By Morgan Roberts

These past weeks have been the most hectic weeks of my summer. Before opening “Turandot” at McCaw Hall in Seattle, we have tech week, which is very slow moving and has a lot of starting and stopping the performance to get all of the bumps smoothed out.

After a week of getting home at 11:30 p.m. it was time to start the dress rehearsals. Those have some bumps to be smoothed out as well, but we have an audience so there usually aren’t many starts and stops. However in this case the director did end up restarting and stopping the performance several times in the beginning, which doesn’t usually happen. That shows how perfect of a show the director wants “Turandot” to be.

As soon as the dress rehearsals ended, we dove headfirst into the real performances with a paying audience.The feeling backstage was a lot stricter but my nerves were the same as they were in tech week, tired, excited, and happy. All of the kids seemed to be anything but nervous. In the huge room that all of the 28 kids in the youth chorus of “Turandot” hang out in, we all set up chairs and play nerdy drama games until we hear the stage manager’s voice over the intercom saying “Places youth chorus, places,” for all of us to come down for one of the five songs that we sing.

The little bits that we sing are all in Italian and just make me want to fall asleep, they are so lulling.

So back to the performances. On opening night everything fell into place. That was one of the two nights that the youth chorus gets to bow with the entire cast at the end. Other than that, we are not seen by the audience. That night the audience wouldn’t stop clapping, they were so pleased and amazed by our performance! It made all of us feel so loved and appreciated for all of the time, work, and effort that we put into this production.After the show is over that night, you can see everyone rushing out to their cars to beat the huge rush of crowd coming out to go home.

The audience of “Carmen” and the audience of “Turandot” were the most people I have ever seen in the same place at the same time. All of the streets are bumper on bumper and the parking garage takes close to a half hour to get out of.

So when the youth chorus is dismissed while the audience is still clapping, everyone is out of there fast, other than the kids whose parents are either chaperoning or are in the show too.The one thing that I am a little sad about is that we don’t get to bow every night.

We only got to bow at one of the two dress rehearsals and one of the eight performances. When I walk out and see the audience I always think, if only they knew I was in that, and if only they knew I was up there!

Well, now you guys reading this know. We only have one more weekend of shows left — three shows — and I will be SO SAD when it ends! I have made so many great friends and had so many great experiences that I will keep forever and I hope to be able to do this again!!

Morgan Roberts is a 13-year-old from Maple Valley preparing to sing in her second Opera with Seattle Opera.