Hoffmann, Tito, Photography...

We are almost getting to the end of the 2nd act in the rehearsals of Tito, we staged finally the third aria I sing, "Se all' impero amici dei". This aria is really tricky and I have respect for it, I have been working constantly with the metronome for the small coloraturas I have in it. They are at first look not difficult but it lies in a tricky part of the voice, at least for me. So I have been practising to get them to be clear and musical. Most of the aria is very Lyrical and seats on the middle high part of the tessitura but when the coloratura comes it is really surprising because it is the first time in the whole opera and towards the end of it, when I have to suddenly sing some coloratura, I find that really interesting. There are many recits in this opera and lots of words to learn and a lot of meaning in these recits. What I like from most of the recits is the intention and the drama that I can play with, that I do not get in the arias. So, I am really enjoying singing these recits.

This week we had two performances of Hoffmann, it has been I think a month since the last performance, so i had a quick look at the music before the performances, at the moment my head is very much into Tito. I must soon really dig into Edgardo, I have been practising some of the very challenging passages but right now, I am definitely focused on getting a competent Tito. The tessitura is slightly different and it requires different colors and each role has its own needs.

This week I am, on my free time, completely invested in photography. I grab my camera and have been wondering the streets of Wuerzburg focusing mostly in black and white photography. The other day, I was in a book store where managed to go through the book of "Genesis" by S. Salgado, it is a beautiful and powerful book with only black and white images, I highly recommend it. I also managed to have a look at a book by Annie Leibowitz who is a portrait photographer, very famous for her photos of celebrities. I have been also admiring again Fan Ho's work, I really like his photos and they just really get me. A few days ago I got to my doorstep, "Europeans" which is a black and white book with photos by the master Henri Cartier-Bresson (French photographer) and I really throughly enjoyed it, I am glad I finally got this book, and looking and trying to understand the way he saw light, composition, subjets, narrative, its for me such a joy and learning experience. I am able now after years of liking photography seing things that my eye did not see, and I am pretty sure that I am still not seing enough but I will get there in time. I find photgraphy not only one of my favorite hobbies but I do truly adimire and have respect for the people behind the camera that manage to see and create incredible and powerful stories, they don't only see the story but they manage to capture it, to capture a moment. There are so many sides to photography, being some of them the photographer himself, his style, his story, the way he or she captures life, the life itself being trap on its own time in history, the subject's life, the country or land through a specific troubled time, under a certain political circumstance, a certain season of the year, a precise economic status, a certain state of mind, a certain light, framing, certain hour of the day, a mood, clima, etc... the posibillities of what a photograph can say seems to me infinite cause there is no repeated second in time.

I stop here, otherwise I will not finish soon talking about it... I wish you a great week ahead of you and until then take care.