A Day of Rest!

Today we had the entire day off from opera rehearsal. I actually missed it.

But we did have an opera horn excerpt clinic with Professor Chenoweth today. It was very informative and I learned plenty. The man is very enjoyable to work with and I learned a lot.

I played excerpts from the operas Don Carlo, the Marriage of Figaro, and Cosi fan Tutte. The playing went well, and our entire OSU Horn Studio played well.

What I particularly enjoyed was the presentation by Professor Chenoweth about being an opera pit player and what life was like. It was interesting to see how different opera playing was from orchestra playing. There is a lot more that can go wrong in an opera than in an orchestra concert. In an opera you have to work with singers, cues, long waits until you play again, offstage playing, extremely bizarre and difficult transpositions, and the potential of playing in different venues and temperatures. Quite a bit of variables to deal with.

Symphonic playing is more stable. You almost always play indoors, the repertoire is widely known, you only have the musicians and the maestro to deal with, and a shorter concert length. When you truly stack it up, the skills and patience required for opera is a much greater than the skills and patience required for symphonic playing.

Overall, today I learned much about a side of the horn which seemed very obscure and mysterious. Perhaps one day I will be able to play with a professional opera company as a sub!?!

By the way, tomorrow night starts our three-night run of Mozart's The Magic Flute!!