Danielle de Niese
Despina Cosė fan tutte
Susanna Le nozze di Figaro
2006-12-23
Week 14 and 15
What a whirlwind! In retrospect, these past four months have really flown by!
The opening nights of Nozze and Cosi were both great successes for everyone as well as for me personally! My parents came up for these premieres, so everything was truly complete!
In general the performances have gone very well! Personally, I've been really trying to do better each time, and also to try and find different colors each and every time, so that no one performance is the same - it's really fun and especially easy to do this with Mozart, because when you have so much recitative you really have a blank canvas every time if you so choose to see it that way. For me, recit's can be interpreted as differently and in as many different ways as one chooses. It's like speaking a sentence. No one speaks a phrase the same way every single time- and in this way one can vary the color, speed, and intention of the phrases in recitatives as if they were spoken... I really like to be very present in the moment on stage, so that means that I probably won't feel exactly the same emotion every time.. But of course I always respect the score and text that is written!
We had one crazy performance, which I'm sure you might have heard about or seen on television: It was the Cosė performance on December 10th, which was scheduled to be broadcast live on television (NPS), as well as screened in movie theaters and the internet. Unfortunately around 20 minutes before the show began, we heard an announcement that the show was going to begin at least 15 minutes late. After we all scrambled out of our dressing rooms to find out what was going on, we discovered that there was a big problem with the turntable (the main set piece that is fundamental to the show's changing scenes), and that they were trying to fix it. It was only a few minutes later that we were told “There's no turntable”. What? What does that mean? “There's NO turntable?” we asked. “Yep, there is no turntable, they've had to cancel the broadcast, and cinema screenings, and they are stalling on the television right now, but we have to still do the show, because the audience is entering the theater right now” said Roger, our fabulous assistant director at the DNO. Shocked and slightly pumped from the adrenalin of this last minute excitement, I met my colleagues in the hall- there was no time to even mourn the loss of the turntable or ask what went wrong. We had to brainstorm about how to do this show without the set! I immediately started calculating how many props I had to use and how many I'd be able to get from stage management (cigarettes, lighter, cups, plate, knife, bread, strainer, clothes for Act 2, condoms for Dorabella, to name a few of the essentials!). We only had a matter of minutes to organize everything, so I coordinated with my dresser and hair/makeup stylist, and set new places to meet on the side of the stage for Despina's quick-changes into the Doctor in Act 1 and the Notary in Act 2. I then took a quick look at the stage and figured out entrances and exits on my own, and then set up my props. My only priority during that show was to make the sure I did everything I could to make the audience feel like they had a good time, and they got their money's worth even though there was no revolving turntable.
So, how did the show go? Well, it was quite amazing!! We flew by the seat of our pants, but everything went extremely well, and the audience thoroughly enjoyed the performance - we received a standing ovation as soon as the lights went out! It was so much fun too, because we had a chance to improvise due to the circumstances, and so when we returned to Cosė four days later (with the turntable), everything felt very fresh and new! In fact, the performance was so good that it was chosen to be broadcast on Radio 4 on December 23rd!
Next up is the Christmas eve live broadcast of Nozze which will be screened in movie theaters and on the internet! Have a Merry Christmas! ☺
