Accademia d'Amore
9/3/2008
Kind hearts and gentle people,
I emerge from the waters of Baroque immersion much the better for my ducking!!
What a magnificent program. I am formulating an enthusiastic rave to send to the Managing Director which hopefully will be sufficently compelling to make singers far and near want to go if they put it on their website, but in the meantime I'll go to town on my blog here . . . first off, it was wonderful to be back in Seattle, land of lattes, during a month when one forgets that it does in fact rain nine months out of the year . . . I should ALWAYS go to Seattle in August . . . my childhood, while very pleasant, was somewhat damp and mossy. What characteristics in my personal makeup that may or may not account for I cannot say. Still, there it is, what? (Sorry, I've been reading Wodehouse.)
The first few weeks in Seattle I spent in luxurious idleness with nary a New England farmhouse in sight. I went to coffee, I window-shopped, I reconnected with every friend I've ever had in the Pacific Northwest, nearly, and best of all as my grandmother is breaking up housekeeping and moving to Texas I got to spend some special time with family and inherit some awesome stuff. I am now the proud owner of the flag for military service used at my grandfather's funeral, my grandmother's wedding bouquet, two thousand four hundred pictures including this REALLY CUTE one of my parents' wedding with my mom's wedding veil falling off (I scrapbook like a bat out of hell when I can find the time), loads of books, Christmassy knickknacks and to my great joy part of my flamenco doll collection was NOT completely ruined by our basement flooding years ago (mom was cleaning out her storage facilities as well.) So I am now many boxes of stuff the richer which brings us to the topic of the usefulness of immense New England farmhouses equipped with barns. Anyway!! On to Accademia D'Amore!
Accademia D'Amore is the name of the intensive summer program of the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera, run by Stephen Stubbs and Maxine Eilander, masters of the style, and featuring such notable faculty as Nancy Zylstra, much-sought-after baroque vocal coach, and Marguerite Tindemanns, viola di gamba player of international repute.
It was an extremely well-run and all-inclusive program featuring classes in baroque dance and movement, vocal coaching, language, style and diction coaching, in addition to staging rehearsals of baroque opera scenework of which there was a tightly-run concluding performance of which any professional might have been proud. I like the subculture of early music a lot. It has the best characteristics of a subculture and the musicianship among the singers is the highest I have seen anywhere. As is the intellectual level. I rarely have had the pleasure of discussing books with other singers, but found myself in very good company for that and many other things. What I love also is that the sense of collaboration between the singers and the instrumentalists is extremely high; it's a tight sense of ensemble and we all hang out together, go to lunch together, learn side-by-side, as the program's not just for singers but continuo players as well. I liked everyone immensely and miss them already, made some wonderful connections in the business and look forward to working with everyone again -- I feel like I'm home.
I must go. This is my first day back home and the house is in some need of tender loving care due to a supporting beam having been found in my absence to be full of termite rot. The beam as well as a goodish side of the house is exposed to God and everybody and we are going for The Tool Look in decor. Let's hear it for home ownership! Rah! Rah! Rah!