Our apartment here in Firenze is adorable. It has wood floors and elaborate, aged wooden ceilings in several rooms.
I'd personally guess the ceilings are at least 100 years old, based on the similarities they bear to the way the wood has aged in my family's old farmhouse. I'm sharing this 2-bedroom, 1 full bath/1 half-bath, with full kitchen and living room with 2 other girls, Stefanie and Brenna. They are both grad students in vocal performance, so I've enjoyed having students to look up to musically and getting to pick their brains about grad school and suchlike. As well as working hard on our music,
we've also had a fair amount of fun, including late-night Nutella/girl-talk sessions. In the three weeks we've been here, I'm ashamed to admit, we've gone through 2 kg of Nutella. Yes, the other students who hang out in our apartment periodically have definitely helped with that, but that's still a LOT of Nutella. It's seriously addictive. :)Speaking of Nutella, the food here in Italy is AMAZING. Nothing less than I had hoped or expected. I've learned enough Italian to be able to order completely in Italian when I want to, so that a nice small triumph, I suppose. I've also been cataloging recipe ideas every time I encounter a new dish on a menu...maybe I'll be a good cook by the end of the summer!
The city of Florence is really beautiful. The buildings are wonderfully colorful and represent a wide variety of historical architectural periods. Here are some pics I've snapped during my time here:
...and of course some pics to prove that I was actually here and didn't just steal someone else's pics off the internet:
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In other news, God is (as always) so good to me. He provided an English-speaking, gospel-centered church that caters to internationals just a few blocks from my apartment. What's more, they have a young adult Bible study during the week. Even more, God provided several other Christians to go to church and Bible study with me. It's been really encouraging. Once again, it's been amazing to see the way the Lord is faithful to me even when I'm not faithful to Him and how He knows no international boundaries! Praise God!
During the week, I spend a good portion of each days in voice lessons, coachings, or scene rehearsals. Like I mentioned in the last brief post, I had fallen in love with doing opera scenes in the original language. It's fascinating. It provides a great intellectual and artistic challenge every second. Intellectually, I have to focus on pronouncing a language that's not my own precisely correct so that native speakers will understand it. This means every double-consonant has to be there or the meaning of the word changes. Meanwhile, all the normal challenges of singing classical music--phrasing, dynamics, breath support, register shifts--still apply, with the extra element of acting and following blocking added in for good measure. You never know what challenge you'll have thrown at you next. For example, in one of my scenes, I have to sing a line whilst lying on the ground. But once you learn your material and learn how to adapt to the different situations that your breathing and singing have to work within, it's so much fun! Here's a brief video clip from our masterclass on Friday (we ran our scene in character but without the blocking) of the duet from Verdi's Falstaff that I'm singing with a chap named Jacob. Unfortunately, my camera ran out of battery just before the part where I get to hit and hold a high Ab for four bars...but anyway this will still serve as a taste for anyone curious about what I've been up to. I'll try to get a better/more complete recording of this and my other scene this week now that my camera has fresh batteries!
In addition to the singing required of me for class, we've all been singing a fair amount of spur-of-the-moment duets. Last weekend, when my friend Chy and I went to Cinque Terre to hike for the day, we sang duets along the trail and surprisingly several people hiking around us joined in! The next post will have pics from that day's adventures as well as more thoughts on adapting to life in Firenze.
Until then,
Emily
