OK, folks, bear with me, please. I did start this because a friend wanted a diary of my experiences doing my first lead. That means a lot of "my first ___" posts. If it gets tedious, well, you can always skip that entry and hope for better things later.
Last night was a principals-only music rehearsal; chorus members had the night off. I had no idea what to expect, but arrived to find nearly all the leads assembled, along with the director and music director (MD), with 3 of the men gathered around the piano working on their trio. I found that if those of us who were waiting our turn wanted to sing along sotto voce and get silly, the director didn't mind as long as we kept the volume down. In fact, I think she was rather entertained by our antics, as she joined in when she wasn't busy giving someone blocking notes.
I only sang in two of the songs we worked on last night: Three Little Maids from School (the only hard thing about that one is finding my first note; after that, it's very straightforward) and Brightly Dawns our Wedding Day, which is a nice little madrigal. My challenge with that one was getting the timing right on the fa la's - come in in the wrong place on something like that and you can throw everyone off track, so I'm going to have to drill that one. And because it has the usual lengthened notes (and a very long rest passage) at the end, the MD told us that one of us will have to direct so that we end together.
I learned last night that we're going to be miked! I don't know if that's just for the principals or for everyone on stage, but this will be new for me. When I did Secret Garden the kids playing Mary, Colin and Dickon wore body mics, and I've done a few shows where we had floor mics, but I've never had to wear one myself. According to the schedule, we'll get them Monday night before we open, which will give us 4 nights to rehearse with them and get the technical details sorted out (e.g., how do I anchor this in my kimono so that it stays put, doesn't show, and doesn't come unplugged?).
1 comment:
Hi Maureen!
The best way to keep a mic anchored is underneath a wig. (Given that this is Mikado, I'm assuming you'll have one!). Plastic earpieces are usually used to affix the mics, but I loathe them - they never stay put!
Bring the mic out at the forehead and run the lead over the top of your head and down your back. The wig can be put on top of the mic and it won't shift at all. The only problem can come if the microphone itself fails - fairly rare, although it happened to me once when I played Ida and they soaked the mic during the Act 1 Finale.
Post a Comment