“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” –Mark Twain

Truer words were never spoken! The summers here in San Francisco are always much colder than I remember or imagine them to be. I have learned from this trip and will remember to pack more sweaters next time. It is hard to believe that my time in this fantastic city is coming to a close. I arrived here on April 11th to begin rehearsals for The Ring Cycle and what a wonderful adventure these past three months have been! I was lucky enough to be a part of the San Francisco Opera premiere of Das Rheingold in 2008 and immediately fell in love with the production. I knew then that the full Ring was going to be something very special. Besides the incredible music, I love the people. I love the camaraderie and innate ensemble nature of the piece. It is a piece that unifies the performers as we all strive together to tell an intricate story full of love, greed, loss, courage, betrayal and redemption. The Ring has been a big part of my career and I love that with each production it teaches me something new about my artistry and myself.

While in San Francisco I have fully engaged in three of my favorite activities, running, yoga and eating!! Everyone knows the food in San Francisco is incredible and I have fully taken advantage of that perk. I tend to lean mostly vegetarian these days and the city is full of wonderful organic vegetarian choices. A friend recently took me to Gracias Madre, a restaurant in the Mission that serves organic Mexican cuisine. Among my favorites on the menu were the sweet potato quesadillas and the dulce de leche ice cream made from coconut milk…so super yummy! Another wonderful restaurant I was introduced to this trip was Bar Jules. It is a lovely little cafe in Hayes Valley that serves fresh locally grown produce in a delightful atmosphere. Yoga is a big part of my life and some of my favorite yoga studios happen to be in San Francisco! Three of my regulars are Yoga Tree in Hayes Valley, International Orange in Pacific Heights and Aha Yoga in the Marina. All of the teachers in these studios are wonderful and inspiring in their own unique ways. As for running, nothing pleases me more than heading down the hill to the waterfront and running along side the bay. Of course I have a monster hill to contend with on my way back up, but it is all worth it for the view and the buns of steel!

This will be an experience that I will always cherish. It has been a special time of reconnecting with old friends and establishing new life long friendships. There are few experiences in life like frolicking around the stage singing “Rheingold, Rheingold!” and “Hojotoho!” with your operatic sisters. It is a truly healing, empowering and uniting experience, one that can only be felt through the power of music…Hojotoho and Namaste!

A few years ago, my husband and I cut out all processed foods, artificial colors, flavorings, and sweeteners, and went organic ; then he became vegetarian (and I lost nearly half my body weight)! We love to cook and eat, so our work is cut out for us, especially when we travel.  We don’t eat fast food and rarely eat in chain restaurants, which use low quality ingredients and precook a lot of their food, adding loads of added fat, salt, and sugar. And while you can find a salad or a veggie sandwich almost anywhere, it’s a lot harder to find something tasty with substance and especially with high quality protein. We end up carrying along a supply of protein bars and homemade trail mix for emergencies.

I want to eat healthy, but it’s got to taste good. So I’ve got minimalist healthy cooking down to an art. It’s easiest, of course, when you’re housed in a business hotel or apartment with a kitchenette; but if I find myself in a regular hotel room, I have a “kitchen box” I ship to myself. You’d be amazed at what you can do with an electric skillet and a hot plate. Sometimes the hotel will give or rent a small microwave oven or refrigerator; but if those aren’t available, I buy a cheap Styrofoam cooler and keep perishables for a couple of days in ice.

Here in Idaho, where I’m singing the Marquise de Berkenfield in La fille du regiment, I’m fortunate to have a homestay where my hosts have cleared pantry and fridge space for me. They aren’t big on cooking themselves, so I try not to mess up their kitchen much and keep my home cooking plain.

I try to eat very simply most of the time, because there are so many temptations and parties. Spinach is very versatile (it can be a salad or a basis for a hot meal: top it with canned beans and a sprinkling of parmesean cheese or a couple of crumbled up soy breakfast patties).  Dried cranberries and walnuts add a lot of flavor and texture to salads; a little goat cheese adds just the right amount of creaminess, and you can also spread it on toast and stud it with cranberries and slices of banana for a delicious and healthy breakfast. Hummus, whole wheat pita, and a few olives make a great lunch. Baby carrots are great for snacking or adding to the salad. And when you get sick of simple fare, it’s time to have lunch out and bring the leftovers home to dress up your spinach for the next day. Boise happens to have a plethora of great restaurants, including Bardenay’s (where they also distill their own gin), a number of Basque and Irish pubs with great happy hour menus, and a fabulous French bistro called Le Coq Rouge —which recently put on an opera night complete with an opera-themed dinner, including Bellini aperitifs, Pollo Verdi, Votre Toast (a berry-flavored palate cleanser), and Gateau du Fille de Regiment.

Keeping up a workout routine while traveling can also be a challenge. I love to run or walk, because it is so simple and you really don’t need much in the way of equipment.  Last summer in Des Moines, the Women of Figaro made it a habit to run together, and we had a great time — what a wonderful way to bond, offstage!

I’m also a big fan of exercise videos. For the past 8 weeks, I’ve been doing P90X, an “extreme” home fitness program that takes very little space. It’s more fun to do it with free weights and a pull-up bar, but all you really need is a yoga mat and resistance bands. I like this program because while it is indeed quite challenging, it’s also varied, and you never get bored. On any given week I’m doing yoga, plyometrics, several different lifting routines, Kenpo, and a boot camp style core workout.  The big bonus comes when a castmate is also doing P90X (we’re everywhere, y’all!) and you can compare notes and encourage each other with cheesy slogans. One of my Fille castmates is an X-er (in much better shape than me) and every day we greet each other with some silly statement from one of the videos, or some other “inspiration”. My current favorite is, “That’s not sweat. That’s just your fat cells crying!”

Also, whenever I travel, I look for opportunities to hike. In Idaho, and I’ve enjoyed trails through the foothills and Snake River Canyon, and am looking for a chance to make it up into the mountains and hit one of the ski trails. The best workouts are ones that don’t cost anything or require fancy equipment, and get you outside and exploring your temporary new home!

The trick is to realize that travel and temptation are just part of the job. You’re not on vacation (even though you may be having a lot of fun and getting to see new parts of the country). So you can’t eat like you’re on vacation —- at least not all the time — and you can’t be a couch potato, either. Eating right and working out is as important a part of my work as training and caring for my voice.  I never know what my precise living situation is going to be until I get there, so flexibility and adaptability are the name of the game. But one thing I don’t have to worry about when it comes to the challenge of eating well and working out on the road — there’s always a new challenge, so it never gets boring!

Bargemusic is a real gem of a venue, and its title says it all.  A retired and restored coffee barge, it sits docked in the East River at Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn, just below the Brooklyn Bridge.  This “floating concert hall” has been hosting chamber music programs year-round since 1977, and many of my instrumentalist colleagues have often played there over the years.  In the vocal music world, however, it seems like Bargemusic is still fairly unknown; I’ve been fortunate to perform there a few times in the last couple of years, and I hope that more and more vocal recitals will be happening there in the future.

A word to the wise, however: performing on the Barge is not for the faint of stomach!  You are literally afloat IN the East River, one of NYC’s busiest waterways.  I have yet to discover whether the river is more busy during the day or during the week, but all I can tell you is that when you see a big boat go by, you’d better hold on to something.  As a singer, especially, who is not grounded at a piano or in a chair, you really have to keep your knees bent and your poise intact, and remember that the piano is your best friend, for the occasional lean or grab.  The small stage has windows at its back, giving the audience a terrific view of the river and the lower Manhattan skyline, but this means that while you’re performing, you’ll be facing the other way, and will have no warning when a large wake approaches!

Last night, pianist Martin Katz and I performed Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin on the Barge, and, as I expected, such distractions were not absent from the experience.  Of course, at the center of this song cycle is The Brook (read: East River), a central character that sees The Miller all throughout his journey, and many of the songs took on additional meaning in last night’s performance.  In fact, some of the most pronounced rolling occurred during the final song, where The Brook is cradling The Miller in its waves, and several audience members commented on the visceral poignancy of the moment!  Even going to sleep last night, I definitely felt like I was still rocking in gentle waves, but I suspect that was only because I spent over three hours there.  I would guess that most audience members get their land legs back pretty quickly.

Tomorrow night we return to the Barge for more Schubert, this time with Winterreise.  Unless the forecast changes dramatically, the East River will not be appropriately iced over and covered in snow.  We can only hope that this time any disturbances of balance will only serve to enhance the increasingly fractured mental state of our protagonist…we’ll see how this goes.  But if you’re looking for something to do in NYC tomorrow night, come join us for some great music and a friendly float!

My stint in Boston began with a very beautiful event at the Museum of Fine Arts. BLO has organized several events with the MFA, including a series of multimedia concerts called the “Signature Series” that precede each of the operas. As this one anticipated Midsummer, it centered around themes of the night, dreams and the moon. Four singers, myself included, were joined by two actors who read poems between the musical numbers, and projections of works from the MFA collection were shown behind us throughout. It was all conceived by John Conklin, the esteemed designer, along with Nick Russell, BLO’s Director of Artistic Administration. These two picked an intriguing variety of musical selections, including but not limited to Purcell, Rossini, Handel, Schubert, Barber, Porter, Britten and Chausson. Titania’s spectacularly ethereal “Come now a roundel” was the only excerpt from Midsummer, and nearly every piece was sung in English. Combining the music with the images and spoken poems, one felt as if a new idiom emerged, a continuous and meditative experience that was so much greater than the sum of its parts. I came away from it feeling deeply satisfied, a gift that can really nurture the traveling artist.

In addition to its aesthetic achievements, I was glad to see BLO joining forces with other arts organizations in town. These collaborations, in my limited experience, seem to happen more often in smaller markets, where the symphony and opera might be under the same administration, for example. It was clear in this partnership that both the Opera and the Museum benefited from their collaboration and that the public enjoyed seeing a unique and locally-produced performance. Museums often present musicians in recital, but typically the museum just serves as a spectacular venue, like the Temple of Dendur or the Pyramid at the Louvre. It’s rare that the content is so organic and that it relates to the museum itself. Opera companies need to be innovative in asserting their cultural value in their respective communities, freeing themselves from the unfortunate stereotype that opera is static and aging into irrelevance. Events like this present music as part of a living and deeply interconnected artistic continuum, as it should be! I hope to be part of many more.

On a lighter note, as I mentioned earlier, I’m staying with my parents for this engagement. I’m always more inclined to stay in a home rather than a hotel when I travel, mostly since I enjoy cooking so much. It’s been great to be back home and to have the daytime company of my parents’ Airedale terrier, Reilly. I’ll also look forward to spending some time with my grandmother, who lives about 10 miles north of Boston, helping her get her garden ready for spring and maybe sneaking up to the North Shore for a picnic by the ocean. The old maxim of New England weather is at its truest in April, we’ve had snow and 60-degree weather in the five days I’ve been here, so I suppose we’ll play the picnic by ear.

For those of you unfamiliar with Boston, I have two recommendations: first, the MFA’s “Art in Bloom” is an annual event that brings scads of fresh flowers into the galleries, a very beautiful change in the typical museum experience. And those of you familiar with Brookline will chuckle at this next one, but no trip to the area is complete for me without lunch at Anna’s Taqueria. You’d think a local boy would be pushing an august institution like the Union Oyster House or some jewel gastropub in the South End, but no. Anna’s is no fine dining, just great, authentic and freshly-made Mexican fare. Start with a browse through Brookline Booksmith (although I almost never leave empty-handed) and then pop into Anna’s for a bite, you’ll be hooked.

Mint.com Personal Finances

As any traveling artist will admit, a familiar place is a sight for sore eyes while on the road. So, on my day off I went to one of my favorite coffee shops in SLC.

Being a coffee fanatic, I spent many a morning, afternoon and night at Salt Lake City’s Coffee Garden during my two-year stint here. SLC is known for its homogeneous, wholesome living, but Coffee Garden delightfully defies the stereotype and makes for a comfy place to read, socialize and people watch.

Aside from bold, delicious coffee, they have an array of delectable noshes that make an afternoon off from rehearsal nearly perfect.

If you are ever out this way for the famous Sundance Film Festival, the renowned skiing, or the world class music making at Utah Symphony | Utah Opera head over to 9th and 9th and enjoy an afternoon of caffeine and salt lake city culture.

During this past summer, I was on a contract in scenic Logan, Utah.  For those spending the long summer days in rehearsals and performances, I thought I’d share three little apps that were invaluable to me in helping me through June, July, and August.

The most important one by far is the NYTimes app.  It’s been free, but is about to switch to a pay subscription in the coming weeks.  I’ll certainly sign up, since having daily access to the Times is invaluable for keeping au fait when I’m on the road.

The silver medal goes to the MLB.com app, which ran me about $15.  This is absolutely useless to anyone who couldn’t care less about baseball, but worth its weight in digital gold for those who do.  It lets you listen to the live radio broadcast of every single game of baseball of the season, including spring training and playoffs.  I like baseball on the radio, and nothing makes you feel more at home than local commercials when you’re sitting on a park bench 2,000 miles away.

The bronze goes to the ol’ Facebook app.  Love it or hate it, the book (as the kids are calling it) is a way of life in the constantly-connected milieu of the 21st century.  And even if you never update your status, you’ll find you have a greatly augmented interest in your friends’ posts about their day-to-day mundana (Your daughter finished her spinach at dinner?  Hooray!) than ever before.

I’ve got the tools to survive and thrive, thanks to my iPhone.  Summer 2011, bring it on.

Poutine! Sometimes called Canada’s greatest contribution to world cuisine, this quintessentially Canuck side dish is not to be missed. Traditionally, poutine consists of a bed of fries covered in gravy and cheese curds (eat your heart out, ketchup). For a great little twist on this classic recipe, I visited the Gilead Café, brainchild of superchef Jamie Kennedy. For over two years this little joint has served as a local paean to the slow food movement; a locally-harvested butternut squash ended up on my plate as a bowl of soup, and it was so tasty that I forgot to take a picture (trust me, it was pretty). I followed that up with the daily poutine special, which is always a surprise. I happened to show up on BBQ-pulled-pork poutine day. Lucky me.

Food this good has an inevitable caloric consequence, best countered with an afternoon spent in some of Toronto’s beautifully kept greenspace. High Park is a popular destination in the west end of the city, as is the Harbourfront boardwalk and running path, which hugs the shore of Lake Ontario for several miles, and on a clear day is crowded with runners, cyclists, and what appears to be the world’s remaining supply of Rollerblades. For a unique park experience, I’d recommend the Toronto Islands, located just a short ferry ride from the banks of Lake Ontario, and affording a fantastic unrestricted view of Toronto’s downtown skyline. Known for its small, car-free community, the small residential area of the islands is interspersed with parkland, waterways, and gardens. Top this off with a petting zoo and an adult-sized swing set (a personal highlight), and you’re left with an afternoon to remember.

When on the road, one of my greatest joys is getting to work with an old friend, or to make new good friends, with whom I hope to work again in future shows. I live to make music with people I care about. And the people I care about, themselves care about making music and theater and seeking truth, and are interested in learning and growing (and having fun) on stage and off. Of course not everyone is going to be your Best Friend Forever, but being thrown together into the musical deep end, it is amazing the kindred spirits you can find out there, and the better art you make as a result of those encounters. I’m continuously amazed by the quality of people I come across in this business, and am often grateful I chose to pursue a communal art.

Sometimes the “small world” of opera has its drawbacks I’m sure, but we have such a quality pool of colleagues to enjoy, and from whom to learn – how lucky are we, who get to make music with friends for our living?

I found the beautiful Nanak Dwara Ashram online and went to a Kundalini Yoga Class. Not only was it a wonderful, peaceful setting, but I became fast friends with my yoga teacher, and another yoga student. They ended up coming to our Friday matinee–and enjoyed it so much that they purchased tickets for the whole season! That night the three of us went out to dinner  at a local hotspot restaurant called Hula’s. It’s going to be a shock to return to the fall weather on the  east coast; we had a delicious dinner outside. The cuisine was kind of a Hawaian-Latin fusion.

We have our third performance tonight, so this morning I took my second yoga class at another studio within walking distance of my hotel, called Urban Yoga. It’s a gorgeous new studio, with exposed beams, and a full class schedule. After an hour of sun salutations and a final savasana, I walked to the Jamba Juice across the street and explored the little shops and restaurants around my hotel.

If I had another day in the Phoenix area, I would love to get a chance to go hiking on Camelback Mountain, which everyone says has spectacular views. I’ve loved getting to know the downtown area and I made two new friends, in addition to my wonderful cast!

Namaste