Wild Ride!!! Berkeley Opera Auditions
Well, it's strange for me to go from performing 8 shows a week in Berkeley, to coming home to Sacramento and having auditions be my job. That is the reality, however. My first audition was for the Berkeley Opera Company back in July, for Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffman". I auditioned for the mezzo role of Niclas/Muse. The audition was quite a riot, to tell you the truth!
I got to the San Francisco Opera house and went up to the chorus area for the audition and got changed into my audition clothes. As I made my way, the person letting people in to the audition asked, "Are you Kristin Smith?" "No, I Carrie Hennessey. I am just going to change and warm up just a bit, and then I'll be ready." "Ok!"
So a few minutes later I emerged and was ready to go, the person immediately asked, "Are you Nora Johnson?" "No I am Carrie Hennessey, but I am ready if you want to send me in early." "Oh, I didn't recognize you in your dress!" So, there was one other person waiting and she went in and did her audition. The person then asked if I was ready, and as she began to let me in announced, "And this is Nora Johnson!" "No, I'm still Carrie Hennessey." So I awkwardly began to walk out, but then she said no that it didn't matter, go ahead. I was with humor able to break the ice a bit with the folks in the audition. It went really well and I was extremely happy. I sang the two pieces and then read an excerpt once, was given direction and read it again. I think that I was not the look that they wanted, otherwise I think that I was in the running.


According to my notes from the audition, you were very much in the running and still on our list when we narrowed it down to four.
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