Yesterday's Lesson

Yesterday I had a long talk with my teacher about some things (luckily, he usually lets me give him an update and do some brainstorming as an add-on, without cutting into our hour singing time).

I mentioned my frustration about feeling that no one takes me seriously, and that this has dampened my ardor for trying to find places to sing (where I don't have to pay anything, and there will be a real audience - AKA I can invite my friends and acquaintances, and get to show off- not a nursing home, even though I believe singing in a nursing home is a worthy endeavor).

I asked again about our joint concert and he basically went "meh", which was not about my singing, it was more about his own feelings about singing right how. He is my age, and has sung almost every tenor and most baritone roles in the standard rep, in recent years with a pay-to-sing outfit run by a friend of his, who always needs men, so my teacher has never had to pay anything. (I suppose what he "pays" is jumping in to sing comprimario roles now and then when someone is needed.) He seems to have backed off this relationship lately, maybe because the outfit now has enough men willing to pay? I don't know. My teacher still can sing anything, just about, because he's a superb technician (and a superb teacher, unlike the conductor of Carmelites who seemed to be unable to convey to me what it was he wanted).

So I've put Amneris/Radames on the shelf for now. Not a bad idea. I worked it to death, and doing that improved my extreme upper register.

I also was honest with my teacher about my hurt that when he puts on a group concert he has never used me, but in fact on one occasion when his regular mezzo was not available used someone whose singing was (IMHO and also in his) not as good as mine.

He said well, that she was someone he had known for years and he had heard her perform under pressure. He reminded me that he had only actually heard me "perform" twice. So now it's back to these same issues that keep surfacing over and over. I can't get anywhere because I have no past. Or the past I have is so ancient and laughable, and the people who knew me then are gone, as at that time I was one of the youngest singers.

I don't want to start the new year feeling disheartened. I know I am singing better and better and my teacher agrees. Those exercises on "VVVVV" that are meant to liberate my "flute register" have been lightening my voice and making it easier to sing high notes with a variety of dynamics, however, as my teacher pointed out, they have not increased my range. I can now sing a tiny "VVVV" on a B natural off the cuff but nothing higher (Eboli at 61 perhaps?) but I still can't phonate on anything above a C and probably will never be able to. But I don't have a peer group. Which is why I have kept relying on that bass, who despite having a glorious instrument and a lot of stage presence, definitely has vocal "issues". He's about the only person I know who came out of nowhere in midlife like I did and is jonesing to sing opera.

Well, I just have to pick myself up and go on. I refuse to let all that talent go to waste or be buried forever in a choir. I need something else.

My choir director recently played in a small chamber music venue, something new that was opened up by an old fashioned stringed instrument maker. I wouldn't be able to sing opera there, but maybe the violinist from the church (he's retired from the NYCO and has happily accompanied me in several of the services)would do something with me. Maybe an all Bach program? I will try to find out what's involved in performing there. I doubt I would have to pay to use the space as I'm sure my choir director wouldn't have done that.

So do I want to make a New Year's resolution? What? To take myself seriously? How do I do that?

How Do I Make Myself Believe I Matter?

I'm taking a break from work now preferatory to trudging out in the snow to get groceries (I ordered some online but if I can't see what I'm buying it's often not the thing I really wanted) and feel a need to write.

I'm not sure about what, only that I feel I'm being pulled in two directions at once, in more than one sense.

Self Assessment

I know that I keep singing better and better, and despite my advancing age, keep getting stronger and stronger. With a few months of work for example, I probably could sing most of Amneris in public (giving a pass on the Triumphal Scene with the treacherous C flats).

I now have a respectable pianissimo high G and G sharp, and even an A on good days.

The new exercises my teacher has given me to learn to sing "on the edges of my chords" (AKA with that "heady" sound that so many sopranos and even mezzos come by naturally) have changed my sound dramatically (no pun intended - if anything I sound more "lyric").

On the other hand, the more I scour the backgrounds of people I meet, whether at group aria coachings, or whatever, the smaller and more comtemptibly irrelevant I seem. The other Mother Jeanne from the Carmelites production has her own web site, and quite a nice list of credentials including opera and symphony choruses in top venues and a few mid-sized roles with places that turned me down (one of them was where I sang "Acerba Volutta" and the auditor yelled "Brava" but never offered me anything).

So what do I have? A handful of roles that I don't sing any more at venues that I now know are a joke, that I sang over 30 years ago, some solos at churches that don't pay people, a few concerts in hospitals and nursing homes, and my big expletive deleted deal production of Samson et Dalila that I organized myself.

Self-Definition

Why can't I just be happy to be a nice (unBaptised) churchlady who sings? I remind myself of a character in a Margaret Yorke mystery that I read: an "old maid" who had retired from a management job to a small English village and sang contralto in a Bach choir (a lot of Yorke's novels use choirs as a setting) but did not take communion because she couldn't bring herself to believe in a lot of the church doctrines. Other than my lack of a birth religion, I fit right in there with the music-loving amateur choir singers with good intonation and good taste. Or I could if I squashed the diva in me who is always screaming. Be one of the best of the bunch. Not on a par with paid soloists of course (although I sound as good as many of them) but good enough to sing a church solo in a limited range (and with the breath control to sing anything Bach wrote without taking a breath in a wimpy place!)

As my partner said "I have a lot". I have a livelihood that doesn't require my going anywhere, a dream apartment that I pay very little for, and someone to love who loves me.

But I won't give up. There's a part of me that only comes alive when I sing Verdi and verismo or Carmen or Dalila, or, sigh, Mother Marie.

If I were, even, 40 !!!! I might matter to someone but at 60??? I don't even think I matter that much to my teacher. Even though he continues to compliment me on my overall progress (and nitpick at the things that are still not right) he has sort of let the idea of our concert drop. Maybe at the nursing home, he said. He and some other people do a free concert once a year in a big venue and when I asked about it (the mezzo who sang last time did not sound as good as I do and he even begrudgingly admitted it) he never offered me anything.

And I just have run out of energy. I don't mean I've run out of energy to sing, or even to keep practicing, but I've run out of energy to treat myself as if I matter.

O Holy Night

I'm here finishing up supper preferatory to doing some singing and thought I'd take a break and post something, to shake off a funk I've gotten into.

I still have not recovered from my bad experience with the opera. Not that I believe I'm as unmusical as that conductor obviously thought I was, but because it has made me afraid to venture forth.

And just as I write that, thinking of the womb, aka my avocational choir, and whether or not to venture forth from it, I have to mention that the womb is heating up and getting quite crowded and competitive.

There's now a conservatory-trained coloratura soprano there, who is less than half my age. She is now the acknowledged "star" of the choir. When I started singing there, there was another operatically-trained mezzo struggling in the soprano section along with me (we had the highest voices in the choir, solely because of training, not natural tessitura). She and I had a strained relationship to put it mildly but I respected her, most particularly her seniority (in length of time with the choir, not age). And I would have said we were peers. Different voice types (hers got lighter on top, mine got louder) but more or less the same struggles with the various choir soprano parts. In any event, now she has moved on to another musical career entirely.

This young woman is quite nice, although a bit cocky, but then why not? She is feeling her oats. She likes singing in this choir but is out there fishing for paying gigs and has been somewhat successful. And of course as she is a real soprano she's got the Bs and even the Cs that I of course don't have. And no matter how good a second soprano I am, a second soprano is, well, second.

But back to "O Holy Night".

When I was a teenager I had what was my only paying choir gig. My local Unitarian church paid people in the neighborhood to sing in the choir basically if we could carry a tune and were willing to show up for rehearsals. They had paid soloists as well, but couldn't apparently find enough congregants to fill up the choir otherwise. At that time I was at the tail end of childhood Julie Andrews vocal glory because I was a heavy smoker, but I could still pack a punch on a high G, so of course I was in the soprano section.

Well, on Christmas Eve the soprano soloist got to sing O Holy Night, complete with the interpolated B Flat. I was so green with envy. But at least she was older. I could be her when I grew up, so I thought. (Ten years,and some 7500 packs of cigarettes later I was told I was a mezzo.)

When I was "discovered" at my own Unitarian church in 2004, that Christmas I sang Wagner's Angel song (chosen for me by the choir director) for the first time. The resident coloratura sang "O Holy Night". I didn't feel any competition, really. I was one of two soloists out of the entire church, on Christmas Eve which was a pretty high profile occasion.

The following year I sang "O Holy Night" on Christmas Eve, in a version given to me by the choir director where the high note was a G. The Mentor Who Will Not Be Discussed coached me to sing it. It went quite well, despite my leg being in a cast and my needing to be carried up the church steps.

One of my many sources of anger at that church's minister involved her total lack of acknowledgment of me as a musician. At one point at a party she referred to the resident coloratura as the "O Holy Night Lady". When I mentioned (in a later conversation) that I was hurt that she hadn't remembered that I was also an "O Holy Night Lady" because I had sung the song the second year she blew me off saying "well, I guess I didn't remember because it wasn't important to me.....I guess that's not how I see you" If the first diss put my nose out of joint, the second put me in a homicidal rage.

You don't say things like that to a diva.

Fast forward to the Lutheran church. The first year I was there I asked the choir director if I could sing "O Holy Night" on Christmas Eve and he said he really didn't like solos on Christmas Eve because he wanted room for several choir anthems. So I sang Wagner's Angel the Sunday before.

But he has had solos on Christmas Eve, just not any of mine. Miss Coloratura Kid said she and the choir director had "discussed" her singing "O Holy Night" tomorrow night but that he said no. But that he had almost said yes. Maybe. Who knows.

I could have been rehearsing my pitiful mezzo version of the song during my recent practice sessions but I just haven't felt like. Maybe I should leave that one to the real sopranos.

I spoke to the choir director about singing "Schlafe mein Liebster" from the Bach Christmas Oratorio some time during Epiphany. It's slow enough to sing during communion (the choir sings the offeratory and the preludes and postludes are instrumental only) and that time of year we can still sing Christmas music. It's a bit low for me (the perennial problem with this rep - the alto things are too low and the soprano things are either to high or in any event written for lighter voices).

And now that Coloratura Kid is there I just wouldn't feel comfortable singing any of the soprano material, even things I sing well (like the arias from the Messiah).

What I noticed also is now that she is there I would be embarrassed to try to put on a concert again there, like the Samson et Dalila. I don't know why. I guess because she's a real singer, a conservatory graduate who is auditioning in real venues for paying work, and who has friends who sing. She would think something like that was silly.

Well, I have spent enough time here, now. I am going to polish every note, every run, every word of "Schlafe". If I don't get to sing that during Epiphany at least I will have learned it and can look for another solo aria. If nothing else there's always "Et Exsultavit" for a 9:00 anthem.

Be Who You Are, Love What You Have, Do What You Can

That is a quote, I believe, from the great Unitarian minister Forrest Church.

Yesterday my partner was talking to me and she said "You have so much". Some of this was in connection with her sadness over age and infirmity, which I, despite having, at 60 totally aged out of the serious "emerging pro" track, no matter how well I keep singing, still haven't experienced yet. At least not the "infirmity" part, beyond not being able to easily walk up and down stairs, or being able to walk at all in high heels.

I have a choir that I love, friends there that I respect who respect me, friendly neighbors (not to mention a rent controlled apartment in a prime location in Manhattan), work that I can do at home, and good health.

So why do I keep grieving over what I don't have?

Yesterday I posted a status update on Facebook where I asked "Is letting go the same thing as giving up?"

After my bad experience with the opera production, I began asking myself, should I give up the idea of singing opera forever? An odd question, because the things that are so strenuous about opera (mostly the murderous range and stamina level required)were not relevant in that situation.

Why can't I just be happy singing church solos? There's a lot of great music out there - Bach, Mozart, Rossini and more - none of it requiring me to sing above a G sharp, or even an E or an F most of the time.

And if I can't sightread (I have a sightreading book at home but have never been able to muster up any interest in it - I'd rather learn a new aria) I do a pretty good job of faking it.

What's interesting, is that, apparently unlike many people, I do my best if I am not surrounded by people who do everything better. That just intimidates me. For example, one of the unpleasant things that happened in this opera situation involved an ensemble section, which I had worked on at home with the recording, and thought I knew, but suddenly was unable to sing surrounded by other singers who appeared to have more confidence and knowing that this conductor had his ear pealed for me to make a mistake. Yet the very next week when I went back to choir, I was able, in an almost identical situation, to hold my own on the second soprano part, which I had never sung before other than with the recording, because I knew I was the one people would be leaning on.

So what is it that I want that I don't have? I know I will never have a "career" and interestingly, I don't much care if I get paid for singing or not. I do still have an overpowering yearning to sing certain roles but, well, I can do that. I sang Dalila, didn't I? It would have cost me less to produce Carmen in a church than I spent on tickets to this opera production that I will never get or sell even if I got them.

I guess what I want is respect. Surrounded by conservatory graduates, YAPPers, and "emerging pros" (never mind the real pros) I feel that I am nothing. It's funny. I feel that not only do I not have a future, but I also don't have a past. Until I started frequenting the Forum, I never realized that the places I sang in the 1970s were laughingly referred to as "the opera underground" and thought of as some kind of a joke. So an experience that used to make me proud (that I had sung this or that role) now has been reduced to an embarrassment.

I just am feeling very small right now, like I want to curl up in a corner.

Slowly Crawling Out

It's done. I resigned, and got a personally insulting email in response, but no arm twisting to come back (was I really that bad?)

I feel like I've really taken a beating and my confidence has been badly shattered.

There have always been areas in which I've had very little confidence: singing above a high A natural, singing softly above an E natural, worrying that I don't have the stamina I need, my lack of musical training.

But this conductor seemed to think I lacked musicality, and in a way that I could not perceive. I mean if I sing an ugly high note, usually I know, yes, that is what I have done. But what was wrong here? If I tried to sing legato he implied that I was schmaltzy and if I tried to sing without being schmaltzy he implied that I was mechanistic. And the worst part is that I didn't hear whatever it was I was doing that he didn't like.

The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed used to tell me I had no sense of rhythm. He said I knew how to count, but that that was not the same thing. So is there some inner flow that I am lacking? If that were the case wouldn't I hear it? I've heard tapes of myself singing and all that I've noticed is that my lower register sounded "talky" rather than "singy" and that (this is mostly fixed) my voice had a big weak spot right above middle C. My high notes actually never sounded that bad on tapes, just loud, but not ugly-loud.

I just haven't had the heart for singing today but I made myself practice anyhow!! I worked on the second soprano part for something were singing Christmas Eve. It's mostly just middle register but there's a gratuitous throwaway high A in the middle (it only occurs once - the second time that melody recurs the second sopranos are an octave below). After working on the new exercises I was actually able to do this. (It remains to be seen if I can do it sitting during choir practice but who knows? Or the choir director may ask the seconds not to sing it.)

Then I took out Wagner's Angel, the only art song I've ever sung (I just don't like art songs unless they're sacred songs for church. Am I missing something?), because it has plenty of legato. I was not all that thrilled with how it sounded. I'm not sure what the problem is. I vocalized up to a High C and sang the ascending phrase from Aida (I now just consider that a mandatory exercise whether I work on the rest of the piece or not) which went like a house afire. And my pianissimo G on "nieder" sounded great. But I got tired and my throat kept getting tight, which I don't remember happening before. I've sung this song almost every Christmas in church one time or another (won't this year - have missed the boat) and always got through it fine although sometimes that G was full voice. Well, I'll take it to my lesson on Thursday. I am not in the mood for any music that's not seasonal right now.

It's funny. My mother was an atheistic Jewish Marxist but she loved Christmas, which she claimed was pagan. I have happy childhood memories of caroling, Advent calendars from the Met, and our beautiful ceiling high live tree.

I just want to wallow in Christmas now. My partner and I have been being nicer to each other, probably because now we're all we've got. She has no friends who spend the holidays here (they all have grandchildren elsewhere, or country homes) and no family, and my mother is dead. I will sing Christmas Eve and then sleep over. We have been looking for a restaurant where we can have Christmas dinner but haven't found one. Everything seems to be closed. Well, then, as I laughingly said, we can be Jewish and eat ethnic and then come back to her place and watch the marathon of Poirot.

Saturday I am going to buy her a little tree.

A New Name, A New Day

First, the new name.

I had a very hard lesson this past week, which is maybe I'm not an "emerging pro".

Maybe I'm just a middle-aged woman (come on - you're 60, that's pushing it!) with a rather wild, undisciplined, large operatic voice, a truckload of diva personality, a minimum of musical training (I learn almost everything by ear but I do it so perfectly no one can tell), a sexy figure and a great hair dye job.

If anyone has been reading regularly, they will notice that I deleted the recent posts about Dialogues of the Carmelites. That is because I am planning to drop out. I booked an extra session today with the therapist I've been seeing for years, mostly to talk about problems with my partner's physical and mental health issues and how to deal with them and still have a life, to figure out the best way to do this.

Why am I doing this? It seems, according to this director, I can do nothing right, but I haven't a clue what he wants. I came there prepared. I knew my small role perfectly, I speak flawless French, and I sound quite lovely in the little solo secion (most of the bits of recitative are in my register break, which makes it hard to sound "lovely" in them, but I didn't think they were meant to be).

There is one other woman that this conductor has been bullying but at least she has a large role, so to her it's probably worth it.

There are two women singing the larger role that I had originally auditioned for, they are less than half my age, and one of them showed up at the first two rehearsals not even knowing how to speak the words to her part in time to the music.

Well, she's 25! Hardly the age of wisdom. When I was that age I hadn't even started studying singing seriously. It was the year I stopped drinking. And hardly the right age for the character she was playing. I can understand a director not wanting to cast me in a role like Erika in Vanessa (the first role I ever auditioned for for this conductor), but if this conductor thinks I'm too old for Erika, why would he want to cast a 25 year old as Mother Marie?

In any event, I am just no longer used to this kind of abuse. I might put up with it if the stakes were higher (if I were getting paid, or singing a large role that I was dying to sing) but for two pages of solo singing and a few lines of recit? No. This is not how I want to spend the first Christmas after my mother died.

I suppose part of me feels like a failure. This was my first venture in 30 years outside of being an (unpaid) choir soloist and singing in operatic concerts either that I produce myself or that someone else produces, in nursing homes or churches.

If this is what I can expect if I get a role I audition for, I don't think I want to go to any more auditions. This is a huge thing to say. It's a huge admission of defeat. Or maybe it's just that I have different values. Over the past several decades I have spent most of my time when I was not at work earning a living either in 12 Step programs or in churches (even though I have no birth religion, I consider myself a spiritual person) where regardless of what else is going on, it is woven into the organization's mission that people treat each other with respect and that there is no bullying or abuse.

For people who have read me at "the other place" I took quite a bit of abuse over the years from The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed but I brought some of that on myself by falling in love with him and at least he did most of his bullying in his studio behind a closed door. And at least the whole thing started because he heard me singing from a hymnal in the back of a church and chose me as a protegee. I never foisted myself on him.

This doesn't mean I will never sing opera again. I am singing better and better thanks to those new exercises my teacher gave me and I have every intention of getting back to Amneris in preparation for the concert he wants to sing with me next year.

And I will still go to the meetups and aria classes where I can sing the music I love with a piano.

As for my new title? A few years ago I saw a play called I Am My Own Wife about a transgender man living in Nazi Germany.

So I can be "My Own Diva". One of my dreams has been to produce my own one woman show, a little chat interspersed with arias. Maybe that will find a market.

Off to Rehearsal

I'm off to my first Carmelites rehearsal. I now have Mother Jeanne totally memorized including the tough spot at the end where I sing (totally atonally) alone with Sister Constance. We will see if I can hold my own tonight. As I've said, I am not a natural harmonizer although once I get a part in my head I can hang onto it.

I also am going to seriously learn Mother Marie. She has to sing four high B flats but they're sort of "throwaway" notes in recitative, not big powerful notes that you have to hang onto like the ones in Aida.

I have been listening to her part of the recording and working on the French. As I'm primarily an "ear learner", if I keep listening to the recording I will know the part. Luckily French is an easy language for me because I grew up hearing my mother speak it.

I have to admit, unfortunately, that I'm not quite ambitious enough to get to rehearsal early to listen to the rehearsal of some of the Mother Marie scenes that I'm not in. I have decided to stop by my mother's apartment instead. But there's time. My goal is to know the part by the time we go on break on December 17. It shouldn't be hard because once I'm secure with Mother Jeanne I won't have to sing through it during my practice times at home - which I have to admit have not been as numerous or as extensive as I would like, as a result of all the copyediting (what pays the rent) that has come pouring in - and can work on Mother Marie instead.

More later....