It’s intermission time here at The Bodice Ripper Project! Maren talks about the power of intermissions and tells a story about gigging as a singer in COVID times.
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Transcript
(orchestra tuning)
Hello and welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project, an exploration of sexuality, feminism, and the journey to self-empowerment through the lens of romance novels.
I’m Maren Montalbano, opera singer, coach, and writer.
In this episode, you’ll hear me talk about intermissions. And I will tell a brief story about something interesting that happened to me this week.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Welcome and thank you so much for pressing play. Today’s episode is titled “Intermission.” We’re about halfway through Season Two, and in keeping with operatic tradition, I wanted to create a little bit of a break.
Intermissions are extremely important in opera. First of all, the operas are usually so long that you definitely need to get up and go to the bathroom.
But second of all, intermission is the time when audience members mingle. And it’s just nice to be able to take a little bit of a break from the very intense story that is being told and absorb some of it.
When I was a little girl, I was in the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and we had a summer camp. So I didn’t go to band camp, I went to chorus camp. One of my favorite memories from summer camp with the Girls Chorus was when the artistic director would gather everybody up for bedtime stories. And bedtime stories were always opera stories.
So she would tell the plot of whatever opera, it could be any of them Tosca Nabucco, uh, Carmen, all, all the big ones. And she told them as if they were bedtime stories. She used to make it really fun. She would say, “And Tosca, who was a soprano,” so every time she said Tosca, she would say, “who was a,” and then everybody had to say, “soprano!” You know, total nerd here.
Anyway, she also would bring in intermission as a part of her bedtime story opera synopsis telling. And for her, tradition for intermission meant going down to the cantina in the basement of the San Francisco opera house and getting lemon drops. Because of that, I always wanted to get lemon drops at intermission. When I was a kid, my mom would take me to the opera. We always went and got lemon drops.
So you can consider this your lemon drop.
But another reason why I’m taking an intermission here is that I’m trying to avoid burnout. I have been doing a lot more projects, which is great. And my time and focus is starting to get a little split. I have not been banking these episodes. I’ve been making them as each week happens, and I know that you’re supposed to do a whole bunch and then release them as needed because that’s the best way to avoid burnout. But oops, I didn’t do that, so here we are.
I’m talking to you from my very new isolation booth, which is in my closet. I have set up some acoustical materials and lots of blankets.
The reason that I’m doing this is that I’ve got a lot more recording projects. All singing projects, which is great. So while I’m building out this isolation booth, I figure why not also use it to record my podcast and do some other voiceover type work?
But even with all of my projects and different commitments, I thought that I would be able to get this week’s story out to you by today. But I ended up with a last minute gig, and I wanted to share some of the details with you, because it’s full of adventure, and it really touches on what singers are going through these days. I thought that might be interesting to you, since I’m a singer. And I talk a little bit about that as a part of my podcast.
So, this is what happened. On Friday morning, a little bit before 10, I received a text from an old colleague who I have not heard from in years, you know, at least five years. And, he was texting because he’s teaching at a university, he’s got a master’s conducting student that is giving a recital that night.
And one of the singers, the alto in the ensemble that would be performing at that recital, had to drop out because of COVID exposure. And the recital itself would need to be canceled unless they could find a replacement.
Now usually when there is an opera, for example, there are understudies, but with smaller recitals, they don’t have understudies mostly because there aren’t, there, there usually isn’t the funds to, to be able to have somebody on standby only to sit around and probably not go on stage.
This was kind of a Hail Mary pass that my colleague was throwing by texting me to see if I was available and see if I could actually do the work, which would be to sing this entire Master’s conducting recital, uh, that night.
So I had a few questions about what their COVID protocols were, how I was supposed to get down there, lots of things. I mean, this place was like two and a half hours from my house, but I was able to clear up my schedule and, um, I went ahead and said yes.
So by noon, I got all of the music and had to start furiously learning all of this stuff. Because remember, this is a Master’s degree conducting recital. So all of the music was actually quite difficult. I’m a good sight reader. That’s one of the things that makes me hireable, but this stuff is not easily sight readable. I needed to actually sit down and learn some of the stuff.
And I did not have that much time. Rehearsal was supposed to be at 7:00 PM. And then the performance would be at 8:00 PM. It was a live stream performance. It was noon when I got the music and I had to leave the house by 3:45 at the latest. So I had about three ish hours, three and a half hours to learn an hour’s worth of very difficult music. And not, not just like, “Oh, I am singing the melody.” No, the alto part. Like, the middle alto part. This was music for six voices. So I was really smack dab in the middle. There was no real easy way to do this.
So. I got working, you know? I pulled up recordings of these pieces. I started studying the score. I circled all of the tricky bits, and then I had to leave the house. I got stuck in a little traffic. I was a little worried I wasn’t going to get there on time, but I did. I zinged right in at 6:58. They ushered me into the building, handed me an N95 mask, and it was go time.
So, uh, it was crazy. All the things that I had to keep in my head at once. Let me just say for the record, don’t try this at home. This is like highly advanced stuff. I had unfamiliar music that I was reading through, so I, I was still sight reading. Luckily, again, I’m a pretty good sight reader.
Also. I have perfect pitch. So that’s, that’s super helpful, but not helpful when two of the pieces were, um, well, one, one piece was a half step down from the written pitch and another piece was a half step up from the written pitch. So I had to remember which ones were at pitch and which ones were I needed to sort of, uh, use my relative pitch.
They were all in different languages. I mean, it wasn’t like hugely different. There was some in Latin, in some in German, but still. It was a completely different acoustic. I’d never sung in that space before. It was a beautiful chapel. Really nice acoustic actually.
And then I was singing with unfamiliar people. I’d never worked with any of the other singers. And they were all very good. It was extremely professional. But, you know, it’s like, you don’t know somebody, you don’t know if you can trust what they’re doing. You don’t know what their level is.
I was standing in this spot and I had to figure out who was singing what part, because we weren’t in a regular soprano on the very, very far right and then bass on the very, very far left configuration. So I needed to know what parts the people on either side of me was singing so that I could orient myself in the score.
And then I needed to watch the conductor. And then plus I was singing in a mask, which I’d never done before.
So there were a lot of competing thoughts in my head and I had to keep them all under control. I’m really, really proud of myself though. But one of the biggest things that I found, which I found really interesting was the whole singing in a mask thing because I’d never done it before. And I was a little worried that I wasn’t going to be able to take big enough breaths.
I did feel like I was running out of breath more often than normal, but because I already had that expectation, I wasn’t panicking. And that is key. The key to these kinds of situations, actually, any kind of performance situation is don’t panic.
You have to be able to figure out how to be flexible. You know what? It’s not just in these cases, like the last minute thing, they know it’s not going to be perfect. I screwed up, I definitely screwed up in that concert. But I got myself back on track for sure.
And I was able to do that because I have enough understanding of this kind of music to kind of fake it a little bit, and to get myself back on track, figure out where to land, and keep skating.
By the end of the concert though, I did notice that my posture was not great. I was sort of hunched over. I was leaned forward towards the music stand, and my shoulders were up a little bit. And I thought to myself, “Oh, this is why I wasn’t able to get really deep breaths because I was holding myself very unnaturally.”
So. I just have a few key takeaways from this whole experience.
And I wanted to share them with you because I don’t know, I’m not sure how many of you are singers. Probably some of you. I think it’s so important for everybody to continue practicing, even if there aren’t any gigs happening. Because as we’re practicing, we’re keeping our voices in shape. We’re athletes. We have to use that muscle or lose it.
So it’s so, so, so important to continue practicing, staying in shape as if we’re going to go perform tomorrow or today. Cause it could happen.
But I would also add: practice with a mask. Now I have a couple of extra masks, um, some N95 masks. And I’m going to order some singers masks, which are slightly larger than a regular mask that gives you a little bit more room. And I’m going to practice in the mask. I’m going to learn how to breathe in that mask so that I’m not, it’s not something that’s occupying parts of my mind as I’m thinking about a million other things.
Another takeaway that I have is it’s so important to stay present with your network. Let people we’ll know what you’re doing. If that means posting on social media, do that. If that means reaching out and giving people calls and just chatting and checking up on them or whatever, do that. That kind of activity goes a long way. And it reminds people that you’re there and that you are easy to work with. You’re fun to work with. And if something like this happens, if something like this comes along and they’ve got an emergency, they will call you because they remember you and they like you and they know you and they trust you.
And then the last thing that I want to share with you is just stay open to opportunities.
Before this gig, I was offered two other gigs, both of which required singing in a mask. And I turned them down because I was afraid. I was afraid of what singing in a mask meant. That it meant to me that the pandemic would never be over.
And I was also afraid of my physical reaction to singing in a mask. Would I be able to breathe? And my experience on Friday told me, yeah. Yeah, you can breathe. You can breathe and you can sing.
It’s really not that much of a difference. I didn’t need to force my sound. It didn’t actually feel that muffled. Um, it didn’t sound that muffled. I listened back to the replay and it sounded fine. Everybody was mic’d also, so that may be part of it. But I am actually very surprised.
And I know that there are probably church music directors out there right now, shaking their heads going, “We’ve been doing this for the last six months. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Of course it’s safe.”
But I think I needed to go through it myself and I needed to figure it out for myself. But I figured it out. So now I’m telling you. It’s actually not so bad to sing in a mask. It feels a little weird, but if you practice with it, you’ll get used to it.
And then you can put it on your resume as a skill. Because I’m looking at it as a little bit of an extended technique. There are some people who practice how to do the, you know, Tuvan throat singing, right? That’s an extended technique.
And there are some people who can whistle. That is also technically an extended technique. I’m a terrible whistler, by the way. I don’t know why, I’ve tried everything, but I’m not. Do not hire me to whistle. That’s all I have to say.
Anyway, all that being said is if you stay open to opportunities, then when they come, you’ll be able to seize them. So that’s all I wanted to talk to you about today at this intermission.
I hope you are enjoying some lemon drops. If they are the candy kind, I’m very jealous. And if they are the alcoholic kind, I’m even more jealous.
Next week, I will be talking with the wonderful Christina Castaneda, who is the host of the Savvy Creative podcast. She is a writer, she teaches creativity, and my conversation with her is fricking amazing. So I hope you stick around for that next week.
You actually learn more by giving other people an opportunity to work together. You learn from them, they learn from you. It all works out. You just build these beautiful friendships and you’ll learn more than you ever will in an MFA program or from a professor, anything. You will learn more working together.
And don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter. I send out love notes every week. Well, except for last week. But, head over to bodiceripperproject.com to sign up. And of course, if you want to reach out in any other way to talk to me about any of these episodes, about my experience with this gig, let me know. Just reach out I’m @supermaren on Instagram and you can just DM me there. That’s the easiest way to get a hold of me.
The Bodice Ripper Project is a production of Compassionate Creative, and was conceived, written, and edited by me, Maren Montalbano. The theme music was also written by yours truly. If you liked what you heard, I invite you to give this podcast a 5-star rating – you think it doesn’t make a difference, but it does! – and I’ll see you next time.