Rachel Mellman, Soprano

I have always loved working with kids. I spent three years after high school working as an overnight camp counselor and still work as a part of my summer camp’s year-round team. I’ve written and led programming for teens, taught littles about science, and spent countless hours chatting about everything under the sun with campers of all ages. Truth be told, if I weren’t performing, I would want to work in kids’ educational media. And yet, when I would hear about opera outreach programs, I never connected the two in my mind. However, this March, a gig with the Palm Springs Opera Guild completely changed my perspective.

In the fall of last year, I was participating in the second round of Palm Spring Opera Guild’s annual competition and, on my way out, the monitor mentioned that the Guild would be casting a school production of Hansel and Gretel for the spring. If we were interested in being considered, all we had to do was write down our name and any roles we were interested in. At the time, I didn’t know a lot about the opera except that friends who had lighter voices than mine tended to sing the rep, but I threw my hat in the ring and said I was interested in anything they thought I would fit as.

In many ways, this production was my first professional job as an opera singer. I have done roles with smaller companies before, but never anything like this. In the past, either at small, local companies or at school, even though it was expected that we should be memorized by the first day, there was always a buffer period. However, when we all arrived in Palm Springs, we would only have two days to stage and rehearse the entire piece before starting shows. Although I studied my music and could run through all of my part in my head, I was worried about what would happen when we tried to put it together.

Despite the natural hiccups of a first run, I impressed myself by being ready to jump into staging with the rest of the cast. This alone was such a thrill for someone freshly out of education. After two exhausting and winding days of rehearsal and runs, we started our first school show at the vocal crack of dawn, 8 am.

Following the plan of my roommate and Hansel, I woke up at 5 am (a time I rarely ever see, and by design) to try and give my body time to wake up before asking it to sing some As and Bbs so early. Although two weeks into the program, my morning routine is still evolving, this is the outline I have been following:

• 5:00/5:20 – Wake up
• 5:30/6:00 – Coffee and breakfast
• 6:00/6:30 – Gentle movement + activation exercises (abs, glutes, all the good support muscles)
• 6:30/7:00 – Wash face and brush teeth
• 6:40/7:10 – Gentle SOVT exercises while starting makeup
• 6:50/7:20 – Vocalize and nebulize

The times change depending on how long our drive is for the morning, but I like to give myself at least 20-30 minutes to warm up and figure out what is happening in my voice. With the extreme dryness of the desert, our early wake-ups, and the activity level of the show, drinking tons of water, adding an electrolyte supplement, and using my trusty humidifier have also become absolutely essential. As someone who mostly works sitting, either at home or in the office, the first few days of this process were a huge learning curve for my body, however, it has also been a crash course in taking care of myself both physically and vocally.

The first time a kid in our audience called out “bravo!”, something we had only taught them just before our show began, I almost couldn’t stop myself from beaming. And it is more of the same magic when we get the chance to do a little Q&A with the slightly older kids. Yes, we get asked 100 times if they can eat the cookies (no, they are glued to the tray so they wouldn’t taste very good) or why the witch is a boy dressed like a girl (well, the witch is a silly character and we also wanted you to hear a tenor voice too), but we also get questions about us as performers. How long we have been practicing, is it hard to sing like that, what was the first opera you did? These kids are thinking about opera and music in a way that they may never have before and it’s truly magical.

As fun as doing our 30-minute opera is, I would spend all day answering these kids’ questions, telling them about how I learned to sing like this, and even doing the wicked riff (yes, that was a question and, yes, as a theatre kid I was more than happy to give it a go).

This interaction with the kids in our audience was the part of educational outreach I never expected. I give more waves and high-fives, and even a few side hugs than I could have imagined for someone singing opera to children. I feel a bit like a Wiggle or a park character at Disney Land.

Although I will be excited to start waking up after the sun is up again once we finish up next week, I am so grateful for everything I have already learned here in Palm Springs. I have had the privilege of working with some incredible folks and meeting some truly incredible kids. Hopefully, I won’t think of 12 pm auditions as quite so impractical once this is over.