Influenza

I'm feeling much better. This flu has been brutal over at the opera house! Angela Brown and Renzo Zulian (playing Radames) were both sick with it all during tech week, and they both went MIA during the final (invited) dress. Oh yeah, and they don't have covers at Philly Opera. There was a last minute replacement for Aida: Lisa Daltirus, who sang the role at Opera Delaware last spring, went on stage for the dress and it looked like she had been there the whole time. She was amazing.

For the dress, they flew someone in from Columbus, OH, to sing Radames, but he didn't have it memorized, so he sat on the side of the stage and read from the score while everyone pretended he was on stage. Clearly that wouldn't do for opening night, though, and both Angela and Renzo were sick for opening night, too. They found a really good tenor, though, who had randomly auditioned for something else and happened to use "Celeste Aida" as his audition aria. The director said, "Do you know the role?" To which he replied, "I just covered it this fall at Chicago Lyric." What luck! After 6 hours of rehearsal, he was in costume and on stage for opening night. He got rave reviews, too.

So I thought this mystery tenor's name was Don Juan Shin, which I thought was the silliest name in the world. But apparently, his name is Dongwon Shin, which makes much more sense. He certainly doesn't look like a Don Juan; this short, squat Korean guy hardly looks like a romantic lead. But he did a good job, both on opening night and the following performance, when Renzo was still out.

The third performance, Renzo came back, but the director made an announcement that he was "95% recovered." Yeah, make that 5% recovered. He sounded like ass doing "Celeste Aida." And when I say ass, I mean ass. Like it hurt to listen to him sing. So after the first act, there was a frantic "Wardrobe and Mr. Shin to stage right" call over the intercom, and Dongwon (I still think of him as Don Juan) played out the rest of the opera as Radames. I felt bad for Renzo, because he didn't really get a chance to sing the role very many times.

Finally, last Sunday, Renzo was back to his normal self, and sounded fine, and all was well with the world. Oh, except for the fact that almost the entire chorus had contracted the flu and were dropping like flies. One girl fainted in the dressing room on opening night, and another one had to leave the stage on a different night. The supers, too, have been fainting on and off stage. It's stupid, but of course we come to the theater sick, and then we pass it around so easily when we're all packed like sardines in the tiny wing space singing off stage.

Now Josh and Jill are sick, and it's all my fault. Strangely, Ray has avoided the bug (knock on wood), and I think if he was going to get it, he would have gotten it by now.