I want to share something I worked on in April and May, ahead of my debut of ERWARTUNG with Peter Sellars and Essa-Pekka Salonen in San Francisco. I wrote an essay on my process around understanding the role of THE WOMAN in Schoenberg's ERWARTUNG.
Preparing Erwartung: Interpretive Notes and Translation
This piece is special to me, because in writing it, I realized how much thought and research I put into each role I sing...even the ones I have sung many times (a post on AIDA is coming soon)!
I'm fascinated with yin-yangness of it all: The pull of the music and the push of the words; The black and white of the notes and words on the page and the rich colors of the emotions behind them; The echo of past voices singing through (but hopefully not drowning out) mine. I like the confrontation. I need the contrast. It turns out, there is contrast even within me: the words I write are the counterbalance to those that I sing...and it's time that my words had their time on stage.