Amaul- Performing a Christmas Opera
Hello and welcome to the second blog for December's blog week! As mentioned in yesterday's blog, my December blogs are about my Christmas memories for each year of college! Today's blog is about the Christmas season of 2019! Mostly… I'll get to that later.
As you know through previous blogs such as I Sigh to Sing, I went into a vocal major in the Spring semester of 2019. In the fall, one of the vocal classes I took was the Opera Scenes class. This class was actually going to continue into the Spring semester. In December we would have a simple performance of a short opera by sitting in a half circle towards the audience. Any time that a person was supposed to sing, they would stand up and then sit down after they were done. It wasn't until the spring semester of 2020 that we would have an actual performance of the opera. The reason I'm mentioning this opera is because it's a Christmas Opera.
It's called Amaul and it's about a crippled boy named Amaul. He and his mother are going through a cold winter and one night a knock on their door wakes them up. Three men are seeking shelter for the night. Worried that she doesn't have enough food for them, the mother leaves to ask the neighboring shepherds to bring food for her guests. That's when I came into the story, I was a shepherdess! The three men happen to be the three wise men following the Christmas star to give the baby Jesus their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. I won't share anymore spoilers, but the ending includes a Christmas miracle!
My favorite line to sing has always been, "Brr! How cold is the night! Brr! How icy the wind. Hold me very, very, very tight. Oh, how warm is your cloak!" Well…almost always. When we were going through the music at the beginning of the Fall semester, our teacher told us that when we sang, "Brr", we needed to roll the r's. When I heard this, I gave out a small moan and my teacher looked at me and laughed. She knew as well as I did that rolling r's was and still is at times hard for me to do. But despite that, this is a fun line. When I get cold nowadays, I often respond by shivering and then I start to sing the line. It's even more fun when there's someone around who has no idea what I'm singing about. 😂
As I said before, the performance we did in 2019 was very simple and we didn't get to actually act out the story. The only other memorable moments I had during the actual Christmas season of 2019 was while working at the same place I mentioned in my Halloween blog. I listened to A LOT of Christmas music that year! I also really enjoyed seeing all the Christmas themed items that people could buy like nativity scenes, wrapping paper, and decorations. My favorite decoration that I saw was what I considered to be a great joke. They were small candles in containers that each had a letter on it. They were supposed to spell out the word "Noel", but… the candle that should of had the "L" written on it wasn't there. The word "Noel" seemed weird to me as a kid, so I thought it was fitting and so funny that the "L" was missing. Do you think it's funny or do you understand the words' meaning? Comment on your thoughts down below! Anyways, I thought it was so funny that I took a picture of it and went around to my coworkers saying, "Look! It's 'Noel' with no 'L'!"
Once the Christmas season ended and school started again, we continued working on the opera. So the Christmas season actually didn't end for me! It was fun to work on a Christmas opera in the springtime with my music friends. One memory I have from it is a day when a couple opera scene friends and I were updating a guy who missed class that day. He was playing one of the wise men.
"You're going to wear a dress in Amaul!" One of them said.
"What??" He said with a look of confusion on his face.
"Yeah! Basically it's a robe, but you can call it a dress." Another said.
"What?" He said again. "Why would I wear a dress in a mall?"
"Because you're one of the wise men!" Another friend explained.
"Oh! Okay I understand. I thought you guys were saying that I had to go to the mall in a dress!"
Clearly, he was not aware that we were trying to help him catch up on what he missed in our Opera Scenes class.
I have one more thing about this opera that I want to share. Amaul was scheduled to be performed on the second weekend of March 2020. After that weekend everything got shut down because of Covid. This opera is all about miracles, and it was a miracle that we were still able to perform and have a weekend together before all the Covid craziness hit!
I hope you enjoyed this blog! Please watch my YouTube videos, consider buying my sheet music, and donate to my website! Thanks for reading all the way to the end!
