Soprano Robin Johannsen, fighting off mad scenes while waiting for the stage…
I met Kevin McCutcheon over eighteen years ago in what now feels like another lifetime. He came to NYC from the Deutsche Oper Berlin to listen to auditions and choose the scholarship recipients for the Opera’s Young Artist program that year. He chose me then and changed my life forever. I came to Berlin, and […]
Read MoreI have been out into the world singing again and have returned home almost none the worse for wear, other than a case of laryngitis that is already on the mend. After six months of quarantining in Berlin, singing exclusively in my own apartment (I imagine how my poor neighbors would shake their heads should […]
Read MoreIn an alternate universe tonight, I am onstage singing a concert of Mozart arias with the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra at the Tanglewood Music Festival in Massachusetts. My whole family: husband, kids, in-laws, parents, sister, cousins, nieces, and nephews are there in the audience, the smallest ones having a picnic on the lawn instead of being […]
Read MoreI am finally back in regular voice lessons with my teacher! Well, not quite regular, but… as it turns out, you can get a lot done over the internet including working intensively on the voice, once you’ve made peace with the fact that all of your more traditional options have been removed. I would have […]
Read MoreThe nighttime has always been my time for thinking and worrying. Even as a small child, I was often unable to sleep, too afraid of being left alone with my own thoughts in the dark. I would get out of bed and creep to the edge of the room, my body still stuck in the […]
Read MoreSaturday started out blue. It wasn’t easy shepherding the family out of the apartment that morning for a walk in the sunshine. It began with me alternately cheering and yelling, “Come on, come on! Did everyone go to the bathroom? Brush your teeth! Grab your masks! Let’s go, let’s go!” After each of us had […]
Read MoreWelcome to my new blog, and thank you for stopping by. How to begin to tell one’s own story? I’ll just get right to it, starting from the middle, of course. There I was a few months ago, happily rolling along in my career, very excited about the projects I was working on, the old […]
Read MoreI started this blog (though I hadn’t yet published it) and wrote my “Welcome” post in the time before America was burning, or at least in the time before America was literally burning. But I do not wish to publish my “Welcome” and my thoughts on other matters without first acknowledging and honoring the suffering […]
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Robin Blogs at Night 