A fresh voice

I am not the only one spilling all my secrets out onto the anonymous Internet, blogging my heart away. There is also the Israeli mezzo soprano Rinat Shaham!

It is funny, how the Internet works. You get a Web log going and you forget that you do not know exactly where it goes. Do not ask me how I happened today to find Rinat Shaham's Web log. It is a long story involving that she once gave a recital on Buffalo's Ramsi P. Tick Memorial Concert Series, and also that now she is playing Carmen starting next week at the Canadian Opera Company. Anyway I could not believe some of the stuff she wrote. I mean, talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve.

Here is Rinat Shaham's blog. She is no relation to Gil Shaham by the way. She does not have to be. She is entertaining enough on her own.

I find that my friends divide into two groups: the mystics and the not. I always had a tendency to believe the world of spirits, cards, stars, and magic.

That is what she writes in October 2009. And then:

At any rate, I was traveling to Paris to be with close girlfriends of mine, both I think have strong witchery talents, and we 3 ended up at a fourth one's apartment, where we were all given some "reading" and some advice.

Uh, oh, Miss Shaham. Readings are not good. Witches are not good. Your life is good, you know? Cease and desist.

What else?

This paragraph is touching. It is a very candid account of insecurity and it kills me, coming from someone as beautiful as Rinat Shaham who, from what I have read, she makes a smoldering Carmen.

But when I stepped into my first dress; The one in which I have to make my big entrance, and sing the Habanera , (and in it I immediately transform from Rini to Carmen, feeling fierce and sexy) , looking in the full-length mirror in my dressing room, all I could see was a frumpy , dumpy, short and fat woman staring at me with horror in her eyes.

There was also this account of singing "Carmen" in Israel where they used actual horses.

The horses pooed all over stage, and we had to maneuver ourselves, skipping in between their doodoo, and trying to keep our own drama going.

Oh my gosh my golly. That "pooed" she has links to a video headlined "Opera Horse Poo."

Too funny.

An undersung Web log, so to speak.