La vie boheme

The past week has been a whirl of rehearsals for Suor Angelica, lessons, coachings, and (my favorite) German food and language. I'm starting (after only two weeks!) to reach that point of learning a language where I understand, sometimes, what's being said, without actually consciously recognizing any words or being able to say how I know what's going on. For example, last night I went to Amici restaurant again with my friend Melissa, Ian (the gay big brother of the group), and Dr. Maddison (the teacher from JMU who runs the program). As always, that was a good time. We were (again) waited on by both Zali (not Zati as I wrote when we met him) and Ati, the Albanian-cum-German waiters, who also speak some Italian--but no English. (Actually, I think Ati is half Albanian and half Macedonian. He drew us a map of where he is from.) After our long and relaxed meal (I had pizza again...I should really try something else there but the pizza is just addictive), Ati invited us to come out to the Cafe Mumu (or something like that) with them after they got off work. This was one of those moments: I understood what he was saying but I don't know how. Except I couldn't understand what time he was saying (I really need to spend some time memorizing German numbers). Unfortunately, when he wrote the time down for me, it was 24:00--midnight! Later he told Ian they were actually going at 1 am. Melissa doesn't do late nights--and I usually don't either, but Ian and I considered going.

But that's all well and good for waiters who have Sundays off, but we are opera singers. Ian has a performance this morning, and both of us are the rental van drivers for today's tourist trip to Leipzig, where we'll be seeing the church where Bach was Kapellmeister for a long time (at least I think that's right) and going to an operetta matinee. And I'm singing in a concert tomorrow night. All that doesn't quite say--party at the Cafe Mumu. So we didn't go. This morning when I woke up I was thinking how I would tell them (in German of course) that I wanted to go if it weren't so late, and another time when we don't have such a full weekend, we will go.

Is it just me, or does it sound like I'm living in an opera? Albanians? Cafe Mumu (isn't the cafe in Boheme called something like that)?

Anyway. I've been thinking about what I want to accomplish this summer as a singer. I believe I wrote a while ago about how I tend to be insecure about my singing and my technique. I think I need to work out for myself what works for my voice and what doesn't and stick to it, and I need to stop trying to please everyone and trust my own judgement. That is my goal for this summer, while I am away from MY teacher and working with many different teachers and coaches who I neither know nor know if I can trust, who don't know my voice yet or my journey.

The opportunity to go to cafes in the middle of the night with German-speaking Albanians is, I suppose, just a bonus.