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Jess Crawford

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PDX OPERAbeat | A Company Blog is the blog for all things Portland Opera, featuring a variety of guest contributors who will provide insider's tidbits on all we do to celebrate the beauty and breadth of opera. Jess Crawford is our primary blogger. Jess spends much of her time eating enormous amounts of cake, making long lists of books she'll probably never read, and challenging people to arm-wrestling contests. During the day (and sometimes at night) she is Portland Opera's music librarian. She writes more about her escapades at her personal blog: http://bravissimi.blogspot.com

PDX OPERAbeat's Blog

Things that are delightful

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 14:04

POGO

The singers for the outreach arm of our company, Portland Opera To Go, have been in the building for the last couple of weeks, working hard in rehearsals. This year's touring production is an English-language version of The Magic Flute, cut down to about 50 minutes. The production, last used in 2005, features a giant 'pop-up book' as the main set piece, with all the things any self-respecting pop-up book should feature: things that slide out, open up, and unfold from its 'pages' -- including the dragon in the opening scene. As always with our outreach tour, the small cast of singers are responsible for everything on the road: packing up the set, loading it into the truck, driving the truck (and our passenger van) to whatever school or alternative venue they're visiting, unpacking the set, building the set on site, and so forth. They are a really special group of people, who are not only talented singers but also excellent educators and poised ambassadors for their craft (and this company). Some of them are local; the rest come from cities throughout the U.S. and Canada.

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The adventures (and misadventures) of Tosca

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 01/07/2013 - 10:52

Happy new year, blog friends!

The period between Thanksgiving and New Year's is a funny time here at the opera. For many of us (particularly those of us who aren't involved with our Broadway series), it's the only "dead" time of year we have. It's the longest period during the season when there isn't a show going on. We put Giovanni to bed (pun intended) and then: almost two full months before rehearsals begin again. And every stinking year I get lulled into a false sense of "I have plenty of time to get this done," when in fact, those almost-two-months are chock full of preparations for this latter part of the season, where, frankly, we hit the ground sprinting and do not stop until we close in May.

To that end: TOSCA!

Knock knock!

Who's there?

Tosca!

Tosca who?

Toscaloosa!

This week, we begin rehearsals for our February production of Puccini's Tosca. The artistic folks -- cast, conductor, director, designers -- are in transit, the set is loaded in to our rehearsal space, and we are (more or less) ready to go.

Tosca is particularly special to me, and marks a watershed moment in my career, because it was the first opera I ever worked on with this company, back in 2005. In fact, it was more or less my first opera; although I had seen Carmen with my french class in 9th or 10th grade, I had no recollection of it at all save that I missed the bus we'd hired to transport our class there and had to frantically get my mom to drive me down to the theater in Baltimore in time to make the show. So: not much.

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Portland Opera goes to the prom

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 12/17/2012 - 14:40

We recently threw our annual company holiday party. Long-time readers of this blog may remember last year's party, which was game night themed. We've also had a Hollywood party, an 80s party, and a tiki party. We don't mess around when it comes to celebrations.

The theme this year is one we've been thinking about for years: PROM! There were seven of us on this year's holiday party committee. We take our jobs very seriously. We filmed a short video invitation:

We sent the staff a "press release." We set up a table in our monthly lunch get-together so that people could pick up their tickets. Unlike previous years, we scheduled the party to take place during a period when there was no rehearsal scheduled in the room immediately before or after the party. Most years we only have one day to set up and one day to tear down because there are other things going on in the space. This year, we had all week. And we needed it, in order to take our music studio from this:

to this: