It is Life.

The following text was written intoxicated after my final performance of L'incoronazione di Poppea at Stockholm Operastudio June 5th, 2014.

Coming to grips with the fact that I have now lived in Stockholm for 4 years is not half of what’s going through my mind.

I sit here now with a glass of wine at my right, knowing that tomorrow everything I worked so hard for at Kulturama and Stockholm Operastudio is OVER! FINITO!!! FINI!!!! DONE!!! COMPLETED!!!

It is unfathomable. All I can think of now is to stay intoxicated until eternity. I understand now why some people find alcohol comforting. I am, as I write, under the influens of 3 bottles of Corona and a glass of red wine… I have another 3 beers in the fringe. I will definitely finish them! (Kids, DON’T DRINK, It’s fantastic!!!)

Tomorrow when I wake up, mostly hung over and filled with anguish, I’m a jobless, student of an art form that takes years to complete and single. I feel like a bum. At least I have a gym subscription to work on my "bumness"…probably my only time consumption this summer. 

I don’t know what to say…. Poppea... It was really hard for me. The music is so difficult and really special, like a treasure.

So unique and complicated. 

What I love about the role of Poppea the most is the history of her. She actually existed, the story is almost accurate to its history all though we had a different take on the story. 

It is written that she was a beautiful woman who used her looks to raise her status. Something which I find fabulous. There is something so powerful about it and yet so fragile. I don’t know how much I can relate to the fact of being beautiful, to me that’s a matter of opinion, but I suppose Poppea needed to know that about herself in order to take advantage of it, to use it.  I imagine Poppea saw a certain reaction in people that fed her some kind of information that she herself, with her natural beauty, had some kind of power over people, specifically men. That to me takes a lot of courage. And it took a lot of courage to play a character like that.

You might ask “where do I go from here?” well I’ve applied to study Italien and German at the University of Stockholm. I dread having to tell “ordinary” people about myself. “Oh, I chose to study these languages because i’ve been singing Opera for the past 12 years”. 12 YEARS!!!! 

I don’t think I’ve ever expressed truly my passion for opera.

I don’t really know where to begin, I just find it incomparable to anything else. 

I love music, it is my passion. 

But opera.  

It’s like an aria.

Aria simply means air.

It is breath.

You must breath to live, therefor

It is life. 

xx Erika Grace

Photo: Francisco Vastenman