Evita!

Ok, I should have brought my minidisk recorder and that’s all there is to it. Don’t ask me how it’s possible that a German opera chorus, completely international in its make-up, and completely old school in its vocal technique, would be asked to sing the musical "Evita." It is just so wrong in so many ways. I am sure that I will never be able to describe the horror to you, but, since there is no record of what I have just lived through, I will have to use my words to describe to you the meeting of two worlds.

These worlds are strange bedfellows, as strange as let’s say a professional basketball player and a professional taxidermist, or maybe like a Bible salesman and a union fluffer or something. Anyway, the point is that oil and water just don’t mix, and I am here to say that operatic voices and musicals don’t mix either. Period. End of story.

I mean, in the score for "Evita", which the chorus painstakingly read note for note, putting T’s at just the right place, syncopating methodically and singing triplets like a friggin’ metronome, there are some high notes. There are even high D’s for the sopranos. But, seriously, do they have to sing them full out? Have you ever heard an operatic soprano sing a high D at the end of the first act of Evita? The sound of us all in that moment could summon up the rapture, let’s just say, and it seems like more than way over the top.

And there are 3 of us out 17 that are American. We have people from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Romania, and a bunch from right here in Germany. When all of these people try to sing in English, one of the most complex to sing because of our strange vowels and diphthongs, it is a roller coaster ride to the happy farm and I ain’t kidding:



Don’t craayah forah me, Argentiiiiiiinaaahhhhh
Zee truz iz I nahever left yuuuuuuuu.
All zru maee vild deeeez
maeee mahd egsistahnsss

I won’t even go into what an embarrassment it is to try to explain to these people, all of whom are older than myself, what the words “slut” and “bitch” can be best translated as in German. Of all of the surrealism that I face on an everyday basis here, I would have to say that tonight’s rehearsal may have been a probable highpoint. Fellini, I have a new concept for you that you might want to consider...