It's almost showtime inside the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. Melodic, bellowing voices echo through the halls backstage as the cast members of "Die tote Stadt," or "The Dead City," warm up their vocal cords - their instruments - for a big night.
But it's quieter in Sara Gartland's dressing room. Just two weeks ago, she had to tell her colleagues her instrument wasn't working, and she could not sing in the opera.
"It was a Friday. I was in the car talking to my husband, weeping, and then I said, 'Okay, I'm going there. I'm going there now,'" she said, remembering how she made that difficult announcement. "I thought, I'm gonna get emotional, and I don't know how to say all of this to be clear and understood when I'm so emotional. So I wrote it all down and I said, 'I'm gonna take my phone out and I'm gonna read to you exactly what's going on and why I can't do this.' And then it was all done. And then I wept."
Last year, Gartland came down with COVID-19. It wasn't an unusual case, and she didn't think too much of it after she recovered. But as "Die tote Stadt" inched closer to prime time - a rare piece produced entirely by Opera Colorado, to celebrate the company's 40th anniversary - she began to notice her body changing.
"I was becoming extremely fatigued, which is not the norm for me," she said. "I was thinking I was having like a reflux attack."
A doctor scoped and scanned her. The diagnosis: the nerves around her vocal cords were in a state of paresis, not quite paralyzed but still stifled, and it was likely caused by the coronavirus.
Opera Colorado acted quickly to cover for her.
The show was nearly complete, and it was too close to opening day to replace Gartland entirely.
"We were at a point in the rehearsal process where bringing someone in to traditionally cover the role was not really an option," Jennifer Colgan, spokesperson for Opera Colorado, told us. "The staging is really complicated. It's a new production. There are a lot of elements in the production that are custom-tailored to Sarah."
"Die tote Stadt" is about a painter who goes mad after the death of his wife. When he finds Marietta, played by Gartland, he becomes obsessed because she looks so similar to his lost love (Gartland also plays the deceased Marie). He paints her obsessively, so Gartland's face was literally part of the set dressings.
Instead of a complete replacement, Opera Colorado hired Kara Shay Thomson to sing offstage while Gartland played a silent role in costume. Gartland couldn't even mouth the words while Thomson sang; her voice therapist said it would further strain her condition.
"We're so grateful that Kara Shay Thompson was available and on a plane the next day after she got the call, to provide vocals for the performance," Colgan said. "There're about four or five singers in the entire world that know the music. Some of them don't even sing the role anymore. Some of them live in Europe and couldn't get here."
The crowd, Colgan added, fully embraced Thomson and Gartland's duet, especially on opening night.
"The audience on Saturday night that just went crazy when Kara and Sara took their bows together on stage," she said. "It could have been a very challenging and negative situation, and it turned around into something that's been very interesting and positive."
Health issues have been kind of persistent on this side of the pandemic.
Usually, Gartland spends summers performing in Iowa and travels around the country to work with different opera companies through the rest of the year. She said she's heard about health problems stymying shows more often since America's pandemic-lockdown phase ended.
"You're hearing a lot of stories from different companies across the country, where their singer was sick, their cover or the understudy was sick, a dancer walked the role or a stage manager walked the role," walked onstage in costume, but didn't sing, she said. "It's just a crazy time."
Scott Guzielek, vice president and general manager of the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, said things do feel different these days.
"As long as operas been around, there's always been sickness and there's always been last minute cancelations," he told us. "Where things are different now is this tends to be onset much faster, without much warning, and seems to spread quickly."
It's just the nature of COVID-19, he said. Performers might be asymptomatic and unaware, and it only takes one group exposure to cripple a cast. Anecdotally, he said it seems like more productions than usual have been ambushed by illness, all while the industry continues to bounce back from the pandemic's economic impacts.
Gartland said this moment has been tough, but it's been an opportunity to be more present in her body and on stage.
Reports of post-COVID conditions similar to Gartland's have made it into peer-reviewed case studies, and at least one author has suggested there's probably a lot of undiagnosed paresis right now. While most people don't need months of therapy to bounce back, most people aren't quite as in-tune with their voices as Gartland.
On stage, not singing has let her work on performing with her body, which she hopes will help her be more "organic" in performances when she can sing again. As she works with her voice therapist, she said she's begun "feeling" her instrument in a way she never expected to.
A virus likely pushed her over the edge, but she's learned how regular stress can cause her body to "grip" her throat and diaphragm. She's dealing with anxiety about her diagnosis now, but she said the industry has long been a competitive and tricky space to navigate.
"I don't know that ten years ago I ever would've said anything about this, because I would've felt such shame," she said.
To heal, she said, she's had to find peace with her body, with her expectations and with her craft.
"I have tried to allow those moments to come in, feel them, have the tears if they come, try and say what it is, and then move on, because I have to stop holding and gripping so much," she said. "All these lessons and opportunities to observe and learn more about myself and my instrument - I'm trying to lock that away inside of myself and remember it for next time."
