Another lazy day getting ready for the final dress rehearsal. Many people think of final dress rehearsals as a performance, and often there is an audience, sometimes quite a large one. My opinion is that the dress rehearsal is exacly that, a rehearsal. It is the last time the artists get the chance to try things out and make themselves completely comfortable with the set and staging.
The prologue went well with all the entrances and exits seeming to be timed well, and my hair seemed to have grown since last night, so was particularly big!
We were called to the stage for the second half only to find that the orchestra were doing notes for 15 mins before we could start. This is not uncommon in dress rehearsals, but no one knew this was happening so we were all set in our place to start the opera for all this time. I was quite unhappy about this, as the lights that are on me at the opening of the opera are very bright and hot and I also started to lose feeling in one foot from sitting in one position thinking we would start! Anyway, eventually we did and all went well. You hope a dress rehearsal has few problems but still enough not to feel you can be complacent. The rehearsal stopped towards the end for the crew to rehearse a scene change, but that was all.
After getting out of wigs and make-up my husband and I went for something to eat, and found many of the cast and crew already in the restaurant. It was the assistant conductor Joe's birthday so we toasted him and then walked back to the apartment with Susanne Menzter.
I would have loved to have chatted more but was feeling very tired so went to bed pretty soon. My husband had been to Barnes and Noble and so I had a new UK magazine to read...such things make me happy!