Marie Does Too Many Things, Installment 2: Winter Quarter, La Voix 2.0 and Carmen
Let me begin by saying, I love Carmen. I love the opera- it has been my favorite for many years. The music tells the story and the emotions incredibly well and led me to character choices that the original Merimée story alone could not. I can understand why a writer might not want their story turned into an opera because of the power the music has to tell a different story than the words- but that is the magic of opera, isn’t it? Bizet’s score uses wonderful, catchy folk-like tunes and high art music to symbolize different types of characters and social worlds. He uses musical themes to represent unspoken ideas. And the story is simple enough that the complexity of adding music and singing to it does not overwhelm the audience.
And I love Carmen. Getting to sing this role was an absolute dream-come-true. Carmen is a woman born into a people and a social class that would only be looked down upon by the society within which they lived. She figured out that, despite life dealing her no cards of power, as a woman in that world and time, she could make her own power and use what she had, her female body, to exercise some kind of power and ultimately experience freedom. Freedom mattered more to Carmen than love. Thus, when she found herself loving Don José in a way that was different than men before, it was scary- it was vulnerable. But he demanded, just as other men did, that he possess her. She refused. And for that, she had to die.
I knew January and February 2026 were going to be musically strenuous. They turned out to be the most intense months of work I have done. To a point where my body was starting to give out. My performance onstage never wavered, but offstage, I was struggling.
Winter quarter began on January 5th, a few days after I returned to Illinois. I was informed that the first week of the quarter we would have music preparation rehearsals for Carmen before staging started the following week. This was a huge relief to me because I had not yet sung the whole role with piano, much less sung it memorized. I do wish I had known sooner. After a week of music preparation that included 2 hours of personal coaching and an hour and a half of ensemble rehearsal, I was reasonably ready to sing the role with my score for the sing through the following Monday, thus commencing 6-day-per-week rehearsals for the next 6 weeks before the show opened. These were also, largely, the final music rehearsals…
6-day-per-week staging rehearsals are not uncommon for a professional production. But, for perspective, when I performed Dorabella in Delaware in 2022, we rehearsed for 3 weeks before performance, and we had several Sundays and Mondays off. Così was also the only thing I was working on at the time, with teaching a few voice lessons sprinkled in here and there.
Throughout January, I struggled to both re-prepare La voix humaine to perform with the Northwestern University Chamber Orchestra (NUCO) on February 5th, and also to memorize and stage Carmen while the music was so fresh. I struggled with the guilt of not being more prepared for Carmen, nor being able to refresh La voix enough to feel confident about the memorization. At the same time, I chose to take a graduate seminar that required 100-200 pages of theoretical reading per week in addition to watching a recorded opera (often 3 hours long), because I love the professor and his class format, and because the content was delightfully related to my doctoral research.
Recap: too many good things.
Midway through January, I had to have an attitude adjustment because I wasn’t having fun with anything. I had to make peace with not being prepared for any of these three things (operas and class) and trusting myself that it would still be wonderful, but maybe not like in my wildest dreams. This attitude adjustment (AA) was sponsored by Steve, my wonderful teacher and mentor, and by Nick, my wonderful, wonderful special man and partner, and it (AA) made a huge difference.
I had three rehearsals with NUCO before performing La voix with them. The first was rough- I was so stressed and tense that I oversang and had to go immediately afterwards into five hours of Carmen rehearsal. Not ideal… BUT the next two rehearsals with NUCO (post AA) went quite well, as I was much more relaxed and enjoying myself. Performing the piece with the orchestra was amazing! Poulenc was such a master of orchestration and to hear and feel all the new colors introduced by the orchestra (as opposed to the piano) gave such a new depth to the emotions of the piece.
The performance came on February 5th, when we were already 3.5 weeks into Carmen rehearsals. I was tired, and asked if I could have the night before the performance off. I now know that I should have asked for that long before, but wanting to commit to the responsibility of singing such a lead role as Carmen, I wanted to offer as much as I could to the rehearsal process. I did not ask for any rehearsals off after the performance, to recuperate, and now I know that I also needed that.
For those who don’t know, most performers experience a period of “let-down” after a major performance. This is the body’s reaction to the adrenaline rush that accompanies the high intensity activity of performing. It is exhausting and usually accompanied by feelings of depression and insecurity. It is perfectly normal and usually passes within 24-hours when properly attended to.
I was delighted to have my dad, stepmom, family friends Eric and Marcia, and Nick in the audience, as well as many of my wonderful Northwestern friends and Chicagoland mentors. It meant so much to me that they came, because I knew that Carmen was the big ticket performance of the month, but performing La voix with NUCO was very special to me. It felt so good to celebrate with them afterwards, after having little to no social freedom the month prior.
I was so happy to get to spend the morning with my out-of-town folks the day after (before Carmen rehearsals), enjoying breakfast, a lakeside walk and Hoosier Mama pie together. But no time for let down. Saturday, I taught and rehearsed Carmen and went with Nick to his work’s late holiday party. No time for letdown. On top of all of that, I had my period. Finally Sunday came, and my body was done with me not creating time for letdown, so the letdown began, and lasted for two days. Not fun. Poor Nick…
I would like to say that Carmen felt easy after that- exciting, fun, and my sole focus. It was my sole focus finally, and it was fun, but I was tired. An AA isn’t enough to save a 32-year-old body (not old, I know, but old enough…) from the effects of neglecting exercise and proper nutrition. Not to mention being “on” 6 days a week. I tried to fit stretching into as many mornings as I could, but I was so tired. I didn’t have time to cook, so I was eating a lot of ready-made meals and snacks, except when Nick and I would cook together during our weekly dates.
The week after La voix and two weeks before opening, we were doing a room run of the show and I tweaked a muscle in my neck at the end of Act II and spent the rest of the opera seeing stars. This was a reality check for me. I iced it, bought a heating pad, took Advil, and several days later, as my neck was starting to feel better, a muscle in my mid-back decided to join the spasm club. Man, I felt frail! I asked to be excused from the other cast’s dress rehearsals, because I was well aware that I just needed rest.
My body was not comfortable, quite sore, when we were finally in dress rehearsals, but I was sadly not excited to be in the theater, not excited to be in costume. I was tired. I was burnt out. The process had been too intense for too long and I had hit my sweet spot two weeks earlier. I was running on fumes.
Finally, the week of the show, I had virtually three days off in a row. How I felt the day after the first day off made me so mad. I felt SO much better that it seemed comical. And I was mad because if I had had or had asked for one day off here and there through the six-week slog of rehearsals, I would never have gotten to such a point of exhaustion. BUT graciously, these days off finally allowed me to get excited for opening night on February 26th.
Dad and Kendra were back in town, with my stepsister Natalie and her friend Naomi. Eric and Marcia ventured back to Evanston. Nick and Bobby were also there for opening night. Steve and Kurt, my dear mentors, as well <3
Both performances were absolute successes. My Carmen cast was a dream- wonderful colleagues, talented singers, fun people. We enjoyed collaborating onstage and there was a wonderful congenial atmosphere offstage. The chorus was brilliant- they sang their music well and they brought the story alive with their energy and commitment to storytelling. The orchestra was wonderful under the baton of a fantastic conductor (Patrick Furrer). The set and production worked beautifully well, thanks to director Joachim Schamberger and stage manager Rachel Henneberry, who kept us safe. Costumes largely worked out well, despite a whole drama of trying to fit two very different-sized casts into the same garments… Vocally, it felt easy which gave me the exciting possibility of taking vocal risks to color the character further with raw human emotion and sounds.
After opening on Thursday, I got to spend Friday walking with Dad and Kendra and then finishing a bibliographic report for class. That evening, with all the family in town, we had a wonderful Engle family reunion in Evanston for dinner with Aunt Marcy, Aunt Karis and Owen, Soul Mama Linda, Dad and Kendra, Natalie and Naomi and Nick <3 Saturday lunch was the meeting of the parents, and I chauffeured Dad and Kendra to uptown to meet up with Nick’s parents (and Nick) at Michael’s. We were delightfully crashed by different factions of family as well.
Saturday's performance was also attended by two of my students, one from Chicago, the other came with her mom from Minnesota. My best friend from undergrad at NU, Maria, flew in to see me (and Carmen). Friends from NW Ohio Eric and Marla, and their daughter, my former student, Kelly, came out for the show. My wonderful NU friends once again showed up, too. And Nick’s mom was there- her first opera, and that was very, very special to me. Surely I am missing others, but to all of you who were there, know that it means a great deal to me to be supported by you. I love singing stories, but it would all be pointless without an audience to feel and experience it!
I am now feeling recovered from everything. My body is back to normal and my mind is finally finding patches of boredom to fill with creativity. Carmen music still gets stuck in my head- mostly others’ music. I am also starting to catch up on the many things I have said for months that I would do post-Carmen: calling friends, replacing the fob in my car key, updating my website and social media accounts...blah blah. Now I have to be careful not to overcommit so I can write my 20-page term paper- and then, oh blessed bliss, Nick and I will travel to Florida for a long weekend at Karis and Owen’s.
There you have it! Please forgive me if you haven’t heard from me in months 🙂
<3
Marie
