another unexpected debut

(Note: I wrote the following blog entry on Monday morning.)

Hello dear readers and greetings from Paris! I'm not supposed to be in Paris, you say? Well, I was in the mood for an authentic French croissant so I hopped on the next train to France to get one. Ok, maybe not. The real story is that Brenda and I were enjoying a lazy Saturday afternoon when she got a text message from one of her friends. Apparently Paris Opera needed an Anne Trulove for their performance of The Rake's Progress the next day, and Brenda's friend recommended her. The text message went on to say that Paris Opera would be calling Brenda any moment. So Brenda shrieked and then said, "Should I do it?" and I, being my usual thoughtful and articulate self, said, "uhhhhhh." And then Brenda's phone rang. I'll spare you the play-by-play from here on out. In short, Brenda hopped on a plane to Paris a few hours later, and I hopped on a train the next morning. I got to Paris at 1 PM and met up with Brenda. She had a 30 minute musical rehearsal starting at 1:30, and the show started at 2:30. The staging was so complicated that they didn't have enough time to teach it to Brenda, so the soprano who was sick still performed the role minus the singing. Brenda sang the role from the side of the stage. Everything went really well, and Brenda sounded fantastic.

 The home of the Paris Opera.

 Brenda in her dressing room before the show.

 the stage

 The left side of the auditorium during the first intermission.

 the ceiling

 the lobby

more of the lobby

As you may remember from the post last week, Brenda is rehearsing a role in Frankfurt right now, and she has rehearsal this morning at 10 AM. In Frankfurt. And we spent the night in Paris. Her alarm clock went off at 4 AM this morning so she would have time to get ready for her 7 AM flight back to Frankfurt. So she's probably in the air somewhere over Germany right now, and I'm at one of the train stations in Paris waiting for my train.

In other (not as exciting) news, I took four final exams last week. I think they all went fairly well. I had my last exam on Friday, and my Professor for that class decided that she would email all of the students the question and we could answer it anywhere we wanted as long as we emailed the answer back within two hours. So on Friday morning I rolled out of bed 30 minutes before my exam, made a pot of coffee, ate some breakfast, and then proceeded to take the exam in my pajamas. I think Brenda was a little nervous that she might disturb me while I took the exam, but she didn't bother me in the least. It was actually quite nice to have her there; she provided great non-verbal moral support.

This will be a busy week of rehearsals for Brenda, and then she will have her final performance in Hamburg on Saturday. We are hoping that we can go up to Hamburg on Friday night so she won't have to spend four hours on a train on a performance day, but we will see if the Frankfurt rehearsal schedule allows it. By the way, I am now on the train, and Brenda made it to her rehearsal in Frankfurt with ten minutes to spare. Plenty of time! Maybe we should live in Paris and Brenda can commute to Frankfurt every day. I'll talk to Brenda about it and let you know what she thinks.

I hope you all have a great week, and I'll talk to you next Tuesday!