Well, it's back to good old Randall again. He sure knows how to throw a curve ball to choir sopranos. Every piece of his I've sung, except the "Alleluia", which moves quickly, despite the high tessitura, has a high A in the middle of it that needs to be sung sweetly. Sure it's marked "forte" in the score but that doesn't mean an Amneris forte, it means as loud as your average sweet voiced choir soprano can sing, which for me isn't even piano it's pianissimo.
Over the years I've fooled around with different pianissimo techniques and most of them work up to an A flat but that's it. Somehow, miraculously, I was able to find a little duckbill mouthed way to sing one of dear Randall's A naturals in a piece called "The Last Words" but that was several years ago and for whatever reason my voice is now louder and freer and making it smaller seems harder. Also, I think I've become inhibited now that we have a real conservatory trained coloratura in the soprano section. When it was just me and the untrained sopranos (snark, snark) it was really a toss-up: me being obnoxiously loud or the sound getting "tinny" up there.
At yesterday's choir practice I held my own throughout a Bach piece in quite a high tessitura (it basically went back and forth between the C above middle C and the G below high C). For whatever reason, maybe because the piece moved, I had no trouble with it at all. (I can sing "Rejoice Greatly", remember?) My nemesis seems to be sustained legato singing at the upper reaches of my range in a context where I have to sound sweet. An Amneris roar, I've got. Coloratura up there, I've got. But not a nice float.
My main interest in conquering this is twofold: first, it's a challenge. This is a skill that I want for its own sake. Whatever I do with it. And even if I fail with this note, whatever I've sweated for will stand me in good stead with something else. I also want to overcome nerves and inhibitions. I want to be able to do this skill as well as I can do it, sitting down in that roomfull of people. I don't want to panic and have my larynx rise like I'm going to choke.
The article by Jane Eaglen that I referenced in this post has stayed with me. If I drill that page with the high A over and over and over (there's another page with the same progression going up to an A flat that gives me less trouble) something will surface. Either that, or the choir director will tell me to sing the alto part or to sing the soprano part minus that note. Which wouldn't be the end of the world. If I ever got a paying job in a choir it would be as an alto section leader anyhow, I just find the challenges of singing soprano are more apt to help me learn new skills that I can use with my opera rep, as long as I don't squeeze my larynx in the wrong way.
So here's how I've fared so far: trying for a tight "oo", which is just like an exercise I do in the studio, makes the note too loud. It's actually "small" in the context of my general singing, but it's way too loud for the choir. The big cottonmouth doesn't do well up that high. On an A flat, yes. On an A natural, no. So I'm going for an open mouthed scoop, then crescendoing immediately into the descending scale so that I don't choke because I can't keep that position for very long. And I must have that downward progression down cold!! It's chromatic and very difficult and it's easy to end up on the wrong notes, which I must not do.
In other news, plans are more or less moving forward for my Fall concert although my teacher is getting cold feet again. He says he doesn't want to commit to it because he doesn't know how he'll be sounding or feeling. Well, if he backs out I can find some other people. It just makes me feel a lot of despair over not having a peer group. Most people my age who sing are winding down, either vocally or psychologically. So once again I feel between an rock and a hard place: young people who are learning, older people who are winding down, and amateurs who are really amateurs and can't sing the kind of music I can. So I feel very alone and at sea again.
Part of me is touched that the man I spoke of in this post was willing to help me organize and market my concert but part of me just wishes he would have invited me to sing something in one of his concerts so all the work wasn't on me.
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