Life in the Pit

It's time for the fall opera. It's a big deal at the university, involving many different departments who don't usually have anything to do with each other. There's a set-building crew, there's vocalists everywhere, and there's 30-40 musicians trapped under the stage, wondering what's happening above their heads.

Last year's opera was "Susannah", loosely based on the story from the apocryphal story of Susannah and the Elders. It ends with people being killed and betrayed. This year, to find something lighter, "La Boheme" was chosen. It ends with people being betrayed and dying, an important difference; there's no malicious killing in this new opera. "La Boheme" has one of the two main opera plots: people fall in love, then die. Compare with "Le Nozze di Figaro", where people fall in love, then get married.

We did a week of rehearsals by ourselves, with just the orchestra learning the music. The next week was devoted to having the various cast members come to sing their parts, to get the feel of working with the orchestra. This week has been all the final staging and run-throughs. Tomorrow night (Wednesday) is the final dress rehearsal for the "Friday/Sunday" cast, and performances start on Thursday night.

We're playing a reduced wind orchestration, which means there's only two trombone instead of four, two horns instead of four, etc. In spite of the reduced numbers, we're still all crowded in. I'm actually in the doorway leading out of the pit, sitting on a different level than everyone else. I'll try to remember to bring my camera, because it's funny.

It's always strange to sit in a pit and play for an unseen spectacle. We hear women (and men) screaming, people laughing, lots of clomping around, breaking glass, slamming doors, and every once and a while, flakes of fake snow come raining into the pit onto our stands. All this happens as we're steadily moving from "Number 26" to "Number 27", so it's a bit dry on our end.

The music is good, of course. There's a reason this is one of the 5 most performed operas. But we can't really play loud, as we'd easily overwhelm the singers, even in our reduced form. So, the nights playing eventually comes to feel like you're singing while wearing a ski-mask; some sound gets through, but it's a little confusing for the listener. I spend a great portion of my time with a mute in and at ppp. In fact, I'll go so far to say that I have never played a piece with so much time spent in-mute. It's certainly above 80%.

More updates as we approach the first downbeat.