ARIA SERIOUS?

Still without gelato or homemade fudge , we begrudgingly present part 3 of Sam Spade's tour journal while gnawing on a carrot. *** Saturday, November 8 th : Saturday turned out to be another long day. I woke before my alarm could do its job, so I decided to hit the hotel workout room at 8AM. I did some cardio on the elliptical machine and did some lifting with the limited equipment they had there. I went up and got a quick shower before having to be at the theater to help load the set into the truck at 10AM. The load-out went smoothly, as per usual, and we hit up Nosh Café for breakfast. It was a pretty good breakfast with almost everyone there, save Crystal and Nic . After breakfast, Crystal, Rachel and I borrowed Elyse’s car (THANKS AGAIN ELYSE!!) and drove to Pasadena to rehearse with Paul Floyd, a pianist with L.A. Opera. We did this because next Friday and (hopefully) Saturday we will all be competing in the Western Regional Finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council...

The tour journal of our favorite Ensemble gumshoe baritone continues... You can find part 1 here : *** Friday, November 7th: Friday was an early day. We were up and had to be at the theater by 9AM for the first of our two shows, which was to start at 9:30AM (the second being at 11:30AM). We all got into costume and were ready to go in plenty of time. Unfortunately, one or more of the schools scheduled to attend the first show didn’t get buses to pick them up. So, we ended up starting that show a half hour late. Luckily we were supposed to have an hour between the shows, so we still had a half-hour breather before our second show. The shows went really well. Nic was really pleased with everything. He is usually happy with how the shows go, but today he was particularly pleased with everything. The Name Polka [in Rumpelstiltskin] during the second show was eventful for me. I usually run around in the crowd and end up diverting attention from the stage. Today, though, it was dark in a ...

No, not that Sam Spade; the private investigator business is still as lucrative as ever we're told. Nope, we're talking about Sam Spade the baritone, two-time Ensemble Member and your guest blogger for this series of posts. See, we here at Aria Serious asked Sam what it was like to be on the road with our Ensemble and what Sam gave us was a tour diary of the Ensemble's road trip to San Pedro last month. Sam was so thorough we decided to break this up over the next few weeks. Before we begin however it might be worth going here to meet our Ensemble as Sam refers to them all by first name. After reading his report you'll know them all so well you'll be referring to them by first name too. On the road with Sam Spade, part 1 follows: *** Thursday, November 6th I don’t remember the San Pedro trip coming this soon in the season last year, but that isn’t the only thing that made this trip unique. Our van depart was set at 1PM today, so I was able to sleep in a bit and ...