V saw me yesterday and asked me how my other life was going. It was rather funny, but in a way I do lead two lives, the scientist/PhD student research life, and the then the musician life. So far this week I've had some sort of rehearsal everyday and tonight I have piano. Phew, I have to admit all the nights out make me rather tired....after all, I am getting on in years :P The opera gala concert is progressing really well, though I will have to miss the next two weeks because of the Pagliacci, so I'll probably have quite a bit of catching up to do when I return. Pagliacci is going well though, at this point I just need to sit down and bang out some of the SII notes and then listen to the CD and memorize the part before our first staging rehearsal on tuesday.

Kathleen will be leaving for Sweden on tuesday and will be gone for 5 weeks! I'm going to get one more lesson in before she leaves, and have talked to Desiree about a couple of lessons while she is gone. I'm not really sure about going to another teacher, but Desiree is cool with having a few lessons and it might help me stay on my breath and singing in the right place. I'm still trying to figure out where to place the tone. I have a tendency to "fall back", which results in me sounding woofy, particularly in the middle range, so I have been working on singing forward. But while learning the dew fairy part from Hansel and Gretel I was starting to overcompensate, and the sound was a little too lateral. So I'm working on getting the right balance, and to stay on the breath through my middle range. I suppose its a lot to think about, but hopefully once I get it right then it becomes second nature (?). Who knows, seems like there are some demons that never quite leave us.