Back in the Saddle

Well, after hearing two glorious dramatic sopranos yesterday, and not having any paying work to do, I was inspired enough to do a serious practice.

The high B flat in the first round of "Chi ti salva" is so not good. It's fine if I just sing a little chunk leading up to it (that's why it's easier the second time) but today I tried singing the scene from the beginning (not really difficult up to that point, and to me the passage "e patria, e trono, e trono, e vita, tutto darei per te" is one of the most achingly beautiful things to sing). Well, I think a lot of the recitative sections, which seem to contain a lot of hard consonants, just tire me out, so I need to figure out a strategy. Also singing the word "vendetta" is not great for keeping the voice in a comfortable spot for soaring upwards. Yes, I sang a couple of drop dead B flats a la Simionato, but it's still a crap shoot. So ok, I have until next April or May to get this in shape. But learning a new piece is one thing, singing a note that has terrified me for 35 years is another.

Another thing I did that I probably shouldn't have was go through the Dalila and Daddy duet with the recording to check my entrances. Most of Dalila is easy to sing incorrectly - there's always the temptation to croon the sexy parts and bellow the angry parts, particularly in the beginning where it's in a very low tessitura. I am convinced now that Sir Arthur Sullivan had the Vengeance Duet in mind when he wrote "So go to him and say to him" from Patience. It's a duet between two comic characters - Bunthorne (a send-up of Oscar Wilde) and Lady Jane, one of his middle aged admirers. I sang Lady Jane when I was 22 and smoking like a chimney (complete with body padding because she sings about being "stout" and at that time I was five foot six, 125 pounds thanks to the appetite suppressant benefits of good old nicotine). In any event, singing that duet from Samson et Dalila it's easy to slip into G&S style patter which isn't great for the voice, either.

So ok. Now it's off to visit my little Dachshund and assemble a "pup tent" for him.

Tomorrow I will do the piece again. The Mentor (Who Shall Not Be Discussed) always told me it was good to learn a piece backwards, particularly if the ending is the hardest part. (My current teacher actually told me something similar....to isolate the difficult section and keep singing it by itself until it was comfortable.) I also need to pinpoint all the bad habits that creep in during those preceding pages.