A Night at the Opera

Ok, I promised better videos of the aria and scenes that I worked on this summer, so here is what I have. My camera stops recording after 3 minutes, so it had to be restarted by my friend Patrick who graciously video'd the final concert for me so I'd have something to bring home to family and friends. My camera doesn't have the greatest recording quality, but this will at least give you a decent approximation. I've included the Italian lyrics and the English translation with each video. Enjoy!

La Pastorella delle Alpi (Rossini)



Italian Text (English word-for-word translation in Italics)

Son bella pastorella, che scende ogni mattino,
I am pretty shepherdess that goes down each/every morning

ed offre un cestellino di fresche frutta e fior.
and offers a little crate of fresh fruit and flowers

Chi viene al primo albore avra vezzose rose
who comes first to the arbor shall have charming roses

e poma rugiadose, venite al mio giardin.
and apples dewy, (you) come to my garden

ahu....
ah....

Chi nel notturno orrore smarri la buona via,
Who in the night horror loses the good road,

alla capanna mia ritrovera il cammin.
to the country mine to return to the road.

Venite, o passaggiero, la pastorella e qua,
(you) Come, oh passenger/passerby/traveler, the shepherdess is here,

ma il fior del suo pensiero ad uno soldara!
but the flower of my thought to one only/alone I give!

ahu....
ah...."Pst, pst, Nannetta!" from Falstaff (Verdi)
(Performed with Jacob January singing Fenton)

Part 1:



Part 2:


Fenton: Pst, pst. Nannetta. Vien qua.
Pst, pst. Nannetta. (you) Come here.

Nannetta: Ssssss. Taci. Che vuoi?
Shhh! Quiet. What do you want?

Fenton: Due baci.
Two kisses.

Nannetta: In fretta.
In a hurry.

Fenton: In fretta.
In a hurry.

Nannetta: Labbra di foco.
Lips of fire.

Fenton: Labbra di fiore!
Lips of flowers!

Nannetta: Che il vago gioco sanno d'amore.
That the charming play/game knows of love.

Fenton: Che spargon ciarle, Che mostran perle, Belle a vederle, Dolci a baciarle! Labbra leggiadre!
That scatters nonsense (gossip), That shows pearls, Beautiful to see them, Sweet to kiss them! Lips flirtacious!

Nannetta: Man malandrine!
Hand thieving/naughty!

Fenton: Ciglia assassine! Pupille ladre! T'amo!...
Killer eyes/eyebrows. Thieving eyes! I love you!...

Nannetta: Imprudente. No...
Imprudent one. No...

Fenton: Si, due baci.
Yes, two kisses.

Nannetta: Basta.
Enough.

Fenton: Mi piaci tanto!
Me you please so much! (Another expression meaning "I love you")

Nannetta: Vien gente.
Here come people.

Fenton: Bocca baciata non perde ventura...
The mouth that is kissed does not lose good fortune

Nannetta: Anzi rinova come fa la luna, come fa la luna.
Rather renew as does the moon, as does the moon.

Fenton: Torno all'assalto.
I return to the assault.

Nannetta: Torno alla gara. Ferisci!
I return to the match. You are wounded!

Fenton: Para!
Parry (block--a fencing term)

Nannetta: La mira e in alto. L'amor e un agile torneo, sua corte vuol che il piu fragile vinca il piu forte.
It see is on high. Love is an agile tournament, his court wants that the more weak conquer the more strong.

Fenton: M'armo,... ti guardo. T'aspetto al varco.
I arm myself,... I see you. I wait for you at the pass.

Nannetta: Il labbro e l'arco.
The lip is the bow.

Fenton: E il bacio e il dardo. Bada!... la frecia fatal gia scocca dalla mia bocca sulla tua treccia.
And the kiss is the arrow/dart. Be careful!/Watch out!...the arrow fatal already shot from my mouth to your braids.

Nannetta: Eccoti avvinto.
Here you are enthralled. (This humorous line based on wordplay means both physical and emotional entrapment.)

Fenton: Chiedo la vita!
I ask for (my) life!

Nannetta: Io son ferita ma tu sei vinto. (The first video cuts off during this line and picks up partway through Fenton's next line, FYI.)
I am wounded, but you are conquered.

Fenton: Pieta! Pieta! Facciamo la pace e poi...
Pity/mercy! Pity/Mercy! Let us make the peace and then...

Nannetta: E poi?
And then?

Fenton: Se vuoi, ricominciamo.
If you want, let us begin again.

Nannetta: Bello e quel gioco che dura poco. Basta.
Pretty/beautiful is the joke that lasts short/a little time. Enough.

Fenton: Amor mio!
My love!

Nannetta: Vien gente. Addio!
Here come people. Farewell!

Fenton: Bocca baciata non perde ventura.
The mouth that is kissed does not lose good fortune

Nannetta: Anzi rinova come fa la luna, come fa la luna.
Rather renew as does the moon, as does the moon.


"Cosa mi narri/Sull'aria" from Le Nozze di Figaro/The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart)
(Performed with Brenna Sluiter singing the Countess)

Part 1:


Part 2:



Opening Recitative:

Countess: Cosa mi narri? e che ne disse il Conte?
thing me (you) tell? and what of it (meaning the plan) said the Count?

Susanna: Gli si leggeva in fronte il dispeeto, el la rabbia.
He himself on could read in his face the spite and the anger/rage.

Countess: Piano, che meglio or lo porremo in gabbia! Dov' e l'appuntamento che tu gli proponesti?
Quiet, that better us to put (him) in trap! Where is the appointment that you to him proposed?

Susanna: In giardino.
In garden.

Countess: Fissiamgli un loco. Scrivi.
Let us fix him a place/location. (you) Write.

Susanna: Ch'io scriva, ma signora...
That I write, but Lady/Madam...

Countess: Eh scrivi, dico, e tutto io prendo su me stessa: Canzonetta sull' aria.
You write, I say, and everything I take on me myself: A little song to the breeze/on the air.

Aria:

Susanna: Sull' aria.
On the air.

Countess: Che soave zefiretto,
What soft little zephyrs,

Susanna: ...zefiretto...
...little zephyrs...

Countess: Questa sera spirera,
This evening will blow,

Susanna: questa sera spirera,
this evening will blow,

Countess: Sotto i pini del boschetto--
Under the pines in the little woods--

Susanna: sotto i pini?
Under the pines?

Countess: sotto i pini del boschetto,
Under the pines in the little woods,

Susanna: Sotto i pini del boschetto,
Under the pines in the little woods,

Countess: Ei gia il resto capira.
He already the rest will understand.

Susanna: Certo, certo il capira,
Certain, certain he will understand,

(They repeat these last two lines for the rest of the aria.)

Closing Recitative:

Susanna: Piegato e il foglio, or come si sigilla?
Folded is the letter, now how to seal it?

Countess: Ecco, prendi una spilla, servira di sigillo. Attendi, scrivi sul riverso del foglio; "Rimandate il sigillo."
Here, take a pin, it will serve as a seal. Wait, write on the reverse of the letter; "Send back the pin."

Susanna: E piu bizzarro de quel della patente.
It's more strange than the commission (a comic plot twist earlier in the opera).

Countess: Presto nascondi; io sento venir gente.
Quickly hide it; I feel people coming.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Basta stasera! Ciao, amici!
Enough this evening! Bye, friends!

-Emily

Slice of Life: Grocery Shopping at Billa

Ok, so this might be one of the more mundane anecdotes I have to share, but I was thinking about it when I was at the grocery this evening. I was enjoying--yes, enjoying--the fact that all the labels are in English (or if they're bilingual labels, at least I can usually understand the Spanish pretty easily, too). Not really knowing the language made something as simple as grocery shopping a lot more complicated! You can't always guess what something is if you can't read the label on the jar or package--there are a variety of foods that are common there that aren't particularly common grocery store stock in the States. For example, in the grocery store near my apartment called Billa, there was some kind of bovine organ in the meat section, on whose package the ONLY word I understood was the word for "beef/cattle" but it didn't look like ANYTHING I've ever eaten that came from a cow or would ever dare eat. It had the texture of a morel mushroom
and was the color of swiss cheese.
Ick. I'm secretly afraid it was brain tissue or something equally weird. On the other hand, sometimes you can guess what something is but probably really don't want to know. Exhibit A: large, recognizable sections of or even entire squids, shrink-wrapped, slimy tentacles clearly visible, in the frozen foods section amidst the bags of frozen peas and minestrone veggie mix.

Also, some things I considered "standard" where conspicuously absent. Like milk in a jug, for example. Though I found boxed cereal and muesli, I never did find cartons or jugs of drinkable milk, only milk in a cardboard carton (which apparently didn't need to be refrigerated until opened) intended for use as creamer for coffee/tea. And trust me, that DOESN'T taste the same.

Buying fruits and vegetables also works a bit differently. You have to select and weigh your own produce at these little automated scales around the store, which print little labels with the price of your selections (produce is calculated by weight, same as much of the time it is here). However, if you don't weigh it yourself before you go to checkout, you probably get chewed out (in Italian) by the cashier. Fortunately, I was warned in advance to do this, so I didn't actually get yelled at. But I did have trouble with the machines the first time I tried to use them, since apparently all of them conspired to run out of the little printing labels at the same time. Not having used one before, and not being able to read and understand the error message on the screen, I assumed I was the one doing something wrong and proceeded to try all of the machines unsuccessfully. All I wanted was to weigh my head of lettuce, gosh darn it! I finally had to give up and resign myself to waiting nonchalantly off to the side in hopes that someone else would come by and weigh their produce so I could watch and try to figure out what I was doing wrong. Eventually a Billa employee came by and reset all the machines and replaced the label rolls so that the machines worked effortlessly as they're supposed to (so it turned out that the machines, and not I, were at fault!). But that was only after the power went out in the store, and all the patrons were bumping into each other for about 30 seconds before it came back on, since we all kept trying to do whatever we'd been in the middle of doing when it went out. (Yes, this happened the very first time I went to a grocery store in Florence. Great first impression, huh?)

What else to share? Oh, don't try to pay with credit for purchases of less than, say, 7-10 euros. You'll get a funny look or they'll ask you to pay cash instead if you can. (Once again, that's from hearsay...I'd been warned and thus didn't try it myself.) Matter of fact, it's best not to try to pay anywhere in Florence with credit unless the purchases is at least 15-25 euro...some stores and even restaurants don't take credit at all.

We went through a lot of nutella in our apartment. Nutella sandwiches in the morning took the place of cereal because of the aforementioned milk scarcity. We also went through a ridiculous amount of tea and juice. Te de pesca (peach tea) became one of my new favorite things. My roomies were quite fond of succhi di frutta, specifically of the pera and pesca varieties (pear and peach). However, Italian fruit juice has a higher viscosity and intensity than American fruit juice. If you want to get an approximate idea of the flavor, imagine buying a bottle of the juice that canned peaches or pears are packed in. That's EXACTLY what it was like. I nearly always diluted it (roughly 1 part juice to 2 or 3 parts water) to make it less overpoweringly sweet and gritty and more like American or British juice. I just told myself that I was back in the UK making squash and it was all okay (that's my shout-out of the day to all my UK peeps :) )

Last, but certainly not least, they had these awesome rolling baskets--imagine taking a little-larger-and-deeper-than-normal US grocery hand basket, then adding wheels and a rolling suitcase-style pull-up handle to it and--VOILA!--you have a store full of people pulling what look like the offspring of a grocery hand basket and a rolling backpack. Remarkably funny looking but surprisingly handy and effective. :) Only disadvantage is trying to pass other shoppers in narrow aisles...

I think I shall save descriptions of the markets and comparing/contrasting the shopping-for-fresh-food experience until another day. If you haven't yet had your fill of amusement at Billa's expense, feel free to check out their website and see what else you can find.

...and I just effectively made myself crave te de pesca by writing about it...sigh. Oh well, I'll make the American equivalent tomorrow morning. :)

Arrivederci,
Emily

Home, Home on the Range!

One of these months, I'll actually get to spend more than a week sleeping in my own bed at home! After one week at home of unpacking, catching up with family and friends, and working on graduate school researching, I arrived today at my family's farm in central Missouri, where I'll be spending the majority of my time for next month (I may be going home to St. Louis on weekends). I will be training horses, fixing things, painting stuff (like gates or doors or suchlike), and any other jobs that need to be done. It's a farm; something always needs to be fixed or an animal needs to be taken care of...I'll have plenty to keep me busy, not to mention keeping my voice in shape and working on senior recital lit so I can hit the ground running at Truman in August. I may also have the opportunity this summer to teach some voice lessons to some middle or high school students in Hermann, so that will be good experience in preparation for taking Vocal Pedagogy this fall in addition to the voice students I'm already getting lined up for the fall. :)

However, farm work generally ceases when the sun goes down, my voice can only handle so many hours of practice a day, and I have to take a break from grad school research/apps periodically, which means I'll have more time theoretically to get this blog up to date with anecdotes and pictures from my travels, albeit after the fact. (Sorry!)

In other news, I got really nostalgic for Italian food tonight. My grandpa gave me wine with dinner and his wife had made Italian style pizza, which reminded in taste and seasoning of the authentic pizza I had in Naples, Italy, less than 2-1/2 weeks ago. While I don't feel the urge to up and move to Italy after studying there the way I did with London, I still did really enjoy it, and things like the smell of pizza seasonings or the taste of wine that trigger memories of Italy (like eating pizza in Naples--the birthplace of pizza--or sipping local wine at sunset overlooking the Mediterranean in the Italian Riviera) do make me miss it. I hope to be able, as I have these moments and process what I learned and how that affects how I live henceforth, to share those moments through videos, pics, and stories here, so that maybe--if I do my job well--you, too, can be nostalgic with me for a beautiful country with a fascinating history, fabulous music, flowery language, and fantastic cuisine!

Ciao amici!
-Emily

U.S.A! U.S.A!

I'm home again! Wow, I love my family. It's great to see all of them again. However, my body hasn't figured out what time zone it's in, yet, so that's making things interesting. I will put up more pics and videos over the next few days/weeks until everything's been posted. Right now, it's time to go enjoy the great outdoors in beautiful rural Missouri. :D
Arrivederci,
Emily

If a picture's worth a thousand words, how much is a video worth?

Ok, this is a pathetic excuse for a blog post, but I suppose it will have to do for now. Here are several video clips from my time in Florence with a quick description of what the video is about/why & where it was taken. While I'm waiting for these videos to upload, I'm going to finish repacking for my flight back to the States from London, which leaves in about 9hrs...

This is a 360 degree look at the view from the Ponte Vecchio (literally "old bridge") at night. The music in the background is from a busking classical guitarist. At the end of the video, you'll see my two roommates, Brenna (on the left) and Stefanie (on the right).


This is a 360 degree view taken from the south bank of the Arno river just east of the Ponte Vecchio by day.


This next video sort of explains itself...it's the view from Piazza Michaelangelo overlooking the city from the southeast.


This is a slice-of-life video documenting one of the many times that my friend Chy and I would sporadically burst into song in harmony as we were walking places (this particular instance is along the streets on the south side of the Arno, but similar instances also occurred while hiking in Cinque Terre and in various other parts of Firenze at various times of the day and night). Apologies for the wind/traffic noise--the harmony would sound a lot clearer/more in-tune without all the background noise.


This next video is of part of the parade/procession associated with one of the festivities of San Giovanni Battista day--a city-wide holiday. This parade involved LOTS of people dressed in medieval attire processing from Piazza Santa Croce to another part of the city (I'm drawing a blank at the moment what street it was). Here's a snippet of the parade that I captured on film.


Ok, I know it's not much detail on what I've been up to, but I need to go finish packing now. Can't believe 7 weeks are up and it's time to head home again!

Quick final thoughts on going home:
-It's easier this time to come home than it was last fall at the end of my semester in London. I really enjoyed Italy and would be comfortable with it if my career ever leads me to move there for any length of time, but for some reason, I just still have this inexplicable love for London. Maybe I'll muse more on that in a subsequent blog post...we'll see.
-I keep trying to say "thank you" and "excuse me" in Italian, even when the people I'm talking to have already addressed me in a British accent...so if I say "Grazie mille" or "Scusi!" to any of you when I'm back in the States, please don't judge!
-Not looking forward to jet lag. Jet lag is dumb and annoying. Hopefully it won't be too bad this time.
-No matter how hard I try, I pack too much stuff. Next time I think I will take literally the common travel advice to "pack everything you think you'll need, then take half of it out."
-I hope I get to come back to London. I really don't know if I'll get to, and if so, for how long. It could be as little as five months from now (grad school auditions?) to years before I'm back in this city I've grown to love intensely.
-I am SO excited to sleep in my own bed again. Is it sad that that's one of the things I've missed most about being away? Maybe it was just because my bed in Italy kept sticking its sharp springs into my back at night...
-I can't wait to see all of you, family and friends, and catch up on what you've been up to for the past nearly-two-months and to share more stories in detail about all the cool opportunities God's granted me in the past two months. :)
Love,
Emily