The Best Yet

I'm just taking a minute here, between work, watching the royal wedding (which I'm loving - I consider myself an honorary Brit after all, having been immersed in Brit Lit since the age of 6), and getting ready for an appointment, to drop a line about last night's practice. Again, I didn't "feel like" - it was late, and it was hard to find a stopping off point in my work-for-pay, but I gave "Chi ti Salva" a spin and this was the best yet. True, I didn't really start from the beginning. I sang "Gia sacerdoti adunansi" and then "Ah tu dei vivere" (the line beginning "e patria e trono" is something I sing very well and always have)and then took a break before getting to "Chi ti salva".

But something is different. I don't know where this came from. I really don't. I mean I've been working hard at getting a buzz in my upper register not to mention all the months of Pilates to give me a core to sing from. But if I just think "woo, woo, woo" (I'm serious!) on those last three notes (I've gone back to taking a breath after "or dal ciel" as is customary) instead of thinking of them as a straight line which sort of ended up getting "stuck", something really opens up and comes out the back of my head. The B flat now sounds the way the A has sounded for several years now. So if only this will stick!! I want to feel I'm past all the angst over these notes.

What inspired me to write, actually, was an amazing post by the great Toreador Song which touched upon issues I've always had, most notably needing tons more core strength than the light lyric singer (I've always felt like an idiot having to chug protein shakes to sing in the upper register but this post explained why) and being told I'm singing too loud or "pushing" when things feel right.

So I'm now off to an appointment, then more editing, then I'll go back to that section early this evening

An Old Friend

As promised, I am now back "in training" to work on Amneris and Azucena. Yesterday I was pleasantly surprised by how well the dreaded page in the Amneris/Radames duet with the two high B flats went. I sang from "Chi ti Salva" several times and it sounded great. Not so great when I started at the beginning, but passable and after a small recoup it sounded good, meaning that there's a 99 percent chance that if I had to sing it in public now I would not totally disgrace myself. Possibly an off-night Borodina type scream on the first one, but a great spine-tingling note on the reprise, as I would have had time to rest. And I think I finally have an inkling of what I'm doing, which I never had before. I just drop my bloody larynx and let it rip! The way I have known how to do on an A for several years. This is what my teacher calls an "animal note".

I read an interview with Jane Eaglen in Classical Singer in which she talks about the need to rehearse difficult passages sometimes for as much as 30 minutes a day. I don't think I've quite done that - mostly out of fear that I would wreck my voice singing those notes over and over - but I've certainly given that page a good 15 minutes over and over. Maybe I'm starting to see a payoff? In any event, I am simply not going to give up. If one thing doesn't work I will try another. And this isn't the first time I've come back to something that gave me trouble. I used to not have the stamina to consistently nail the ending to "Acerba Volutta" and now it's my top aria. True, we were only talking about an A there, but nonetheless...

I called this piece "an old friend" not "an old foe" because the role of Amneris was written for a voice just like mine, albeit for someone with more stamina and a tiny bit more stretch in the upper register than I have now but I can see that I am getting there and that this is the rep I am meant to be singing.

On the other hand, the soprano line in the "Halleluia Chorus" is "an old foe" because that is not something I am meant to be singing. The alto part really isn't either but at least it won't squeeze my voice into the wrong place and have repercussions.

Anyhow, I can hardly wait to see my teacher and start planning our concert. I know he really really wants to sing this. So I just have to keep drilling and drilling it.

Tonight I almost didn't practice because it was 7 pm and I was feeling blah and had paying work to do. Boy am I glad I did!!

So now it's back to paying the rent.

The Ghosts of Easters Past

Easter was never a big thing with me, which makes sense, as I am not Christian. Being raised as a secular socialist I was not strictly Jewish either - certainly neither my mother nor her parents observed Passover.

I did, however, fall into the habit of going to church to hear music on Easter. Mostly it was my partner's idea, but I went along, perhaps in memory of being taken to church on Easter by my mother - to hear music of course.

Easter 2003

This was the year that we got up too late to go to one of the Episcpal churches that featured good music, so we went to the local Unitarian church instead. I had fond memories of singing in the Unitarian church choir in Brooklyn, which at that time did have quite a bit of classical music. My more recent brush with Unitarianism had been less positive - I had attended a service at a church in Provincetown that was full of what I term Unitarianism's "hippie-ish silliness", a blend of tiresome pop psych and music from the druggie sixties, recycled as something "spiritual". The minister at the 2003 Easter service (whom I recognized as having once been a well-known journalist - which is what she should have stuck with, being a superb writer and an extremely unempathic person) said "even if you don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead, it's still a nice story". This grabbed us because we don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead, but were pleased that the minister referred to this story, as it was Easter. My partner and I became members of this church.

Easter 2004

Falling after the life-changing events of February 15, 2004, this Easter featured my singing a duet by Mendelssohn called "They have taken away my Lord" (Easter was the only time Jesus was allowed to be referenced in this church, which I, despite my atheistic parentage, found quite silly) with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed. There was lots of flirting and he made numerous jokes about his personal identification with Mary Magdelene. The choir sang a piece called "The Polish Easter Carol" in which I was bullied into singing a high B flat at the end. I am not a soprano, certainly not a high one, but I was the closest thing they could find to one in this amateur choir. That note loomed before me throughout the entire service.

Easter 2005

By now my relationship with The Mentor had become quite tarnished. He agreed to let me sing "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" in the service. There was quite a brouhaha about this, which I have discussed in this post which as I said represented exactly the sort of left-wing provincialism that I detest. But what I have not yet mentioned was the Sondheim-torturing-Stritch singing "Here's to the Ladies Who Lunch" ringer that The Mentor took me through the Saturday before. I probably sang "Redeemer" 17 or 18 times in his studio (who sings something that many times the day before a performance?) and each time he panned it, if not for one reason, then for another. After I sang it Easter Sunday, he put his thumbs down and made a face. So much for the first principle of Unitarianism "Belief in the inherent dignity and worth of every human being". No, I don't think I sounded bad, but I was so exhausted that when I went for the High B flat in the Easter Carol nothing came out. Oh, and did I mention I hadn't eaten anything the night before but had spent the entire night crying?

Easter 2006

I had a paying job singing the soprano line in the Halleluia Chorus, somewhere in New Jersey. Because I was getting paid, I felt entitled to sing as loud as I needed to to keep my larynx down, and actually got through the entire bloody piece without a mishap.

Easter 2007-2010

At the Lutheran church. Singing the soprano part in the Halleluia Chorus. Made gunshy by the glares that told me to keep the volume down, I was never able to sing all of the following: the High A on "he shall reign", and the last two rounds of Kings and Lords on the F and the G. If I was lucky I got two out of three. I coined the name "my annual battle with the KingznLordz"

****************************************************************

This Easter I decided to say goodbye to the KingznLordz forever and ever. With two trained coloraturas in the choir, why should I kill myself? The alto part is not much fun either, for other reasons. Too low, with nothing to show off my lovely mezzo legato line. Oh well. We never use it as a choir anthem anyhow. It's mostly on the program because the congregation knows it.

I went to the Museum of Modern Art with my partner for the first time in almost five months, ate too much gelato, and had a sleepover.

Tomorrow I am getting back to Amneris and Azucena. If I want to sing high notes, that's the rep where I should be singing them.

Some Thoughts on Holy Week and Answering Snark with Kindness

First, Holy Week. On Maundy Thursday I sang "Pie Jesu" from the Durufle Requiem, with the choir director on the organ and his wife on the cello. It went really well and I got compliments from people who had never much liked my singing before. I could say it was possibly some of my best singing. Unfortunately, no matter what I do, I can't carry that sound/confidence up above an A flat (the highest note in "Pie Jesu" is an F sharp). Sometimes I wonder why I keep bashing my head against a brick wall over opera, but I just love it, and my voice is definitely the right size and timbre, I just can't seem to keep hoisting it north.

Singing the Mozart Requiem yesterday as part of the Good Friday Passion Play was an unbelievably magical experience. It's because of things like this (and getting to sing sacred solos regularly) that I am spending Sundays at this Lutheran church, whether I agree with their theology or not. I still consider myself a Unitarian but they are such louts when it comes to classical music. They whine that it's "Christian" instead of seeing how glorious it is. If my atheistic Jewish mother could say "the angels always want to hear Mozart" what is these people's bloody problem? (I hear they are singing Beatle songs regularly on Sundays - excuse me while I go stick my head in the loo).

I also sang the alto line in one of the solo quartets. Now that there are two operatically trained coloratura sopranos there it is utterly pointless for me to sing soprano in pieces like that. The alto parts (certainly the one in the Requiem) are not particiularly comfortable, either, (it's rather sad that I get all excited every time I see a D sitting toward the top of the staff) but going forward there will be more opportunities there.

I still want to keep my seat in the soprano section, though, so I can sing second soprano when the occasion arises, which is the most comfortable. I can get to sing a lot of Es and Fs and a few Gs but don't have to struggle with keeping the volume down on an A.

Which reminds me. I have to decide if I am going to torture myself with the soprano part in the "Halleluia Chorus" again tomorrow. I will be in the soprano section for another piece, which does have a second soprano part. I may. I will view it as an exercise. Of course I won't sing it as well as the real sopranos (I probably sang it as well as the untrained ones when that's all there were) but there are things I need to work on. Last year I "squeaked" on the high A. I have to remember not to sing "he". Who sings a word like "he" on a high A?

Getting to the second part of this post title, which in a way is the most important, what happened was I got an invitation on Facebook from a young man who has an opera company, that I auditioned for, and got nothing from, inviting me to a concert of "amazing voices ages 10-42" (where he found a 10-year-old I have no idea). So I posted something saying "too bad it stops at 42" and then updated my status to say something about the fact that I needed to get back to working on planning another concert for older singers. So this man got back to me and told me about the concert venue (which is unbelievably cheap, and near where I live - well, I live in Opera City, which is rather ironic) and said he would help me organize it. I was so touched. He is a good person, even if he never invited me to sing in one of his concerts. So I said I wanted to do something with my teacher in the Fall and he said "why not now?" No, I'll stick to the Fall. Now I have to think about rep. It would be nice to have a few other people. There's a dramatic soprano who sings with my teacher. If we can get her, she and I can do the Aida/Amneris duet and I'd love to take a crack at Manrico/Azucena. I am afraid to sing the Amneris/Radames duet although maybe we should work on it until the last possible minute and see. I need to overcome my phobia about those high notes. I have to find something, some gimmick or technical trick that will enable me to get up there. I can do it but it's so "on the edge" like a skater doing a triple axel. It's not natural. And then there's my partner to deal with. She thinks I should just give up opera entirely, for whatever reason. No one seems to understand that when I work on this stuff I am fighting both my own fear and a significant other who doesn't want me doing it.

Well, now it's almost time to start my day, which means doing some of my work for pay at the laptop (I've got tons) and going to visit my partner and doing chores for her. My luck I only got 6 and a half hours sleep. I just didn't want to stay in bed any later.

While I'm at it, I might as well post an "intention" as they used to say in the women's Moon Circle:

Every day that I can I will work on one piece of Verdi or Verismo until I overcome my fears and build up my stamina.

Love Your Voice

I hadn't expected to write anything else so soon, but was going to wait until after my marathon of Duruffle (solo from Requiem), Mozart (teeny weeny solo in Requiem and alto chorus part), and, what I sarcastically refer to as my "Annual Easter Battle with the KingznLordz", which I may pass up this year and sing in a more comfortable range forevah and evah!! but the jury is still out on that one!

However this post by the wonderful "Avocational Singer" was too good to pass up.

All I can say is yes, yes, yes.

These are the things I have learned to do over the decades, and which I do now. Unfortunately, I didn't do them when I was of an age to be on the verge of a career. First I smoked and drank (I laugh and say that I sang all the Gilbert and Sullivan contralto roles as a chain smoking underweight 22 year old and now sing Yum-Yum's "The Sun Whose Rays" at 60), and later, even after I had stopped doing those things, I continued to starve myself so that I could fit into a size 29 jeans (many women, including many singers, usually with lighter voices, are that size naturally, but I was not)and was caught up in a lot of Lesbian "PC silliness".

Would I have done more of those things if I had had a mentor?

Well, the jury is still out on that one, too.

Music and Mentors

There's not enough time before my Pilates class to do any work, so I might as well write. I haven't posted anything for a while, and I now have a new subject. It's an expansion of one of my pet subjects, that I addressed in this post - mentors.

Apparently a well-known diva has set up what she calls a "mentoring house" - a place for conservatory students and other young singers to live and have access to her archives, coaching, and other advice.

I don't know what the criteria are for getting to do this, but I've now met a young woman who is living there. Yes, she's good, but so are numerous other young singers whom I've met who are struggling on their own. Apparently she met The Diva in a masterclass. Did she stand out? I have no idea.

I never had a mentor, unless you count The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed and the problem with him was not only his toxic flirting (he was gay, so he was "only kidding" although he really had me fooled!) but his capriciousness. Basically after a certain point he got bored with me and wanted to move on to other "finds", in addition to having gotten an earful about how much the congregation of this UU church disliked operatic singing (boy am I glad to be outta there - a subject for another post)!

My current voice teacher, whom I've known for years, was never a mentor either, and come to think of it, he never had a mentor which is why he never had a career. A man with a dramatic voice like that, who can sing every tenor role Wagner ever wrote, half of Verdi's, and many Verdi baritone roles as well, should have been better known.

I think when my rather wistful envy of this woman and her mentoring situation (actually, she doesn't look very happy most of the time so I can't say I really envy her) turned to total dumbfoundedness was yesterday, when she mentioned not owning a black dress, and said she would "see if she could get Diva to buy her one!!" Apparently Diva had gone through this woman's wardrobe (part of mentoring, no doubt) and made her throw out half of it because it didn't fit. Well, yes, clothing is part of being a singer.

I suppose both my mother and my partner were mentors of a sort, just never about singing, which is what I desperately longed for. My mother made me a writer, by example, and it was because of my adolescent moonlighting as her proofreader that I was able to sidle into a professional editorial job with really no formal training. And my partner went shopping with me for the "right" clothes for a senior executive. Yes, they made me look frumpy and totally sexless, not to mention that they were too big, but it was her attempt to help me have a "career" (so that she would always be assured of a breadwinner in her life - no, don't go there!!)

Yesterday I had a reasonably happy day. The church where I sing observed Palm Sunday, which was her favorite holiday. She wanted to come but couldn't, so I brought her palms and made her favorite soup. During the soupmaking, she despaired of my not understanding the "right" way to chop parseley with a big knife. I asked her what the big deal was and she said "Well, I won't always be around, you know." Come to think of it she was my kitchen mentor as well. She taught me how to cook. (So I could cook for her?) In any event, I suppose that was a form of mentoring.

If I were a better person I might be more appreciative and less envious, but - I'm not!

On Writing, Not Singing

Over the weekend, I went to an LGBT themed brunch, where I must admit, I felt like a bit of a hypocrite; on the other hand, I still certainly count as solidly B.

In any event, I met someone there who is a high-level Broadway producer, and when another one of the guests mentioned that he had written something and the producer politely agreed to look at it, I just bit the bullet and told him about my play Duet. (If anyone is interested in reading it, you can post a comment with your real email address - which I will delete later if you ask me to). I don't actually know how this play got written. My mother always wanted me to "be" a writer (I - to my disappointment - got the English medal not the music medal when I graduated from High School) so I probably do write a lot better than I sing, but I had never written fiction before.

But when all the brouhaha was going on with The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed, and there was really no one I could talk to because everyone I knew was either a friend of my partner's or of his, this play just sort of wrote itself. I mean he was very funny and a bit pretentious. An excellent voice teacher, yes, but besides his not knowing the difference between being seductive and being supportive, or being seductive and being appreciative, or what you will, he also did spout a lot of new-agey claptrap that was quite funny when I put it all down on paper.

The line of the decade (after hearing me sing "Mon Coeur)":

TMWSNBD: What are you singing about there. Translate it for me.

ME: My heart opens at your voice like a flower at the kiss of dawn.

TMWSNBD: Sooooooo. What kind of flower do you think she's talking about?

This play did have its world premier at a small community theater in Texas and sitting in the audience hearing people laugh at the lines I had written, which came from the torment I had suffered, just put me over the moon. I think the play is really good. It's funny and well-written. If it were a movie it would be called a "chick flick". The off-Broadway theaters I had sent it to weren't interested....not edgy enough, but even people from there seemed to be impressed with it.

So who knows? Maybe that tortured and transformative phase of my life will live on forever?

A Few Things to Look Forward To

First of all, now it looks like I'll be singing the Duruffle "Pie Jesu" with the cello on Maundy Thursday. That is usually a fairly well-attended service. I still don't know about the solo quartet for Good Friday.

Also, I spoke to the violinist that I have been planning to work with about gathering up all the music we can put on a concert bill. The only thing I'm waiting for now is the transcribed copy of "Ich Habe Genug". I was really surprised to find that the mezzo version doesn't seem to exist anywhere. There's a soprano version that's too high (it's a third higher...see my earlier post about ranges) and a bass version, which is exactly an octave lower than the mezzo version, but written in the bass clef. After I give that to the violinist we can try to plan something. If the church doesn't think we're good enough for their regular chamber music series (or doesn't think I'm good enough although my plan is just to be one heavily featured item on a bill with other people)they will, I hope, let us use the space for free and recoup the rental fee from the ticket money and then some. Actually, I really do think I can hold my own in this repertoire and sound as "professional" as anyone else they would be likely to hear. Where I fall short is at the extreme end of my range and the extreme end of my stamina and Bach alto/sop 2 material doesn't overtax either.

I also, though, really want to get back to "Condotta". I am going to bring it to my lesson tomorrow.

Mainly I need to attack the pile of editing in my virtual in-box. The amount I owe in taxes is staggering. And heave a big sigh and try to really really learn the alto part to the "Requiem". Singing those runs just above middle C is a good skill to have and I am going to make them buzz, the way Angelika Kirchschlager does on the recording.

...When Family is Not Supportive (Reprise)

Because this has been an ongoing theme in my life since I began seriously singing in my 20s, I knew I had made a post on this subject earlier so I went back and re-read it. Many things have happened in the past 11 months: my mother has died, we are on a path toward moving my partner into an assisted living facility, and one of the two auditions I mentioned led to my being cast in a small role, spending $400 on tickets, only to be tortured and bullied by a conductor and deciding I wanted "out" - so badly, in fact, that I didn't even bother to ask for my money back, but just took it as a tax deduction.

Before my mother died, I had been going from time to time to group coaching sessions. I was always the oldest person there, and with the least experience, although compared to some people who showed up, I was often better prepared. I simply didn't have the heart for this for several months (or I was too busy), but on a whim I decided to sign up for one for this afternoon. I didn't plan on singing any opera. I am too stressed out at the moment to sing "Condotta" in public, which is what would be next on the agenda for me (I have already sung "Acerba Volutta", "Stella del Marinar", "O Mio Fernando", Fenena's short aria from Nabucco, and Dido's Lament there, as well as a few pieces of church music.) So I decided to bring "Liber Scriptus" from the Verdi Requiem and "Fac ut Portem" from the Rossini Stabat Mater. (The fact that it's Lent also gave me an excuse to beg off opera.)

Well, my partner gave me this long lecture about why my doing this sort of thing is stupid: I feel bad that other people are younger and better (true), it's a waste of money (not true - these things cost about $15 or $20), and basically she implied that this whole thing is a "fantasy". She said "you sing in a choir and do some solos". Isn't that enough? No. Because, for example, I can't sing a piece like "Liber Scriptus" in that setting.

I spent my whole last therapy session crying about the fact that I have stopped making plans to sing anything other than choir solos. I just feel I can't afford it either monetarily, or in view of my living in a constant family crisis. I know no one is going to "hire" me to do anything, but I also know that if I wheel and deal, I can plan something myself and carry it off well enough to give people an enjoyable afternoon of opera and myself a diva platform which is something I am starved for. But this involves making this particular thing, and the date that it's scheduled for, and the dates that rehearsals are scheduled for, the most important thing in my life (as I'm freelancing now I can always work - if I managed to plan concerts when I had a full-time job I can certainly plan concerts when I'm working at home on my laptop!). And how can I do that when my partner is in a constant state of crisis and she resents the small amount of money I spend on an ad hoc two hours of coaching?

What's holding me back isn't lack of talent or lack of a good teacher or even my age, so much as getting no support from anyone. I know this sounds whiney, and if I were twenty years younger I could just divorce the unsupportive spouse and move on, but I can't do that now.

I don't know why my partner hates the whole idea of my singing opera. I used to think it was because she thought I would meet straight men who found me attractive (or vice versa) but there were plenty of straight men at the career coaching group I went to and she never said anything about it. I think she had an agenda for me and singing was never on it. She wanted me to be a "professional woman" who dressed like the women who show up on tv newscasts in suits. It's similar to how (after we outgrew the whole politically correct Lesbian in jeans thing) she was always steering me toward conservative suits that were two sizes too big, and telling me to cut my hair. That's just not me! If I can't be a real diva I'll be a bathroom diva but I'll be blowed if I'm even going to go do the laundry without makeup on and believe me - I never buy anything that says it's supposed to look "natural" because I don't do "natural".

I thought I sang well enough at the group coaching. I mean I have no future, so the agent husband of the woman who runs it (who is very nice and can sing anything) thought a good time to take a bathroom break was when I was singing, but the woman herself admired my pianissimo high E (well for a mezzo it's a "high" E) in "Fac ut Portem" and one of the men said I had "big high notes" after hearing "Liber Scriptus".

But having no support team just makes me sad. I mean my teacher is good to do some quarterbacking with, but as I've said in the past, he's a voice teacher, not a mentor.

It also makes me angry. I have tried to be forebearing with my partner. I love her, and I feel sad that she is in such physical and mental decline, and I want her in a better living situation. I am even resigned to the fact that I spend "leisure time" doing her chores not going to movies and museums like other healthy women my age. But when she blows off my singing, my heart turns to ice.