Amahl and the Night Visitors

I agreed to help out a friend (my choir director Kathleen) and sing in the chorus as a shepherd in a production she is staging in Saugerties this weekend. The leads are all her high school age vocal students (plus an incredible 12-year-old boy as Amahl) - the kids are doing a great job.

I love Menotti's score, which I sang in high school, and eagerly signed up to do it again. Oh my god....those words. I forgot about how many words there are to memorize - lists of complicated pairings, no rhyme or reason to how they fit together. I've been sitting here all morning chanting "olives and quinces, apples and raisins, hazelnuts and camomile, mignonettes and laurel......"

Yikes! Dress rehearsal tonight and I need to be off book. Hopefully, I will get there by then.