Making progress

Now we’re making progress. Monday was a difficult day with a series of new technical problems: The first part of the rehearsal had to take place behind the curtain because the safety curtain could not be raised or lowered. After the break the curtain had been fixed. Die Fledermaus was to be performed in the evening, so we had to finish the rehearsal on time and I lacked precisely 15 minutes to get through what I had planned.

Monday and Tuesday there was a sitzprobe in the orchestra rehearsal room, where the singers were rehearsing together with the orchestra for the first time. Meanwhile we worked with the technique on stage. Tuesday we had four hours of rehearsals with Iréne, Ylva and Peter. We had the time to get through the whole final sequence of events technically – with fire, special effects, stage elevator, etc. We’ll do it all again on Thursday together with Tina, so she’ll be confident about the fire on stage and the set changes. On Thursday we will also have our first rehearsal with a real baby in the final scene… The hospital has confirmed that we can use a real baby without causing it any harm, and I think it’s going to be an intense scene. Well, this should have been a secret saved for the premiere, sorry!

Luckily, the fireman has approved everything – including nine gas fires and a man set on fire on stage - and the stunt man Martin Spang Olsen is guiding and helping us so that it won’t be dangerous for the singer who’s doing the stunt.

Among other things we still need to make the lights for the final scene and to see how it all works together with the music. We also have to find out how we can put the ring on the fire without melting it for real. Moreover, we haven’t had a complete run through yet and we haven’t seen all the fires light up automatically at the same time. And I still need to make the choir’s final entry, where they don’t sing.