The LAST hour. Of a three hour rehearsal. Which had sounded JUST FINE up to that point.
....all of which will ultimately prove useless because once we are actually singing those eight bars on stage with the staging given to us by the director, on set, in costume, it will sound totally different anyway--all the precious little adjustments the conductor asked for will be diffused into nothingness.
I would rather receive an anal probe from angry aliens than EVER have to relive that hour again. The only thing that kept me (and, probably, several other people as well) from either nervous breakdowns or (in my case) psychotic episodes was the mantra I repeated over and over in my head: $44.10. (This is, in case you were wondering, the hourly rate of pay for non-tenured chorus at the major opera house where this rehearsal took place. Looks great on paper until one realizes that due to budget cuts there are MAYBE three to ten hours per week that one receives this princely sum....for the privilege of rehearsing eight bars for one hour.) When I asked a colleague, only half-joking, why he was doing this to us, she sighed, "...because he CAN."
Seriously....there is no headache quite so bad as the one engendered by the repeated bashing over one's head with the blunt instrument of a conductor's ego.
I'm in my happy place now (which involves a BIG glass of a refreshing alcoholic beverage, so I hope that this post will maintain coherence, though somehow I doubt it...).
Seriously....is it too late to go into accounting?
RM
