An emotional week

It has been a very emotional week. At daytime we’ve been on stage rehearsing and in the evenings we’ve worked on the lighting design until 11 p.m. almost every day. I have been pretty nervous thinking if we were able to make the story appear plain in the 3rd act. In this act we have to make it clear that Siegfried is dreaming when he meets the rhinemaidens, and we also have to make a kind of split-screen with the lights between the world of the Gibichungers and Valhal (between the march of mourning and Brünnhildes’ great aria in the final scene). Jesper (the lighting designer) has come up with some excellent solutions to this problem.

Unfortunately we have had some technical problems on the stage this week, so I had to cancel the rehearsals Wednesday and Thursday. Friday we were back on stage rehearsing. It went all right, even though we had a tight schedule. It bothers me that I’m feeling kind of stressed because of this rather limited time frame, instead of being able to enjoy and use the time we have for this process. But I’m beginning to feel just how important it is for me to make a brilliant performance – it’s the ending of “The Ring” and of six years’ work!

Thursday evening we had a rehearsal with costume and makeup for the first time. We had to move from one rehearsal room to another several times while the stage was getting repaired. At first we rehearsed on the main stage, then on the back-stage, and after that in a rehearsal room on the fourth floor - and then on the back-stage again! What could have been a terrible rehearsal actually went very well; the costumes and makeup looks great on the characters.

We haven’t had the time to rehearse the great final scene. We’ll rehearse the scene together with Iréne on Monday and Tuesday and hopefully together with Tina on Thursday.