This cold has moved into my chest and is seriously hindering my voice. When I went to church this evening (so nice to have a church w/ a 5 p.m. mass not 5 minutes from the theater), I found that I could barely sing - so little breath I had to breathe in the middle of phrases, not much volume, and some notes and any intervals across or near my passaggio were difficult to sing, if I managed it at all. This did not bode well for my performance tonight!
I warned our music director that my volume would be limited and that he'd have to listen hard for me. This is an issue because the small space dictates that our musicians be placed behind the set, where we can't see them and they can't see us. There are several places in Pirates where a singer has an a capella pick-up to a measure before the orchestra joins in. Ruth has quite a few of those, so the MD needed to realize that he'd have trouble hearing them tonight.
As it turned out, I was able to get out my lines and my songs, but only just. I think I may have had perhaps half my usual volume. Even speaking required a lot of effort just to produce an audible sound; trying to sing at an audible level seemed to require as much energy as pushing a truck out of the mud. However, it must have sounded OK, because none of my fellow cast members commented on my reduced volume, and as I was working my way through the crowd, a woman came up to me, told me I was great, that she loved the show, thought we were all wonderful. Maybe I should have asked her to come home with me, so she could continue in that vein. No, best not, since TW has come down with my cold and we wouldn't want to infect the nice lady.
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