This is the third time this leitmotiv has occurred in this blog and it won't be the last. For more, you can read here which will lead you back to an entry that is earlier still.
The good news is that I think I may have prodded my teacher into being proactive with me about planning this fall concert. He wrote to me about changing my lesson time and I wrote back asking if he'd gotten my email about the concert venue and how to visit it and then I said as tactfully as I could that I was upset about not being able to find a peer group, as I wrote here. He wrote back to me (I think this had never occurred to him - he only knew that I was ticked off that he asked another mezzo to sub for his wife, not me)and said he would think seriously about this and try to introduce me to some people he knows from the pay to sing outfit (I can't be the only person on the planet who developed a passion for classical singing at a later age and has the skill of an emerging pro, the enthusiasm of a kid, and the healthy, fit, body of someone in prime middle age). Then, more miraculously, he started talking about the concert as if he were really going to participate in it!
OK, so that's the good news.
The bad news is how my partner reacted when I mentioned this. Now remember. We're talking about one concert, planned five months from now, not in conflict with anything existing on my calendar, of music I know, that might take at most two or three rehearsals. I won't be spending a ton of money on coaching, nor will I be rehearsing once a week.
So guess what my partner had to say. "I don't know why you're doing this. Weren't you just complaining that you don't work enough hours?" Well guess why I don't work enough hours??? Because I spend all day Saturday shopping for her and doing her laundry, she calls me four or five times a day to discuss her financial and health problems not to mention gossiping about her friends. Then I accompany her to various appointments, not routine ones, thank goodness she's now well enough to go by herself, but I spend enough time "doing for" her that her problems are front and center on my screen for at least five or six hours a week that I could be working (I'm not counting the pleasant happy family times we have together).
No one knows how hard it is to have to overcome all my own fears and insecurities, not just about am I good enough (and yes, I know I'm good enough to sing a concert of excerpts from Verdi etc.....I've heard my teachers' pals and students from the pay to sing outfit and I would say I fall somewhere in the middle in terms of how good I sound) but also about why am I doing this when I'm 60 and have so little money and so many family responsibilities. So then to have not just no one supportive in my life, but someone who actively does everything she can to discourage me and argue with me - no one knows how devastating that is.
So why am I doing this, exactly? I guess because I feel I'm being led. The fact that The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed found me in a House of Worship and got me to sing at the age of 54 was not an accident. Long after the weak-kneed passion I had for him has passed, my passion for singing has remained. I know I have this big dramatic Verdi mezzo voice in me that needs to get out. Doing nothing but singing church music where I have to keep the volume down is like keeping a lion in a cage. Don't get me wrong. I love that music not to mention that as a result of singing it I have better pianissimo skills than most singers in my fach even famous ones.
But if you knew someone who could run a marathon, maybe only a few more times before she's too old, would you keep her cooped up?
Normally I call my partner every morning to see how she is. Well, last night I hung up on her in the middle of her telling me why I shouldn't be planning that concert. It's very hard not to pick up the phone and call her (she doesn't own or know how to use a computer) but I won't.
I know you have said in the past that your partner regards opera as evil and exhibitionistic, but is it possible that on some level she is simply threatened by your passion for it and is afraid that it will lead you away from her? Or that it takes up time she thinks you should devote to her? After all, being passionate about singing is not unlike being passionate about a person. She may see your singing as a rival of some sort and does not want to admit that to you or to herself.
ReplyDeleteI think it is difficult when you develop a passion in middle age. People are used to you the way you were and suddenly you have this all consuming interest that does not include them. I am in the same situation as you, in the same age group, having been one person all my life, and then suddenly 10 years ago, at 48, awakening to the fact that I have an "instrument" as my music friends call it, and as a result, becoming a completely different person. Also like you, I have no peer group because I am too old for a career. My spouse, who cannot carry a tune at all and plays no musical instruments, deals as best he can, but he says he prefers the person I was before because he got more attention then, even when our kids were little and I was busy working full time and raising them. In spite of the working mother thing, I was completely devoted to him and spent every possible free moment with him. But for the past 10 years, I have been busy singing, and playing the piano too, in my free moments, instead of sitting by the fireside with him. Who can blame him for feeling like he now plays second fiddle (no pun intended) to my music interests?
At any rate, I would not capitulate, because the resentment you will feel is lethal to your relationship. You will always be angry at your partner one way or another, but in my opinion it is better to do what you feel you are being called to do, and be angry at her for non support than to stifle this part of yourself to please her and then be forever angry about that. Think about what matters, what you will regret on your death bed. I long ago came to the conclusion that I cannot allow my spouse to interfere with what I consider to be my calling.
What's interesting is that when she met me I was singing (I had always wanted to but could not quit smoking, which I finally did at 26)and she was one (not the only!) reason I gave it up at 30. Back then there were no uncloseted Lesbians singing opera and I was very uncomfortable around the people I sang with, not to mention that I was not making money. My partner didn't discourage me from singing but she wanted me to do something different, like sing cabaret songs in a women's bar for example. Ironically, back then I felt I had no peer group or support system either and I was considered a late starter even then. (The first person who noticed my exceptional voice was a music teacher friend of my mother's, when I was 14, but then I started smoking - as a weight-control strategy, which didn't work all that well. If I had gotten on a serious path then things might have been different.)
ReplyDeleteI think I did become a different person. It all started with the tenor who "discovered" me singing from a hymnal in the back of the Unitarian church when I was 54. I fell madly in love with him but I truly believe I fell in love with him because he raved about my voice, not the other way around (I didn't become passionate about singing because of him).
I don't even think the issue with my partner is as simple as she wants me to spend time with her instead of singing. It's that she thinks it's not "necessary" and is a drain on my limited time and money.
I finally did call her late this morning because she's 77 and in very poor health and I just wanted to see how she was. Neither one of us mentioned the quarrel. So I guess I will just take things one day at a time.
Thank you for writing about your own experiences.