My orchestra is performing Hänsel und Gretel in a few weeks. What a great opera. I'm really enjoying it. However, having made it to only two of the first five rehearsals, I am woefully unfamiliar with the music. So I am, in the best college tradition, cramming.
I have a double CD of the opera in German, the libretto, which has German in the left-hand column and English in the right, and my viola part. I don't know German. Trying to learn the music and the story while also following my part is extremely difficult. I can only follow the music and the libretto or the music and my part, so there is lots of going back over things multiple times. I spent over an hour last night on just one and a half minutes of the first act. As a matter of fact, I've already spent about four hours just listening and reading, and that's all been on Act I. As my conductor says, "Opera is hard!"
Because I've been struggling with the opera, it didn't really occur to me that Lee might enjoy it, despite the fact that she has been listening to various CD's lately. But yesterday I put on my favorite bit so far, which is Peter's drunken song in Act I, and we danced and danced around the kitchen, laughing and giggling with Clara looking on with fascination. Lee then looked at the libretto, and what does she see but a gingerbread house on the front. "Mommy, tell me the whole story." And that was that.....
"I want to hear the witch's song again!" She loves it.
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