Busy days

The final scenes of the Auction are now staged, and we are starting to run the acts of the show without interruption.  John Burge, the composer, has been present for the last several days, and it really helps to have him here to work with the individual singers at the house while Phillip Headlam conducts the rehearsals of Allison Grant's staging at the barn itself.

The weather has been very oppressive but it's started to break now, and today it's a little cooler.  I've never done an opera in this kind of setting before, and in this weather (it gets really hot in the barn) I've been really wiped out.

On Friday I managed to get down to briefly visit Rob and Viki, Katie and Honor, visiting from Scotland, and borrowed Rob's guitar tools to restring my guitar.  Then it was into the studio to record the cowboy style "radio song" that opens this opera, and will be played as an introduction to the first scene of the show.  I also had a chance to do some improvised slide work on that recording, so needed to borrow Rob's glass slide.



The Quinte Ballet School has provided three dancers to dance the scarecrow ballet, and they are an interesting addition to the cast. 

monday

Last night we ran all of act one, and it went surprisingly well, considering that we had been concentrating on act two for the last few days.  The weather has also broken, and it's quite damp and cold, so that will provide its own challenges.  First too hot, then too cold!  That's this spring in Canada, apparently...