Back at Bard

Hey all, Bard Music Festival 2009 is under way here at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, and I have already sung more Wagner in four days than I ever have in my entire life. Or probably ever will again.

It turns out, though, to be a lot more entertaining than I thought it would be. And my voice is, unbelievably, holding up.

This picture is the gatehouse to Ward Manor, which they made into a dorm a long time ago. Ward Manor kind of looks like this except bigger. I pass by the gatehouse walking back and forth to the cafeteria . I'm not staying in Ward Manor this year for the first time in my seven years of coming to the Festival. This year I "get" to stay in the new air-conditioned dorm (see below), which is pretty comfortable but short on atmosphere. And bugs.

A couple of dumb things have happened: first I locked myself out of my room on the First Day...and had to call Security to get back in, and they made me sing something over the phone to prove I was who I said I was. I thought that was pretty weird. It took forever for them to come, too, so I must not have made much of an impression.

The second dumb thing is that I muttered under my breath during a rehearsal and was overheard by the conductor. This guy is Leon Botstein, who is extremely brilliant and kind of crazy, not that there's anything wrong with that, and also really effing funny. From time to time, like once or twice per rehearsal, he goes into a long story or speech about something--at which point the room gets extremely quiet because you don't want to miss what he has to say, because it will be interesting and there will always be a big laugh somewhere along the line. For some reason he was going on about the faithlessness (or stupidity) of Elsa, the heroine of Lohengrin, and he got off on this satirically misogynistic thing about weddings being a march to the scaffold or something, and then he interrupted himself to say that in some cultures they play the same marches at weddings that they do at funerals. At which I muttered under my breath, "You're making that up." So then he slewed around and looked right at me, and said, "You think I'm making that up? I'm not!" He wasn't frowning, or anything, so I sure hope he knew I was kidding.

Since supposedly things come in threes, no doubt I will do something dumb at this afternoon's rehearsal. If so, I'll be sure to let you know.