You Gotta Believe

By rights, I should be posting something tomorrow (well, maybe I will anyhow), but I feel like posting something today.

In less than two hours - well, no, if I want to be literal, in a little over 12 hours - I will be 60. This is the age at which many singers retire.

So how can I be singing better than I ever have in my whole life?

When he heard me sing Katisha with a G&S Troupe in the early 70s (I was still smoking like a chimney) one of the cast members, a bass who had had an operatic career before losing his eyesight and settling in to a home at this troupe (it had several levels, pros, of which he was one, covers, of which I was one, and people with minimal vocal training who only sang in the chorus), told me I sounded like Ebe Stignani. I only half believed him, since at that point an F felt like a "high note" and half the time I seemed to have bronchitis and couldn't sing at all.

When I returned to singing in 1976 after quitting smoking, my teacher (I'm still studying with him today) helped me lighten my voice and told me I was a lyric mezzo. For a whole year he scarcely let me do anything but hum and sing long scales on "oo", after which I got cast as Nicklausse in a slap-happy, no-pay production of The Tales of Hoffmann. From that time forward, I never thought of myself as anything but a lyric mezzo. And since I really wasn't happy singing anything but "trouser roles" I never gave it a second thought.

Even when I was cast as Laura in La Gioconda (see my previous post) I didn't really see myself as a dramatic mezzo although Ebe Stignani had sung the role.

And when I returned to singing in 2004 I saw myself primarily as a soprano in a choir. It had been so long since I'd smoked (or sung) that I had reverted to my childhood fake Julie Andrews sound and was a likely to be heard singing "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" as the Habanera or Dalila's "Mon Coeur". Why not? All those pieces have the same range, more or less, actually.

Even when I starred in my own concert version of Samson et Dalila, that was primarily about the sex and the character. Since it was a concert in a church with a piano, who needed a big sound?

I don't know when I started wondering if I really was a dramatic (I mean a real one, not a baby). Maybe it was when I started going to meetups with other singers and sang "Acerba Volutta" when most of the other mezzos (who were 25-30 years younger) were singing Mozart and Handel.

Now although I never told anyone, I have wanted to sing Amneris for about 40 years. I know the opera almost by heart, but except for one or two runthroughs of the duet with Radames (in private!) I had never really sung any of it.

I'm not sure how it came about, but I was looking around for duets to sing with my bass friend and thought, hey! we could do the Judgment Scene. I wasn't sure my voice had enough heft, but hey! we're talking about a duet with a piano at a concert with a small audience. And then things just took off.

My teacher really liked how it sounded (I think he's totally surprised by how big my voice has gotten) and it seemed to be a good fit.

Now to be honest, I don't know if I will ever have the stamina to sing the whole role (I mean I'm the age at which most singers retire or at least scale back, right?) but who knows.

I'm just not going to let anyone tell me I can't because I'm 60.

And I'm determined not to be afraid of those ascending scales. I think if I use that "portamento" technique that my teacher has talked to me about and sing it big, I can master it.

For now, I just have to worry about the Judgment Scene.

Sunday will be interesting. The bass and I will be rehearsing in the basement of the Unitarian church where I was discovered over 6 years ago by The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed. He may even be there. That's ok. After an emotional roller coaster that lasted over 4 years, we made peace and actually had a nice, professional collegial talk when I sang an excert from Gounod's Sappho at a fundraiser.

I mean I'm actually going to get to sing this scene in public even if it's just a "Musicale" in someone's living room. This is beyond my wildest dreams...