Week #2 working in the chorus of CANDIDE. Been taking antibiotics and steroids all week to knock out the remnants of a lingering upper respiratory problem. Some days I sound like I should be banished to a TB colony on a remote island. Other days, it feels like a champagne cork has permanently lodged in my right ear canal. Other than that, I feel fine.
Tuesday night we received our official score.

I skipped into our house after Opera practice and proudly displayed my big book of music to the TV-watching Texan.

Look Texan…..I got a score tonight!
Who won?
No, no silly….the musical score….for CANDIDE!
What grade did you make?
If it doesn’t involve a round ball and a scoreboard, the Texan ain’t interested.
The chorus had a very productive rehearsal last evening.

Dr. George leads the chorus rehearsals and he keeps us on our toes. He has a LOOK. When you see the LOOK, you’re highly motivated to sing your part correctly. After one of my particularly noisy TB coughing spasms, Dr. George chastised, ‘If you’ve got a cold, don’t come to rehearsals and spread it around!’
Oops. Didn’t think I was still contagious. Guess that was my invitation to slink out the door. I stayed. Let’s just say rehearsals next week will find me on the back row with a pocket full of Halls. It’ll be OK. I’ll be a safer distance from the stick.
I’ve been pondering the unlikely mash-up of Voltaire and Bernstein that is CANDIDE. What sort of musician decides to make a musical of Voltaire’s grimly satirical work?
I thought I was utterly alone with my ponder-ations.
Until I spotted the bookworm weiner dog.

She wasn’t going rogue this time. She was studying THIS.
Roxy Doxy: You DO realize, Voltaire and Jonathan Swift are considered the greatest satirists in all of literature?!
Me: What do you know of Bernstein?
Roxy Doxy: Bernstein? I was the featured counter-tenor soloist in his Chichester Psalms!
I am no longer alone.
Not-keeping-score love to all.