Dido & Aeneas

Last night was my very first opera performance. Whew! It went really well actually. I played Dido in Purrcell’s opera "Dido & Aeneas." Performing is always so interesting. I feel good about my performance but I hesitate to say it was good/not so good/great – I don’t want to label it that way, at least not for myself. Let other people judge me. In my own mind, the performance was what it was. It was a release, I let it go in the moment. And when the moments pass, I have no energy left to put towards those ideas. I will say, as far as acting goes, opera is definitely the bigger challenge. This being my first opera, I had no idea how different it was going to be from a musical. Of course the music is written very differently, but in an opera it’s like the greatest form of expressing the emotion is through the vocalist’s line of music, not so much their own facial expression. Whereas musical theatre, the music is written much more like real speech and is easily matched to faical expression and body language. But with opera – it’s like what do I do with my face when I’m singing a two measure melisma (vocal run) on the word "valor"? Oh well, it was my one night of being the lead and now it’s over! I’m just a chorus girl for tonight’s performance.