I just can't get you outta my head

I'll admit it, I'm in a music learning frenzy.

I've actually been really lucky in that I'm usually just learning one role at a time, or maybe learning one role while I'm performing another. Plus, with 4 cherubinos, 6 Rosinas and 6 Cenerentolas, I've had a lot of repeats. But right now I'm in a kind of obsessed state of learning a million and one things, and I kind of like it.

In addition to the Varese pieces which I talked about in the previous post, I am making sure I'm all learned and memorized for a concert of all Mozart music with an orchestra this weekend (3 arias and 3 duets), I've begun learning a new role which I may have to go do in about a month, I have two songs which are the beginning of a song cycle a composer friend of mine has begun writing for me and which we want to get a recording of asap, and I have a couple of new audition arias that I want to bring with me on my upcoming audition trip to europe. Going from Varese to Mozart to bel canto to modern American and back to Varese in one day makes my brain swim, but it also really inspires me. One second I'm practicing floating high B flats and the next I'm practicing belting a middle C in full chest voice. I usually prefer the part of this job where I'm around other people, whether it's working with the conductor on the music or just rehearsing the staging with the cast, but this self imposed solitude with constant learning is actually really making me happy. I've often only been leaving my apartment once a day, to go to the gym (okay, I've only been doing that this week, but I'm DOING it) and otherwise I just sequester myself. When my brain gets full I stop and do something else like catch up on my emails, but then my newly insatiable appetite for learning reasserts itself, and I'm back gazing at sheet music.

I'm usually a horrible procrastinator, but if this keeps up, I might learn the Mozart role I'm singing in France in 2010 by the end of the week.