Grapefruit Seed extract (don’t ask me why it works. It’s probably a placebo. I don’t care.)

3. Sudafed (not as good as Actifed, but it will do)

4. The neti pot (if you can handle it)

5. Foods with garlic. (Seriously.)

6. SLEEP!!! and lots of tea

7. Afrin sinus

8. Zinc lozenges

If you know another product that works for you, please tell me about it in the comments section!  I’m actually very healthy, so I haven’t had a chance to sample many things! But I’m constantly asked about these products, so I like to be well informed.

Some singers also take beta blockers to deal with nerves.  I have never done this because I don’t like to play around with my biochemistry.  Avoid the powerful drugs, people!  They can affect your voice. They can affect your life. Just say no.

In the world of pharmacology, a little goes a long way. I will never forget how helpful it was to have Imodium when I landed in Kathmandu and discovered that I was allergic to yak’s milk (yaktose intolerant?).  Or the herbs that I drank when I had an unexplained fever in Tokyo. These were just simple over the counter remedies, but they made it possible for me to get onstage and sing all my concerts.

Here’s a link to a funny little video about opera singers and hypochondria. Stay healthy!

London’s Little Luxuries

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When I woke up on Wednesday morning, it took a moment for me to remember where I was.  Then I saw the pot of tea on the night table. Ah, yes, London!

The only problem with whirlwind audition tours is that performers rarely have enough time to really enjoy the magnificent cities on their itinerary. Like most opera singers, I build my travel plans around auditions and performances.  But I also look for little ways to experience the beauty and the culture around me.  By taking just a few hours out of a work day, I can usually find something amazing.  And these “stolen moments” make all the difference in the world! So let me share with you some of the little luxuries that I’ve discovered in London.

1. Royal Walking Tour

My hotel was located in Bayswater, just a few miles from Buckingham Palace.  This inspired me to create my very own royal walking tour (with some help from Google Maps)!  I picked up my morning coffee and pastry on Queensway, and then I proceeded to have a picnic breakfast in Kensington Gardens.  (Now you have to admit: that’s a great way to start a Wednesday!)  Then I set off on my merry way,  visiting Westminster Abbey and window shopping at Harrod’s before taking my lunch at an Italian cafe outside Buckingham Palace.  A perfect royal morning.

2. Soaking up Art

Then on Thursday, I had a few hours in between auditions.  I needed a good place to rest and recover my energy. So I decided to go to one of my favorite places in all of London: the British Museum.  I have spent many happy hours there in the past. For me, walking into the great court feels like coming home!

Museums are great places to relax because they have so many benches.  I really needed to recharge my batteries, so I slipped quietly into the ancient Assyrian room and chose a bench in the back, near the famous sculpted reliefs from Nineveh.  But eventually, I grew weary of Assyrian lion hunts, and I wandered into the Ancient Greek rooms.  Suddenly, two dozen English school boys from St Paul’s School were all around me, pointing out the details of the Parthenon Frieze. They were adorable, but they were loud, so I retreated to medieval Europe, where I found a nice comfortable bench in front of a video about Sutton Hoo.

When I was fully rested, I decided to do some shopping. Museums are great places to find classy and original gifts. The British Museum offers everything from refined objects d’art to unsual kids’ toys.  You can get bejeweled earrings or cufflinks for the medievalist in your life. Or a rubber sphinx for the toddler who is also a budding Egyptologist!  (I considered getting one of these for myself, but I’m not usually in the mood for riddles at bath time.)

Incidentally, the museum restaurant also offers a full afternoon tea between 3 and 5 PM, where you will find a heavenly combination of scones, pastries and tea with clotted cream.

3. Joining the Circus

After my final audition on Thursday evening, it was finally time to relax and celebrate with friends.  I needed to decompress after nine days on planes and trains and automobiles. So I took a walk up Charing Cross Road from Trafalgar Square into Leicester Square.   And finally, I hit the bright lights of Picadilly Circus!

Well, now I’m back at good ol’ Heathrow Airport and I’m ready to return to Los Angeles.  But it’s been a good tour — thank you for coming along!

A Soprano in Bayreuth (an epic tale)

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It was a dark and stormy night.

I couldn’t see anything out my window as the train chugged along. And because there are no fast trains to Bayreuth, I was traveling at about the same speed that Richard Wagner did back in 1870s. 

As a Wagnerian soprano, I was pretty excited about seeing Bayreuth for the first time. This is the town that hosts the famous annual Wagner Festival.  And it’s the place where Wagner himself spent the last decade of his exciting and highly controversial life.

Wagner’s music set the world on fire, and I just couldn’t wait to see the place where so much music history had happened. But when I arrived, it was too late to go exploring. I checked into the Golden Lion hotel and fell into a deep jetlagged sleep, with visions of flying Dutchmen in my head.

By the time I woke up, snow was falling softly on the picturesque Bavarian streets. So I put on my hat and gloves and hit the cobblestone road. But Bayreuth is very quiet on snowy Saturday mornings! It was several minutes before I saw another human (of course, I did see three Norns, a couple of valkyries and a talking bird… Just kidding. Wagnerian humor.)

The snowflakes didn’t stick to the ground, but I could hear the crunch of frozen leaves under my feet as I walked around the Hofgarten. First, I went to the Franz Liszt Museum (the great Hungarian composer was also Wagner’s father-in-law), where I studied handwritten manuscripts of Liszt’s compositions (!) and stood quietly in the room where he spent his final hours. And then I visited Wahnfried, the historic Wagner family villa, although the house itself is being refurbished and will remain closed until 2013.

Finally, I arrived at the Festspielhaus, the opera house that Wagner built to his own specifications in 1876. This is the site of the famous summer opera festival, the Bayreuther Festspiele.  I walked the length and width of the enormous stage and tested the hall’s spectacular accoustics. I would dearly love to spend more time on that stage.

But you don’t have to sing at the Festspielhaus to experience Richard Wagner in Bayreuth. The town is peppered with subtle references to his operas. Need directions to the station? Take a right on Meistersinger Street. Want to go to the festival? Meet me on the corner of Nibelungen and Tristan! If you want to relax, you can enjoy the local spa: Lohengrin Thermal Baths. (I wonder if they have any swans there?) And if all this talk of opera is giving you a headache, just get some aspirin at the Tannhäuser Pharmacy!

Nevertheless, this city is not just about Richard Wagner.  As I walked around the Old Town today, I started to get a vision for what Bayreuth had been like before its most famous (and somewhat infamous) resident arrived.  There is a beautiful 18th century castle as well as several charming Baroque churches. Best of all, there’s another opera house! The Markgräfliches Opernhaus is a breathtaking example of German Rococo.

But at the end of my magical weekend in Bayreuth, it still seemed like I had forgotten something. So I went through my mental checklist one more time: Festspielhaus, Baroque opera house, castle, Liszt Museum, Wahnfried… but I didn’t slay any dragons, marry any mysterious knights, or steal any golden rings.   I didn’t even immolate!  I guess it doesn’t matter.  After all, you should always leave something for your second visit to Bayreuth…

Vienna, All Dressed Up For Christmas

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This week, I decided to splurge on a little pre-Christmas gift for myself: Vienna.

Every now and then, it’s nice to visit a beautiful city even if I’m not performing there that weekend. So I decided to head to the capital, and I wasn’t disappointed. The Imperial City is all ready for the holiday season, with the most elegant display of Christmas lights along its fashionable boulevards.

Sunday evening, I had the pleasure of seeing Verdi’s Nabucco at the Staatsoper.  The Ukrainian-Russian soprano Maria Guleghina was battling a cold that evening, but she still delivered an impressive performance in the role of Abigaille. When I last heard her sing it in Los Angeles, Ms. Guleghina gave an electrifying rendition, pinning people to their seats with a wall of sound. It was pretty exciting.  But this time, she sang with less wildness and more nuance, letting her voice blossom slowly into creamy high notes and chesty low tones.

The next day, I extended my mini-vacation to include the Naturhistorisches Museum.  If you read my posts about Florence, you know that I am a museum lover; in fact, I “visit” certain works of art whenever I’m in Paris (Winged Nike at the Louvre) or London (the Parthenon Frieze at the British Museum) or Rome (Michelangelo’s Pietà in St Peter’s Basilica). I consider these artworks to be my friends.  Since I was in Vienna, I had to drop by and say hello to the famous Venus of Willendorf, an ancient statue in the shape of a fertility goddess.  Some experts believe that this little 5-inch statue is 24,000 years old! So I checked in with Venus, not because I’m interested in fertility this year, but just because she’s that cool. In fact, the Naturhistorisches Museum is full of cool stuff, including amethyst geodes and dinosaur bones. There are a number of fun exhibits for kids, like a “time machine” that documents continental drift.

All in all, I had a marvelous time in Vienna.  It is a glorious city, steeped in culture and art. The Economist recently hailed Vienna as the city with the highest quality of life in the whole world! No one can deny that it is a great place to be. And yet, when I actually lived in Vienna in 2004, I noticed that the city also has a peculiar kind of heaviness to it.  There are so many old traditions that they can actually weigh you down.  All over the city, there are fantastic neo-classical statues in niches and fountains and columns and archways.  Very often, you will find statues of young men and women (and serpents and griffins and mermaids…) supporting the buildings of Vienna on their backs and shoulders and heads.

But if you’re strong enough to carry the weight of an Empire between your shoulder blades, then Vienna makes an unforgettable Christmas present.  🙂

My Favorite Room

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Do you have a favorite room?  A favorite place?  A favorite opera house?  (Come on, you’ve gotta have a favorite opera house. )  If so, I have just the aria for you.

Photo of Paris Opera found at chameleon-interiors.blogspot.com

A couple of weeks ago, I made a brand new recording of “Dich teure Halle” from Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner.

This is the moment in the opera where Elisabeth bursts into the Hall of Song, overjoyed by the fact that her beloved Tannhäuser is returning to her. She knows he’ll come to the Hall of Song, so she runs in and cries out “Hello, dear room!”

So it’s a love song… to a room. Pretty cool, right? I think so, too. And he music is very exciting:

Here is my translation of the German text:

You, dear hall, I greet you once again,
joyfully I greet you, beloved room!
In you his songs came alive
and wake me now from troubled dreams.
When he departed from here,
how bleak you seemed to me!
All the peace abandoned me,
all the joy went out of you.
How my heart now beats in my chest,
you look so proud and sublime.
He who brings life both to you and to me,
he will not stay away for long.
I greet you, I greet you
You precious hall,
I hail you!

So, the next time you walk into your favorite room, try singing this song.  And if you desperately need some more music right now, you can find more of my videos and audio recordings HERE!   Have a great day, everyone.

Fusilli al Puccini

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When we last left our heroine, she was trying to balance a piece of sausage on a napkin in the Munich train station.  Meanwhile, back in Salzburg, the traveling diva is attempting to cook pasta to an operatic soundtrack…

One of the hazards of traveling around the world so much is that you don’t always take time for the simple pleasures of life, like cooking. I’m not much of a cook.  I blame this on the fact that everyone else in my family cooks quite well, so learning to cook always seemed rather redundant. I have often said that I will take up cooking whenever I get married or move to Paris, whichever comes first.

Well, I am not engaged and I’m not moving to France this year. But since I have already lived in Italy, there is really no excuse for not knowing how to cook.  My friends tell me that cooking would actually go very well with my personality and artistic sensibilities.  I hope they’re right.  Historically, I have been very impatient with long recipes and very clumsy in the kitchen!  But I do like cooking movies: Like Water for Chocolate, No Reservations, Julie & Julia. So with that inspiration in mind, I’ll give it a try.

I decided to start slowly with a nice plate of pasta. One of my best friends just loaned me an introductory DVD & book set authored by the Italian cook Antonella Clerici.  She writes: “Come in ogni preparazione gastronomica, anche un semplice piatto di pasta per essere buono esige che la materia prima sia di ottima qualità.”  (As in any culinary preparation, even a simple dish of pasta — in order to be good —  requires that the raw materials are of excellent quality.)  So I went to the market and selected some raw materials: whole grain fusilli noodles, fresh zucchini,virgin olive oil, garlic, black olives, feta cheese, black pepper, etc. As I reached for the cheese, I suddenly caught a vision for a good pasta recipe.  I was able to visualize the taste of the pasta (I suppose that’s not a visualization, but rather a gustalization?), and imagine different flavor combinations.  This is probably a routine experience for most people, but for me it was very novel and exciting!

As soon as I got home from the market, I watched Antonella’s DVD; she gives some excellent tips, but half of the fun is watching the other Italian cooks argue with each other. “Ma no, fai male!”  (But no, you’re doing it wrong!) It cracked me up. I manage to stop laughing long enough to pick up the book.  I read that the corkscrew “fusilli” noodles are perfect for absorbing a thick chunky sauce, like pesto or bolognese. Good to know. At about this point, I started to get restless.  I felt I had already gleaned enough inspiration to start cooking.

Now, it was time for the most important ingredient: opera! Who can cook without good music? So I cranked up my playlist of Puccini arias on Spotify (“Innamorata di Puccini”), uncorked the pinot grigio, and released the noodles from their plastic bag.  The soundtrack really helped:  I sliced the zucchini to Rudolfo’s declaration of love; the pasta boiled along with Magda’s first kiss; and Butterfly’s distress peaked just as I was throwing the salt and garlic around. Finally — I kid you not — I placed the final olive on my finished plate of pasta just as Pavarotti was singing “Vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!” (I shall win, I shall win, I shall win!).

So my fusilli al Puccini emerged victorious.  I did add just a little bit too much olive oil, but I blame that on Enrico Caruso’s velvety voice. And if I turned up the heat a little too high under my roommate’s frying pan? Definitely Puccini’s fault. Perhaps I should actually follow a recipe next time… or maybe not? I am definitely open to suggestions, if you have a tip for me. Buona notte, ragazzi.
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