the land of cheese

Well, in a strange turn of events I now find myself in Green Bay, WI for OFY. One of the other Paminas fell ill this week and the director called me this morning, pleading with me to drive up and do the remaining shows this week. I'm not feeling so hot myself (seem to be coming down with a bit of a cold), but I can still sing, so I told her I would do it. I made a billion phone calls, canceling and rescheduling various things for the next several days, then got on the road by 12:30 for the two hundred mile trip up to Green Bay. It actually went very quickly, as there was little to no traffic, so now here I am at the Green Bay Super 8, getting ready to go have dinner with the gang. We've got two shows tomorrow and one Friday morning, then I will dash back to Chicago to make my teaching in Palatine in the afternoon. It's going to be a crazy couple of days, but hopefully I've now endeared myself to OFY that they will hire me back next year. :)

Other than crazy car trips, the week has been fairly uneventful. The St. Matthew Passion concerts went swimmingly, both were nearly sold out, which made for very exciting performances. Despite it's EXTREME length, the audience seemed to really love it. I'm completely smitten with the music of J.S. Bach. It's just so enthralling. I'm hoping to work up some oratorio arias this summer and coach them with a colleague from MOB.

So that's about all the news from the midwest. I was feeling very midwestern today as I drove through the nothing-ness of Wisconsin. As I drove through Sheboygan, I just had to call Skafish (my bf who lives in NYC) to leave her a message about livin' the dream. You see, we always used to joke that we'd end up singing at Sheboygan light opera (who knows why we chose that city) and here I am, not so far from it. But a gig's a gig, as you come to realize in this biz, and I'm pretty fond of this one. So here we go, tour blog part deux....