Smile!

Hello Everyone!

Well it has been awhile. I have been really busy since Thursday. My weekend was a very musical weekend. I had a voice lesson on Thursday, Saturday, and Today. Wow 3 voice lessons in less than a week. I learned so much and I'm trying to comprehend everything. It is going really really well. I love my voice teacher. She is amazing and I have already learned so much from her. I'm really excited to get my recital together. She has given me one Italian, one French, and 5 german pieces. She wants to give me another French piece. I'm so excited that I don't have any English pieces for Voice lessons. I have a lot of English rep and I want to expand more on other languages. My recital date is officially May 18th at 6:30. It is the last week of school and also the week of finals. It will be a struggle to fit it in but it will work out. I also went to 3 music events this weekend. First I went to a brand new opera that was commissioned by the Wiener Staatsoper. It is called Madea and it tells the story of Medea and Jason after they steal the golden cloak. Medea sorta goes crazy and kills Jason new love Creusa and she also kills her 2 children that don't love her anymore. It was a very powerful opera. It was all atonal meaning no tonal center. Like most songs have a key signature (i.e. C Major) This whole opera had no key signature. It was just random notes but it was beautiful. The next morning I went to the Musikverein and saw the Vienna Philharmonic play Debussy and Ravel also the composer was a famous composer from the states. He was the conductor of the New York Phil. He is a big deal. Later on Sunday I went back downtown to see Simon Boccanegra by Verdi. It was interesting. I didn't like the beginning but after the first act the plot and music got a lot better. This weekend I plan on going to The Flying Dutchman by Wagner, Moses und Aron by Schönberg and Arabella by Strauss. I'm really excited. Ever since I have been in Vienna I realized that my main love of music is Opera. I'm still a big fan of musical theatre but I want to learn as much as I possibly can about Opera. When I was younger I use to fall asleep during classical music concerts, and now they wake me up. I was exhausted before the Opera but then I was so excited to see the opera. Yesterday was a great day too. I started class at the Wien Bibliothek by the Rathaus. It is where a lot of main manuscripts are of schubert, schumann, and other Viennese musicians. We were looking at manuscripts by Schubert. I saw with my own eyes a paper that Schubert wrote on and touched. I was so going to die. It felt like I was meeting my idol. Its just like someone meeting there favorite basketball player or favorite singer. I felt like I was in the same room as him. It was amazing. After analyzing some Schubert it was back to normal life at the school. I got to go home early which is always nice. Yesterday I also realized that I get about a 2 week spring break. I finish classes/midterms on March 22 and I got go back to school until April 6th. Mom is flying in on the 26th so I'm thinking about flying out to London/Ireland on the 22nd at night and coming back on the 25th at night. I was thinking of maybe going somewhere else instead but I found round trip ticket for 80 euro which is really a steal. Any ideas on where I should go instead of London/Ireland? I was thinking Barcelona but I don't know. I'm sorry I haven't responded to some people's emails. I just really have been busy and I'm trying to live my life up here. I know this is sorta a short entry but I will try and update more frequently. I'm off to go work on Homework

Tschüß!!!

~B