Groping for a Resolution

This title, I see now, is actually a double entendre.

New Year's is almost upon us, and there is the pressure to make a New Year's resolution.  But what?  I have just about finished with the Artist's Way commitment. I mean, I believe that that program changed me forever. It is right up there with AA and the Well Spouse. Actually, a lot of what I learned from the Artist's Way is similar to what I learned from The Mentor: to make my life a feast for the senses even if my daily circumstances are not. I feel that I had made a lot of headway, particularly at Christmas. I knew I wasn't going to get any presents (and hence not give any, except to the needy) so I would have to find something else to do. I bought a small tree and decorated it, and got one for my partner. I put the expensive plaid sheets on her bed and made bean soup with red tomatoes and green basil. And I sang in a Christmas Eve service. Even though I wasn't a soloist (there weren't any), still, being a part of something that beautiful made Christmas Christmas.

I am trying to learn what my triggers are for getting depressed.  The first is spending too many hours indoors working.  So I made the choice to work no more than 30 hours a week, even if it means taking money out of savings.  In four more years I will be able to collect my full retirement amount from Social Security and if I add that to my earnings I will have almost as much as I had when I worked full time in a management position.

But today I realized another trigger, which is hearing what I call simplistic, dismissive,  "anything is possible if you want it enough" talk.  Someone posted something on Facebook saying "if you don't love what you do find another career" huh???  So I saw this just as I was telling myself to be grateful that I had a paycheck, a cheap and decent place to live, a small safety net, and that there were many people in this country now who had lost all of the foregoing, not to mention the many many people who never had it to begin with.

But every time I hear something like that I backslide spiritually.  I think: what's wrong with me? Why am I still trapped with dull work?  How did I end up here?  Am I a failure because I sit for hours cleaning up punctuation when what I dream of doing is strutting my stuff "out there" some way, some how.

I did all I could.  I got a year of career counseling.  I don't blame the counselors, or myself.  Repackaging a 60 year old with a time limit before her severance pay runs out, and eldercare responsibilities, in a bad economy, is not like redecorating your living room. It is something for which there is a slim likelihood. I was lucky there was work of any kind to be had, so I grabbed it - what they call "the low hanging fruit".

So now I am depressed again.

The Artist's Way tells me that it doesn't matter what I do for a living if that is not something that it is easy for me to change.  I can express the artist in myself in other ways.

So how does that translate into a New Year's resolution?  I think I'm a bit burned out with morning pages and artist's dates, although I think I take the latter from time to time instinctively now.

I am really really enjoying my new iphone.  I have made it a goal to photograph myself in every sexy outfit that I have.  So here are some shots in the drop dead red leotard that I wear to my Pilates class when everyone else is wearing black.

And my final bit of surprisingly happy news is that people love my "Angel" Youtube video.  One of my Facebook friends shared it with a lot of her friends.  It sounds lovely, although I sound like a lyric soprano, not a dramatic mezzo.  Well, I guess it doesn't matter what I call myself.  For me the world ends at A natural for the most part so anything that doesn't go higher than that I can sing.  I would post the video here, but I really can't trust random readers to understand how to put a positive spin on feedback.  I always am happy to receive constructive criticism but as I wrote here this seems to be a learned skill that is less intuitive than I thought. If you know me in real life (or online) and want me to send you the link, just give a shout.

Everyone Loves an Angel

Yesterday I sang Wagner's "Angel" song in church during communion.  That is a "milestone" piece for me because it was the second solo I sang after being "discovered".  Although I date my transformation from the date of "Mon Coeur" (February 15, 2004), as I wrote about here, I was actually "discovered" the summer before, singing from a hymnal in the back of the church. The first solo I was given was "Dido's Lament" for "Day of the Dead" (the Unitarians' answer to "All Souls Day") and the second was "The Angel", which I was assigned to sing on Christmas Eve. I never liked German lieder and still don't much care for the "An Die Musik" sort but this is different. Of course when I sang it on Christmas Eve 2003 I had no idea how to sing it and I am sure I bellowed my way through it.

It was also the first solo I sang at the Lutheran church, Christmas Eve morning of 2006.  It has come a long way since then.  I wasn't 100% happy with the top G in the actual performance church service, probably because I was afraid I wouldn't have the energy to make it up there, so I gave it that little extra "push" that it didn't need.

But I got more compliments on this from people in the choir and the congregation than I have on any singing in recent memory.  Was that because I really sang that much better than usual?  Or because they liked that piece?  Or because an Angel was a perfect response to the tragedies of the weekend?

What is so ironic is that, like the Susanna with the heart of a Lady Macbeth and the Goro with the heart of a Manrico, I find myself spending most of my time singing "angelic" church music when I have the soul of Dalila.

I who so love flaunting my cleavage spend most of my singing time either in a choir robe or a long black skirt and top with a high neck!

This weekend my SO referred to me as "angelic".  Most  likely because I got her a cat, which I will pay for.  I pay for the cat because he is there for me to enjoy as well as for her to enjoy, much as I pay for her cable tv so I can watch it.  I mean if I am going to engage in charitable giving, I would rather give to someone I know and love than to strangers, even if it is not tax deductible.  And yet I feel all of this has happened by default.

So many of us end up with things other people are impressed by that we never wanted or aspired to.  Many divas, for example, are not really divas at all, they just have extraordinary voices and by dint of that and hard work, ended up singing at the Met, but I don't think they all enjoy all that media hype.  So I never aspired to virtue, but people see me as virtuous because I pay for things for my SO and sing in a church for free.

I remember one of the early times I sang "Mon Coeur" (this was after that fateful February) someone came up to me afterwards and said I was so seductive and then quickly said I was such a good actress. My feelings were hurt because I had hoped they would say something like "perfect typecasting".  Don't people know that it's when I look angelic in a choir robe that I am acting?

In other news, the videographer said that she didn't know about putting the "Angel" on Youtube because she was far away, and as I was singing during communion, there were a lot of visual and auditory distractions (she said you could hear "body of Christ", etc. as a sort of counterpoint).  Anyhow, she said she would send it to me and if I like it I will email it to friends and that she will try to come to a rehearsal of my next solo ("Andaluz" by Joachin Nin, for Epiphany) and tape me from close up.

Last but not least, I have been trying and trying to take a sexy picture of myself with my new smart phone.  This is the best I have been able to come up with so far.

I don't know why, but when I upload it, it ends up sideways, which I actually like.  It looks like I am lying down!

Angel or devil?

Impressions of the Gala

Well, I watched the Richard Tucker gala on tv, and, as I had guessed, found it both depressing and inspirational.

 Jamie Barton blew me away with her rendition of "O Mon Fernande". Her voice was dark and rich, and just as I said to myself, "no, with all that weight on the bottom and all that richness she's not going to interpolate some stratospheric note into the ending but will just sing a good solid A", she did interpolate some crazy high note (I couldn't grab my pitch pipe fast enough to tell if it was a B or a C). How do these singers do it? How do they get their voices to be so big, so rich, and with such ranges? I simply can't get a handle on that. No matter what I do, I just don't really have anything above an A except to sing in the middle of a run and drop like a hot potato. And her singing is surprisingly passionate, compared to her rather - so it seemed - placid "yes definitely from the heartland" personality.

And Olga Borodina rocked "Mon Coeur". Although she should have left that interpolated B flat alone. It doesn't belong in the piece unless you can sing it softly and sweetly. She also seems to have lost a lot of weight. Apparently she is chewing up the scenery as Amneris this season.

Sorry to say I found Ailyn Perez rather underwhelming. She has a beautiful voice full stop. She has neither the passion of Anna Netrebko or the brilliance of Beverly Sills, in, say, a role like Manon. But she did say something that left me with, well, something. I may be misquoting her, but it was something like "If you work harder than everybody, anything is possible."

I work and I work and actually I do keep singing better but it isn't enough. Finding that perfect energy balance eludes me (I realized today that I am always a little too wired or a little too tired), if I talk too much I'm sunk (like a typical New Yorker my default mode of speech is loud with a tight throat). I have chronic sinus drainage, which makes it hard to raise my palate.

Well, tomorrow morning I am singing Wagner's "Angel" song in church. It may be on the church's Youtube channel. I won't post it here, because there is a nasty commenter who ripped some sound clips I put up here to shreds and even though I took them down and referred to her as a bitch in my subsequent post, she still makes comments (not nasty ones, but why is she still here??) The "Angel" has to be sung entirely pianissimo and it has a lot of Fs and F sharps and one G. So I need my beauty sleep. And I will keep it what I laughingly refer to as a "female" morning. No hymns. Until the "Angel" is finished.

Thankful Thursday - and Musings on "Location, location, location"

First "thankful Thursday".

The church where I sing posts a "thankful Thursday" prompt, and people can respond to it.  I am a bit shy of doing that, but I need to remind myself of a few things.

First, I'm alive.  I was reading a post on Facebook from a young woman whose mother died of breast cancer when she (the mother) was 10 years younger than I am now.  I am certainly now of an age when people die and although it might be considered tragic, it is not considered unusual.

Second, however depressed I often feel because of my lack of varied stimuli (I think this is at the crux of it - the fewer hours I spend alone in the house the less depressed I am), I have long since stopped feeling depressed by the holidays.  For years I got flak about why did my mother celebrate, and raise me to celebrate, Christmas, if she was Jewish?  She never really had a satisfactory answer, which made me feel put on the spot when I had to answer for her (and me).  Now that I consider myself a Unitarian (which for me is a mix of Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism - actually they would include Buddhism, but that particular tradition doesn't speak to me) I can celebrate any holiday I feel like, and anyhow, I'm a "high art" snob, so if I can sing church music I can decorate for Christmas.  I don't particularly feel sorry for myself that I have no family and will not get or give any presents.  Music and decorating are enough for me.  If I desperately need a sweater or more opera CDs I can buy these for myself.  So I am enjoying the holiday season quite a bit, actually.

Third, I have conquered four "tech" problems basically on my own, with only the help of company personnel, in other words, sans a "foreign language interpreter"! I took care of getting a new hard drive for my laptop, downloaded a printer driver from the Epson web site, reconnected my external hard drive, and got an iphone to replace my rinky dink cell phone.  The iphone did not come with an instruction manual but I figured out how to do everything except take decent pictures of myself.  Yes, it has a reverse camera, but I hardly look "hawt" if I am trying to take a photograph.  I have one set of facial expressions and body language when I'm posing/vamping and a totally different one when I'm concentrating on looking into a camera viewfinder.

For the second subject of this post...

I was asking myself whether watching the Richard Tucker gala on tv tonight would be inspirational or depressing.

I think what I find the most depressing is that I am literally in the armpit of Lincoln Center where the greatest singers in the world congregate to perform, and their successors go to school.  What role is there for a 62 year old with a pleasant large-ish voice in a limited range who can sing a handful of excerpts from great operas (cherry picked so that she doesn't get too tired), and some church solos?  How am I relevant?  Who cares?

Someone had said a while back that I should start a "community opera group", but there are probably 10-15 of these in Manhattan (and the other boroughs, but I would not want to travel outside Manhattan at night if I was not getting paid) and I have been rejected by all of them, except one that wanted to charge me $450 to sing a role.  (I wasn't insulted, I just don't have that kind of money, and if I am going to spend money, I would rather produce my own thing as a tax deductible charity event.)

It would be too self-piteous to blame it all on ageism, but what I do think is that no one is interested in someone obviously over 45 (I don't think I look 62....I'm 62 like Bette Midler or Bernadette Peters, not like an image of someone's grandma) who has minimal experience, no music-oriented formal education, and sounds, even at best, like she still needs a little polish.  (I think if I sounded exactly like I do now and was 27, people would be very interested, although they might instruct me how and where to get more polishing, and I think if I looked and sounded like I do now but had sung 20 roles over 20 years, people would also be interested, but the mix of my skills, age, and background are a nonstarter.)

So OK.  I can always produce something myself, and as someone said "if you build it, they will come".

What I really keep hoping is that someone will be interested in my story if not in my singing.

Before the day is over I promise to write to someone I know who writes for Classical Singer and ask her how to pique someone's interest.

A Happy Holiday?

I am very behind, because my computer crashed and was in the repair shop for two days, so I am behind with work at a time when a lot of other things are going on, but I felt a need to check in.

On the singing front, Sunday I am singing in one of the social outreach Christmas concerts.  I am down to one Nin song and one simple Spanish carol for solos.  Otherwise I am singing some Christmas carols, Chanukah songs, and seasonal pop standards with five other women, sometimes in 2 or 3 part harmony, with each of us having a solo line here and there.

I like the woman running the group but she and my teacher do not see eye to eye about vowels.  I tend to think my teacher is correct, because his take on vowels is similar to The Mentor's, and to a famous Met soprano who was the judge of a big aria competition (I got a grade of 55 out of 100, which certainly let me know where I stood - would probably do better now, but I don't intend to go back).

My teacher says all vowels are to be modified except "ee" and "oo".  Ah is Aw (although I can sing a pure "Ah" if I have to, certainly up to a G).  The killer is "eh" sort of like the e with an acute accent in French.  If you sing it pure it tightens everything.  My teacher, the Mentor, and the choir director all agree it should be more of a schwa sound with an open throat and a dropped jaw: sort of "eh" with a lot of "uh" in it (I hope I am making sense).  Well that is what this woman and I fight over.  I don't mean fight - I am happy to sing the vowel the way she wants, particularly in Spanish songs with a limited range, it just feels unnatural.

Anyhow, it is interesting to get a different perspective.  If I had been a conservatory student I would have been in a lot of these situations and would have had to sort things out and use different techniques for different things.

On the 16th I will be singing Wagner's "Angel" in the church service.  I sound so much better than I did five years ago the last time I performed it in public.  I could tell that the choir director was pleased.  And it will be - I hope - on the church's YouTube channel, which is a new thing for them.

I can also see how much easier certain choral pieces are, for example, Barber's "Sure on this Shining Night" which has a pianissimo high G in it.

I am going to sing "O Holy Night" in the mezzo key at an outreach concert on the 30th.  "The" night will have passed but we will be singing other carols, so it should be ok.  I will brace myself for more feedback about vowels.  I will also try to sing the top G (that's what the high note is in the mezzo version - in the soprano version it's a B flat) lightly, the way I sing the one in the Angel song.

The first Requiem rehearsal went well.  Really the only thing I'm nervous about is that big climax in "Liber Scriptus".  "Lux Aeterna" suits me like a glove.  I muffed a few notes in the ensembles, but will have time to work on them.  The most important thing is for me to be able to sing "against" the soprano and she plans to be at all the rehearsals.  I need to find a bass.  I never heard from my original one.

In other news, my partner and I made a calendar for ourselves out of old pictures from Ogunquit, Maine, our paradise.  Here are several photographs.  The last is where we want our ashes scattered, and I know we will meet there again one day.  In the meantime I hope we can go there for her 80th birthday.

Here is the entrance to our little studio.

Here's the lawn of the main house.

Here's the beach.

This will be our final resting place.


And she will be adopting a cat next weekend.

So our life is good, even without being able to afford presents.

Not Giving Up Today....

I now - for now - seem to be back in the swing of things.  I have three things going on right now: the Christmas concerts, choir (I now have two solos scheduled between now and Epiphany), and the Requiem.

The Christmas concerts have turned out to be a little disappointing.  The pianist is not proficient enough to play the Spanish art songs so instead of singing three I will be singing only one, which the director may very well play herself.  And one Spanish Christmas carol as a solo.  Otherwise it is six women singing Christmas and Chanukah songs in two part harmony.  The director seems to think I am a soprano, which is fine.

I have gotten so much conflicting information about my voice type over the years.  If I can barely reach a high C (and this is something that never changes; all that has changed is that the notes I do have - up to a B - sound better more consistently and I have lost the break I used to have above middle C) I am not a soprano, at least not where opera is concerned.  On the other hand, I am most comfortable singing in the upper middle part of my voice, which means for choral purposes I am a second soprano not an alto.  I would say even for oratorio solo purposes.  I am not someone who sings "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion" well.  I sound  much better singing "I Know that My Redeemer Liveth".

But when I posted something about my vocal "sweet spot" (F to F on the staff) on the the Forum, a well-respected voice teacher said that meant I was a "low mezzo". Huh? I think of low mezzos as, well, women who love singing "O Thou that Tellest".

Interestingly, the woman who runs these seasonal concerts is always telling me to sing "brighter" vowels, while my teacher tells me to sing "darker" vowels.  Both of them want my voice to be freer, so who is right?  I know when I first started studying I had been artificially "whitening" my voice to sound like a soprano (what I call my "fake Julie Andrews voice", which actually serves me quite well up to a G or G sharp but does not easily go higher) which my teacher said was choking off the higher notes by making them "spread".  Although now I find if I sing "happy", on some of the high climaxes (involving As and A flats) it makes those notes easier.

And I seem to have finally found a real head resonance.  Is that because I am being diligent about blasting all the crud out of my sinuses?  I think I was always congested behind my nasal passages, which is not something I ever noticed until I began trying to figure out why I had such a "gargly" sound in my upper passagio.  Anyhow, after the New Year I am going to get a referral to an ENT. I have always been leery of getting on the merry-go-round of medication for nasal stuff because it either makes you speedy or makes you sleepy and I have seen my partner spend a lifetime, more or less, being partially dysfunctional due to the combination of asthma medicines and allergy medicines.  But who knows?  Maybe the ENT will have some other kind of advice.  I am using nasal spray but what happens is it loosens up all the junk and then I spend hours "snuffling" although eventually it gets cleared out.

But getting back to the Christmas concerts, I really like the woman in charge of these because she is nice and friendly and treats me with respect, which I find people rarely do in the talent-stuffed New York singing scene.

As for choir, I am definitely singing a solo (one of the Spanish art songs) on Epiphany, and will probably sing Wagner's "Angel" song on Annunciation Sunday (the third Sunday in Advent).  That is one of our pastor's favorite songs.  It was the second solo I sang after I was "discovered" ("Mon Coeur" was actually the third - the first was "Dido's Lament") and was chosen for me by the choir director at the Unitarian church to sing at Christmas and I have kept it in my repertoire ever since.  It will be interesting to hear how that pianissimo high G sounds with my improved technique.

Last but not least, tonight is the kickoff rehearsal for the Requiem.  At first my partner was teed off, but it is only an hour, and this is something I have been planning for over a year.  I am responsible for assembling the singers and pianist and arranging rehearsals, the church will donate the space and give the ticket money to the social outreach program of their choice, and will handle the marketing and promotion.

The purpose of this rehearsal will be to finalize cuts and sing through the big ensemble pieces.  The soprano is the one who sang in my Verdi concert and the tenor is a friend of my teacher's who sings in the Met chorus.  I am lucky to have him.  The only problem is the bass.  He is someone I know from Facebook (I think he friended me after meeting me at an audition) and he said he was working on the Requiem and yes, would be interested in this (he can just view it as a big rehearsal) but that Thursday was not a good day to rehearse.  So I said we could probably switch to Tuesday after the New Year but that I just wanted to know if he could make the rehearsal today.  Over the course of two weeks I have sent him emails and left a message on his cell phone but have not heard anything. I am pretty sure he is still in the land of the living because I think he has posted things on Facebook.  So - huh??

Well, if I don't hear from him by the end of 2012 I will try to get someone else.

And I will line up someone to be on "partner patrol" in case she has a (real or manufactured, but not life threatening) crisis the week leading up to the concert.

Gratitude or Giving Up?

A while back I posted something on Facebook (was it as long ago as last Thanksgiving?) where I said I found it hard to tell the difference between gratitude and laziness.

People think I am not grateful because I so often feel frustrated at how anonymous and irrelevant I feel...no matter how well I sing (or do anything for that matter) I am surrounded in this city and particularly in this neighborhood by a suffocating mass of people who can do it better.

It is easy to say, OK, I have it pretty good.  I have someone who loves me, however flawed our relationship is, something to do for a modest living that I can do on my own schedule, a cheap apartment in a pricey ZIP code, not to mention that I am old enough now to know that no matter who is President, I, personally, will not fall through the cracks.  I spent 35 years bored out of my wits for most of the day and what I have to show for it is two 401ks and health insurance for life.  And now I earn little enough that I could probably qualify for lower middle income subsidized senior housing if I lost this apartment.

But I have this huge hunger in me to be somebody and in this environment I am nobody even if I leave the house every day flawlessly made up, looking like I am going for a photo shoot or at the very least a curtain call....no  mean feat at 62 when nobody cares how I look but me and my significant other.  It ain't in my job description.

Lately I have just felt like giving up.  One thing I learned (surprisingly) during the hurricane was how lovely it was to lie in bed in the dark (I could have done with a little heat) listening to the radio with my significant other with few pressures other than having to run home for a few hours a day to work at my laptop (I had power in the apartment, she didn't).  The competition was on hold

I want to run away to Ogunquit Maine.  Almost every summer we spent a week here. And this picture doesn't even do it justice. This room looks out on a Japanese garden that was written up in a magazine (I can't remember which one, now).

Just think if I lived in Ogunquit.  Well, I would have to walk everywhere except in July and August when the trolley is running, which would mean walking the equivalent of ten blocks, possibly in the snow, to buy overpriced groceries at a small convenience store.  Or maybe there might be someplace I could order groceries online?  There would only be one church within walking distance, and chances are I would get to be the star soloist full stop.  I would get bored pretty quickly...there are a few art galleries and a summer theater from which I would have to walk home the equivalent of 15 blocks with a flashlight, because it's not on the trolley route, and two movie theaters.  Maybe once a month or so I could take the bus to Portland but I would probably only get to spend 4 hours there because the last bus gets back fairly early, I think.  I would be bored, but I wouldn't feel like I was drowning at the bottom of a pool of talent, so far down at the bottom of the pool that no one can even see my nose.

If I hadn't been born in New York it would be easy.  I could go "home", presumably somewhere where I would be a bigger fish than I am here, and I would feel less overwhelmed.  But I have noplace to go home to.

I could choose to live a simple life here: just close my eyes to the mass of talented people, never go to another audition, stop reading Classical Singer, unfriend all the working singers on Facebook who don't know me and certainly don't care about me even if we met once or twice at a "meetup", and be an unpaid choir soloist and go caroling in nursing homes and sing a few art songs.  But is that giving up?  Is that admitting that I am a failure?  Or is it being grateful?

Next week I have the first rehearsal for this Requiem that I have been planning for over a year.  I will probably get flak about it from my significant other, but I will deal with it.  Maybe this will be the last  "big" thing I will ever do.

After the Storm

Sandy has come and gone (left a lot of devastation, which is tragic, but thankfully not in my neighborhood) and Obama will be President for four more years.

So it's now "OK" to get back to thinking about singing.

I spent most of the storm week with my partner.  First I waited out the storm with her and then when it hit, I stayed with her every night because she had no power.  I did, so I spent a few hours a day in my apartment, using it as an office.  The worst thing for me was missing choir rehearsal, which I had to do.  I would never have forgiven myself if I had been there and she had fallen in the dark and not been able to get up, or even use her Life Alert button.

Now it's almost time for this week's choir rehearsal, and it's snowing, and it's windy, so she of course is on at me to stay home.  Absolutely not!  If the thing I want most isn't a paying choir spot, but the respect accorded a professional choir member, I don't stay home because of inclement weather, as long as the subway is running.  In all fairness, I should say that the majority of the choir, trained or untrained (and all unpaid) would not stay home either.  So much for the people who roll their eyes about "volunteer" choirs!

I am working on the Spanish Christmas songs (called "Villancicos") for the concerts I am doing with the woman who produced the September 11 concert.  I am also going to sing one on Epiphany at the Spanish service in the Lutheran church.  Epiphany is the biggest holiday for the Spanish-speaking parishioners so the service should be well attended.  I also xeroxed some of the more contemplative songs for the choir director, to give him as possible ideas for Communion for Christmas Eve.

I now have three other soloists for the Requiem but it is like herding cats.  A rehearsal day that is good for one person is not good for someone else.  Well, I will organize and negotiate.  I spent years doing that with my staff in an office, so I can do it for this.

I was also realizing that one reason I haven't made as much progress as I would have liked over the past 8 years isn't that I have the wrong teacher or that I don't practice enough, but that it is not "total immersion".  A conservatory student with a Master's in Vocal Performance will have studied for 8 years, but she also will have been immersed in, for example, performance classes where she will get feedback, listen to other singers, as well as studying languages and music theory.  For me it is really all stolen moments.  One reason I like working with the woman producing the Christmas concerts is that in addition to being knowledgeable and supportive she is also someone who gives me a different perspective.  If I were, for example, a conservatory student taking an intensive seminar in Spanish song, I would get ideas that perhaps would be different from those I was getting from a voice teacher.

I don't know what this says about anything, but one of the women singing with the group this time is a mezzo with a lovely voice who has real experience: meaning having been a soloist with orchestras in smaller "cities" (to me anyplace you have to drive is not a city, hence the quotes), not to mention having a professionally designed web site showing her in a gold dress lying on a bed of roses!!  I wonder how much a photo shoot like that cost??  That's what I want.  Someone to photograph me in a low cut dress lying on a bed of roses....

The Bitter and the Sweet (New Edition)

I suppose that is really what life is, when it boils down to it.

After feeling really good about how I sang at my audition, and about the myriad opportunities on the horizon, I sank into a funk yesterday at choir practice.

First a pat on the back.  I sounded really really  good on the soprano part in the Bach.  This is not easy for a mezzo to sing, although the tessitura is no higher than that of the three mezzo roles in Donizetti's  the Three Queens. I finally did get tired at the end, but that was after singing through quite a bit of it several times.  Singing that, I can really tell how much both my technique and my stamina have improved.

We now have another young high soprano, this one still at the prestigious conservatory.  I would say she is a "lite" version of the woman who left, whom I referred to as the "young coloratura".  This woman is about five years younger and has less confidence, but she still sings better up in the Bach soprano tessitura than anyone else we have.  Fine.  If she is around for the next cantata we do, I can sing alto, if the alto part is in a decent range (up to at least the E at the top of the staff, with not too much florid singing below middle C).

I was not bothered that she was there.  There is plenty of room for a variety of trained singers who can take turns as soloists.

What bothered me was that, by going to that conservatory and studying with a prestigious former Metropolitan Opera star (which does not make this woman necessarily a good teacher, although she might be) she is part of an exclusive club, so the tenor, who had been to that same prestigious conservatory (the one whose wife told me I needed a new voice teacher, more or less), and who has mostly ignored me unless he is leading the choir, buddied up to her with interest, and it all made me feel very B list.  It's like people who have been to Harvard or Yale, who bond instantly with other people who have been to Harvard or Yale, and will ignore someone who is equally intelligent who only has an Associate Degree from a community college.

This is yet again, a situation in which I feel very like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz.  No matter how well I sing, I am not worth bothering with because I have no credentials and no history, and when you add to that the fact that I am not young, I am basically worthless.  I mean I can always find little nooks and crannies into which to insert myself where I can sing, or I can organize things myself, and I can sing well, and am singing better than ever, but I am made to feel invisible.

Is it really all about youth?  People who are more experienced are interested in younger people who are less experienced but they are not interested in older people who are less experienced (unless they are in a position of authority over them of some kind) or in older people who are growing and learning and improving.  As I said to someone, they are usually just embarrassed, so the older people are ignored.

On the other hand, the other day I was at an event (with my partner) for LGBT seniors and their care partners and needless to say I was the best looking female in the room for miles around, which did not escape notice.  One of the older woman told me I looked so glamorous she wanted to ask for my autograph (and that was in jeans and a simple top, but with my red hair and stage makeup, of course.)

So what is the sweet, you might ask?

I now have a full quartet for my Requiem.  These are all singers with much more experience than I have, which is a good thing.  It will raise the level of the performance and I am glad that they are willing to work with me.

I have an opportunity to sing in several holiday concerts and I am going to show the Spanish songs both to my choir director and to the man who organizes the music for the Spanish services at the church.

My partner at least for now seems to be less bristly about my wanting to spread my wings a little regarding singing.  She said she really heard me when I said that singing in church was like taking a pleasant stroll, but singing opera was like running a marathon, and as long as I still can run a marathon, it is something I feel I must do.

Audition Recap

I don't really have time to write, but I don't want to leave my readers in the lurch.

I had my Ballo audition Saturday and I believe I sang well.

Circumstances were not ideal, in that I had to wait for an hour.  That can be a pitfall for me because it can cause my energy to flag or to get frittered away.

I listened a little, walked a little, did some breathing exercises, and then went downstairs to what I thought would be a warmup room but it turned out there was no piano.

I heard some big dramatic soprano voices and a few coloraturas.  There were no mezzos singing in the hour during which I was listening.  Apparently one of the big dramatic soprano voices was not to the auditors' liking and they said some highly critical things to the soprano in question. Most of the other people (including a soprano with a stunning, large, bright, well placed, and pure voice, who sang some Verdi and some Wagner, and including me) got a "thank you".  I got a "thank you" and a smile.

I was very nervous when I started and the first three phrases of "Re" didn't sound good, but once I hit my stride I sounded really good on the big climaxes.  And I was able to hold the low G for four counts. Then (my almost worst nightmare) they asked for the Adriana aria, but fortunately only for the end.  So I started with "O vagabondo" and really nailed that high A and sustained the F all the way to the end.  Thank you to the woman who coached me to sing "Et Exsultavit".  Putting that sound in the big arias really helps.  I am never going to sound like a light lyric soprano, but it takes a lot of the weight off.

The question is what are they looking for.  If they want a very dark voice, they would not be interested in me.  There was no callback date mentioned, so I have no way of knowing if I am being considered.  The performance is 13 months from now.  I know one of the pianists they use (he was listening, not playing) but I don't feel friendly enough with him (the way I did with the pianist for Gioconda) to contact him.

In other news, the bass I wanted to use for the Requiem is not available for weeknight rehearsals, which is what works for everyone else, so I will have to find someone else.  I have an email out to someone but have not heard back.  I am also going to ask my teacher at today's lesson.

And there are going to be several Christmas concerts in nursing homes and hospitals.  These should have meaning beyond just the glory of singing.  I am going to sing some Spanish carols that are basically art songs, by a composer named Nin.

Lastly, today would have been my mother's birthday.

Coaching Debriefing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Yesterday I had a coaching session for my audition set.

First the good.

I did some of the best singing I have ever done.  Particularly the first runthrough of "Re dell' Abisso," Dido, and the second runthrough of "Acerba Volutta" beginning "verra, m'obblio".

My voice has lightened up a bit (the coach said that might not be great for "Re") but what I mean is it feels lighter and has more spin.

The bad.

The first runthrough of "Acerba Volutta" after a few stumbles with entrances in the section beginning "verra, m'obblio" I sang a not very good high A at the end.  I just didn't have the energy balance.  Although the coach said it was okay.  I hung onto it the requisite amount.  It just got "straight" and I portamento'd down from it too soon.

Also it seems I had pasted the pages of Re back to back in the wrong order.  How could I do something like that?  Am I into "senior moments" now?  I mean I earn my living dealing with the written word, and various documents (although most of these are electronic now).  I can thank my lucky stars that I asked the coach to play from my binder so that the first person to use it was not the pianist for the audition.

Also, I seemed not to know "Voce di Donna" at all.I muffed the words several times and sang the second ending instead of the first ending. My teacher had told me to end it when the solo section ends.) I don't have much time left, but I need to drill this,  just to make sure I know the words. This is where listening comes in. I am at the point with these arias where I don't like to listen to recordings because I don't want to pick up other singer's idiosyncrasies.I use recordings in the beginning of the learning process because I can memorize what I hear faster than notes on a page, particularly because I don't read key signatures. But I need to listen to this one both for the words and for the endings!

Now for the ugly.

I don't know how "ugly" this actually is, but after singing each aria at least once, and singing "Voce di Donna" two or three times, I went back to "Re" and totally conked out at the end.  It wasn't even a question of that last G going "straight" and ugly.  It just wasn't there.  My whole infrastructure collapsed.

In real life I don't think I would have done that much singing without a break.  Even when we rehearsed the Verdi concert there were times when other people were singing and I could recoup. But it really really irks me.

I think what is holding me back vocally now is primarily my inability to replicate the whole support/strength/energy connection (I can't think of a better technical description) at will.  When I sing well, I sound like a professional dramatic mezzo.  But I can't always do this.  And I don't really know what it is I do right when it's right (my teacher has commented on this).  A lot of it has to do with getting the right burst of energy (I think, Zachary if you're still reading, this is what I mean by "letting it rip") and connecting it to my lower abdominal muscles, my ribcage, and my pharyngeal space.  And I can't always do this.  It's like faking a smile, where you smile with your mouth but not your eyes.  If I don't give that extra "oomph", I don't have the intrastructure to sing well, certainly not in that repertoire.  And I seem to be very vulnerable to being tired, and I seem to get tired easily.  This was always a problem, even when I was younger.  I mean if I'm comparing myself to laypeople, I am not someone who gets tired easily.  If I didn't sing I would never notice this.  It's that I don't have that something extra. Professional singers go to the gym all the time I understand, although, interestingly, the didn't in past eras and there were still plenty of big voices with energy behind them.  For example yesterday I did all the right things.  I got enough sleep, ate healthily, chugged some Muscle Milk (something I haven't had in a long time - in fact the bottles in  my fridge were out of date).  But it wasn't enough to make me superhuman.  And Verdi mezzos need to be superhuman.

So what I have to tell myself is this.  On Saturday I am sure if I start with "Re" after not oversinging Friday (I will ask my teacher what to sing/not sing tomorrow and Friday - tonight I am singing a high soprano part in a Bach cantata, which moves quickly, and has not given me any problems) I will not be tired.  So I will sing it the way I sang it the first go around with the coach.  If they ask for something else (the coach agreed) it will be unlikely to be the Adriana or the Gioconda aria.  They will probably ask for Dido or Dalila, both of which I can sing in my sleep (they are actually the first two things I sang with the Mentor along with Wagner's "Angel").

Interestingly, I think one problem (actually this is a good thing) is that my standards are much higher.  When I was rehearsing Samson et Dalila I muffed quite a few high B flats. One afternoon I even conked out and couldn't hit the high A in Act 3.  But I just considered that all in a day's work.  I was so excited about singing this role in this opera and getting to be hot and all Dalila-ish, and impressing my friends, that that was all I cared about.  If I didn't sound like one of the stars at the Met so what?

I think where I have become chastened is that when I have heard singers at these meeups or at some of these amateur or low level semi professional groups, they sound more like the singers at the met than they do like me.

Well, maybe I will be happy in the same way about my Requiem. It is something for the church to observe Lent, and so I should be able to get a good audience (even if they don't care about  me, or Verdi, they will probably want to give something to the food pantry or whatever the money will be going to), not to mention that I have the biggest set of brass ovaries on the planet for organizing even a small-scale pocket version of this major work!

So wish me luck Saturday.

As some of my friends say, it is T minus 3 (I think?)

C'Mon Get Happy!

Well, the  "happy" trick seems to be continuing to work for the ending of "Acerba Volutta".  I suppose I can use it for anything:  Ulrica can be happy because she sees her little Devil friend. Whatevah.

I remember seeing Beverly Sills in the last act of Traviata (I have always been a huge Sills fan) and not liking it because, well, she just looked too happy.  No matter what emotion she was conveying with her acting and the color of her voice, "Bubbles" was always there somewhere.

Well, being happy (or tricking myself into pretending I am) seems to have a great one-on-one correlation with proper vocal technique.  It raises the ribcage, makes the abdominal muscles buoyant, and lifts the palate.  High notes, even for me, who has struggled with them for a lifetime, are easier.  This also explains why the hardest thing for me to do it to "sit" on a note for a long time.  I can do it in my middle register, even in my upper middle register if I sing the note pianissimo (like in a choir piece) but singing a note full voice and hanging onto it seems to foster tension.  That may be why I sing things like "Rejoice Greatly" and "Et Exsultavit" so well.  They are "happy" pieces and the fact that the notes move fast prevents me from building up tension.  For example, I notice that the hardest thing in "Re" is that last G that I have to hold onto.  It is marked fortissimo, and by the time I get to the end of it, everything is rigid and I have lost the buoyancy.  But I am moving in the right direction.

I also have discovered - something that no one ever told me - "lips together teeth apart" (I think that was the name of a play).  If I make a conscious effort not to close my teeth together, just when I'm sitting for hours at my laptop working, I have less tension when I'm singing.

Now the $64,000 question is can I replicate this "happy" physiology when I'm not feeling happy?

I have actually been feeling happy for the past week, which I rarely feel.  My partner is being taken care of, which takes a big burden off me, I have singing engagements to look forward to, my partner is not giving me flak about them, and I am getting out of the house more.

One thing I can easily fall prey to is what is known as exogenous depression which is different from endogenous depression, a nonspecific feeling that life is meaningless or hopeless, which usually has a biological basis.

Exogenous depression can be caused by an upsetting event in one's life (thinking my partner was going to die) or, for me, spending too much time doing dull repetitive work (interestingly, I got just as depressed doing this in an office as doing it at home alone, probably more) and taking care of my partner in her (messy) apartment.  Then when I would combine this with looking at Facebook and reading singer blogs and seeing how other people lived (some of these people seem to be doing something different every minute of every day and interact with hundreds of people on a weekly basis), I would feel like I was a failure, which would translate into a physical feeling that I was trying to move through mud.  And of course this would affect my singing - I wouldn't be able to get my abdominal muscles working properly.

I remember someone saying it's important to unpack what certain dreams mean "I want to sing at the Met" for example.  What is it that you want??  Not everyone can sing at the Met.  So I was thinking what I seem to want is to be in the middle of some kind of activity where I feel close to the center, someone attractive and important, however small the activity or arena is.  Which is why I would rather be a mezzo soloist in a home grown concert of excerpts from the Verdi Requiem than one of 100 choristers in a production at Avery Fisher Hall.

The Digital Divide

I realized this morning how many of the things I desperately want and don't have (back to the subject of photographs again) have to do with the fact that I am basically on the wrong side of the digital divide.  Basically now I see two digital divides.  There is of course the big one (which I am on the right side of), which is "do you own a computer or other device that enables you to use email and the Internet" or even "do you regularly have access to such a device by walking to a library".  And this is not nothing.  My partner and several of her friends either don't know how to use email or the Internet, or only use it at the library, therefore email is not their primary mode of communication.  But then there's a new one that involves do you or don't you own or know how to use all kinds of (prohibitively expensive) gadgets that you don't need to earn a living (or at least I don't) or to stay in touch with friends or conduct simple business, but that make life "fun".

For example I am thinking again of the younger people on Facebook who are constantly posting pictures of themselves.  When I mentioned something about this a woman responded thinking I had said I wanted to meet a professional photographer who would take head shots.  But that is not what I meant at all.  I just meant having a friend with a smart phone who was (and these are my exact words) "part of the document your life as you go" culture.  For starters, very few of my friends have smart phones.  Some of them only just got a no frills cell phone last year!!  I have had a cell phone for almost 10 years.  I got it when pay phones were no longer readily available and basically I use it either in lieu of pay phone (to make calls when I am out), so that people can reach me when I'm out, or to make "long distance" calls, which are prohibitively expensive from the land line.  I keep the land line because the cell phone reception in my tiny apartment (which is as deprived of air as a subway station, practically) is very spotty.  I plan to replace it with the simplest, least expensive iphone when it conks out, but not before.  I consider that an unnecessary luxury, as I'm living on less than half of what I made when I was working full time.  If I want to blow money, I'll blow it on producing a concert.

Yes, I can also use it as a camera, but it is not a very good one.

I also have a digital camera, which my partner bought me probably five or six years ago.  To date, any time I have wanted pictures developed I have taken the little thingummy (which usage dates me terribly!) to a camera store and asked them to make prints.

Once a friend did come over and help me install the software, but it turns out it does not interface with Windows 7, which is what I use on this laptop.  Probably I could figure out how to download a new "driver' (I did this with my printer - something I need for work) but with all I have to do this is way down my list of priorities.

Interestingly, photography used to be a hobby of mine, but my interest in it diminished greatly when the onus devolved upon me to handle the technical end of things.  Previously, all I had to do was have a good eye for choosing a subject and framing a picture and drop off the "roll of film" somewhere.  Other people did the rest.

And of course my friends do not have digital cameras or phones that they use as cameras either.  One friend took a picture of me taking a bow after my performance as Dalila and it took her two years to figure out how to "get the picture out of the camera and mail me a print!!"  And the friends I have with smart phones don't take pictures on a daily basis - only if they are traveling or visiting their grandchildren.  As I said on Facebook, if I went out to lunch with one of them and asked her to snap a photo because I was wearing a drop dead sexy looking top, she would think I was crazy.  In fact I only got the new profile picture that I use  here because a friend from out of state (who had a digital camera with her) came for a visit and I begged her to let me "take five" to go in my tiny dressing area and put on my favorite sexy red lace top.  (And this woman actually knew how to dump the picture into her computer and email it to me.  But then she at least is under 50, if not technically part of the "younger crowd" for whom "snap and document" is as natural as breathing.)

Also, one thing that surfaced in my Artist's Way morning pages (not to mention my therapy sessions) is that I both need to work more hours to make more money and get out of the house more to see more people.  The obvious answer, of course, is to take my laptop into a Starbucks or some such place but I would be terrified to carry my livelihood around with me unnecessarily, not to mention that I don't know what to do with the doodat (another great technical term) that would make the laptop wifi ready.

I think what I really need in my life are some young friends (under 40) who are the kind of close friends who will do a quickie favor for you at your house just in the natural course of events, but of course I'm 62 so my friends are all my age more or less or older, because my partner is 78, and most of them started out as her friends.  I have no family.  And there aren't even really any neighbors in that demographic either because a rent regulated building is by definition a NORC aka "Naturally Occurring Retirement Community".

I wish I could find a way to hold auditions for a "nephew".

Highs and Lows

Something totally weird happened this week.  I discovered what I think is my "whistle register" - although that and a Metrocard swipe will get me on the subway.

I never thought I had one, and if this is it, it doesn't seem to have much to do with my regular voice.

I was fooling around trying to hum a high A (not something I can really do - the highest note I can hum with my mouth closed is usually a G) and instead I sort of wheezed out a pitch that turned out to be a high E!  I was able to replicate it, and take it up and down from an F to a C sharp (at first it wouldn't go lower than an E flat) but I can only do it with my mouth closed and my larynx raised, and it feels like something wheezy being squeezed between my larynx and my chest, including blowing out through my nose.  I can't always replicate it (just tried) and I know I have to be very careful not to do myself any damage.  I noticed just now that trying to take the sound lower (sometimes it won't go lower than an E flat) produces a hideous squawk that could be dangerous.

Now my higher singing in general seems to be better, though.  I was able to get through the soprano line in the Bach cantata (I have to sing it now that the conservatory trained coloratura is gone).  It has 6 high As but they all go by very quickly.  I will be able to sing it if we don't over-rehearse it the morning of the service.  Six high As are one thing; eighteen are another.

And staying "happy" when I sing the ending to "Acerba Volutta" seems to do the trick.  I did notice that some of the low notes in "Re dell'Abisso" didn't sound great, but it's a fair tradeoff.

And, best news of all!  I landed a spot at the Ballo audition.  I will sing "Re" first and pray that they don't ask for "Acerba" next because I worry if I get a big adrenaline drain from "Re" I will have trouble.  Maybe they won't ask for anything else, or they'll ask for Dido or Dalila, to hear something in a different style or language.  I am not getting my hopes up (I will be competing with singers with impressive CVs who are 20 years younger at least) but it will be a chance to sing.

I Need to Get Back to The Artist's Way

When my partner was taken to the hospital, I had finished reading and rereading The Artist's Way and was about to sign a contract to do the program for another 90 days.

I decided to take a break from it until things were settled.

Well, she is coming home Friday with an array of services including a home attendant (no schedule or time frame was specified, but anything is better than nothing) so my plan is to sign that contract on Sunday and get back to the program on Monday.

I have noticed that now that the terror and sadness have left me (my partner will definitely live another day, if not another decade), and the depression (which really had gotten into my bones) has lifted, I am back to my same old same old feeling "cranky" and resentful.

What's important to note here, is that I realize I felt much less cranky when I was involved with The Artist's Way.

First of all, the fact that I chose that as a self-help program to involve myself in, rather than, say, fitness or veganism or meditation or reading the 100 great books, says something about me.  Just as someone's wanting to lose weight or quit smoking says something about them that makes them different from other people who are overweight or who smoke.

When I say "cranky",  here is what I mean (and this is something different from how I feel when I get frustrated when I can't sing something as well as I would like to).

For good or ill, I have a number of working singers and other working artists on my friends list on Facebook.  So every time I read about someone's opera performance, costume fitting, trip, onstage flirtation, detailed character analysis, etc.  it's like a knife going into my heart.

And I feel like a failure.

Not because I am not a professional singer (very few get to be that) but because after all these decades, someone with as big a diva personality as mine (and it is huge) has ended up sitting at a desk cleaning up people's grammar, sending work back to people who don't even know what I look like and could care less, even if they did.

I did all the right things.  I went to career counseling.  I did a self-assessment.  I spent a year there.

When I was involved with the Artist's Way I brooded less about these things.  First of all there was the Artist's Date.  Sometimes I cheated and did something in my apartment, but even in that instance, I made sure it wasn't part of "business as usual" (e.g., if it involved music, it had to entail looking at music that I had no commitment to sing anywhere, which therefore would broaden my horizons).

It taught me that choosing the most beautifully colored heirloom tomatoes at a farmer's market, having a bath with an expensive bubble bar from Lush, or spending time pondering which top, which neckline, and which eyeshadow color I was going to wear that day to Duane Reade made me something.  (And in fact, one day when I stood on the checkout line at Duane Reade itself, a young woman told me how much she loved my makeup and hair.)

The Artist's Way says artists (and by artists they don't just mean "professionals") are cranky when we are not being artists.  So I guess I am not that unusual.

Why am I So Hard To See

The title of this post was inspired by this post . Something I seem to struggle with over and over, is the fact that I seem to be invisible most of the time.

Is it my age?  I am 62 but I don't look 62.  (One of my sources of discontent is how few pictures I have of myself; if I had one that was that different or better than the one I use for a profile picture I would post it.)  I am certainly not skinny (I have a BMI of 25, which is teetering on the borderline of being overweight) but I am extremely fit and mostly carry my weight in the right places.  I have a gorgeous hair dye job and wear stage makeup all the time.  I never look ordinary, I can tell you that.  And because I have so few "special occasions" in my life, I do myself up as if every single day were one. I have been approached at least once with an offer to be an "adult" film star.  Apparently women my age who look like me are a huge niche market (and yes, the more I feel ignored, the more I will "up the ante" regarding the kinds of things I write about here).

Or is it that I work in an industry that is almost entirely virtual, where no one knows what I look like?  And when I did work somewhere where I was physically present, despite having a high level job, I was treated like a "function" not a person, let alone an attractive woman with a great fashion sense.  I know sexual harassment in its most virulent forms is Hell, but a little wholesome teasing to make an attractive woman feel appreciated would be nice once in while.  But (sigh) the pendulum has really really swung so far in the other direction you can't even see that there is a pendulum.

Lately I just have had too many experiences of being "aggressively ignored" and yes, just like "deafening silence" it is very obvious when someone is being aggressively ignored.

In fact the lady who wrote the above referenced post also wrote and published an article (I can't remember about what) in which it was advised that professional singers should politely ignore hangers on who are not really good singers, and not "engage" with them in conversations about singing.  If you want to be polite, she advised, you can engage with them on another topic of mutual interest.  What is the problem here?  Is "amateurishness" contagious, the way some people think homosexuality (or overweight) might be?

But oh, doesn't she know that this is oh so obvious to the "ignoree"?  It's like waiting for the taxi that stops for other people, but not for you.  This can't be an accident.

So what does it take to be noticed?  Choosing the right venue?  The right social circle, virtual or otherwise?  Moving to a part of the country where what you do, even in a less than stellar manner, is in short supply and you can be special? (This latter is not likely.  I have a sweetheart deal where I live and anyhow I never learned to drive.)

Why does one person attract notice when others do not?  I am not talking here about trying to compete with singers at the Met, or even with singers at all, but about the synergy that occurred with Julie and Julia, which I have written about many times.

Why did someone decide that Julie's blog about Julia Child's recipes deserved a magazine article?  All kinds of people write all kind of blogs about all kinds of things.  I will never sing at the Met, but, for example, why shouldn't someone from Opera News or Classical Singer decide that my writing about the experience of trying to do something with classical singing in my late 50s and 60s is worth a little public exposure?

What do I need to do??

There are days when (I can hear someone saying "be careful what you pray for you may get it") what I long for is to be chased up and down Columbus Avenue by a herd of paparazzi.  I want a public life so badly.

Finding the Smile in It

Actually, the title of this post refers to two things: one happy and upbeat, the other rather snarky.

First the happy and upbeat.  When I was struggling with "Acerba Volutta" the other day one of the things I tried was singing the ending section "lightly" the way I sing Bach.  I mean that top note is only an A!!! I can sing arpeggios up to a high C and comfortably up to a B.

Now years ago, when I first began singing with the choir, I had problems with singing too lightly.  I was singing with a "white" (although not a "straight") sound that was "spread" and it choked off my upper register and made it shrill.  I think that is what prompted my teacher to talk to me about singing "dark vowels".  To get rid of that sound and make my sound more mellow.  But I am past that now, and actually have a comfortable buoyant sound that I can carry up to an A (I was remembering how much easier the Randall Thomson "Alleluia" was last year compared to several years earlier) without my voice sounding shrill or spread.  Even the choir director has mentioned it.

And I only recently was coached to sing "Et Exsultavit" with a lighter sound.

So today I sang the ending to "Acerba Volutta" and pretended I was singing "Et Exsultavit".  I didn't sing the whole aria, but I sang from "Verra?  M'Obblio", which might as well be singing the whole thing because there's a huge break before that where I can recoup.  And it worked!!!  I mean she (the Principessa) is all happy and excited because she is waiting for Maurizio and is imagining him arriving soon.  So why not be happy?  I don't have to drive a mack truck through it!

As for the snark, this is "telling tales out of school", but I am disillusioned enough now that I don't care.

About five or six years ago, when I was involved with the pseudonymous blog and other Internet fora, a young man who happened to be an opera director hit on me.  He was probably about 20 years younger than I was.  I knew his father ran an opera company so I played footsie with him and said I wanted him to arrange an audition.  I wrote about this in my pseudonymous blog and got a slap on the wrist saying that I should "be careful" blah blah blah.  So I "locked" the entry (you can't do that with Blogger).  Now I don't care.  I don't need to worry about my "reputation in the business" because - let's get real! - I'm not in the "business",  I'm just a superannuated wannabe with a good voice who has the management skills to produce my own concerts. For example, when I sent a packet of materials to the father (without the blessing of the son) he (the father) called me up and insulted me saying how dare someone with so little experience have the chutzpah to apply to  him for an audition!!  And if you add to that the fact that the company where the son is a director is the one where I was rejected out of hand for being too old (because I was not a "future investment" not because of how I looked), I really have nothing to lose and might as well have a good laugh, because...

I see this young man just got married.  His wife better keep an eye on him.  He may run off with her mother HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Further Clarification of My Previous Post

I made a status update on Facebook about how, at this time in my life, I so wished my passion were writing or painting, not singing, because I simply find it almost impossible to muster up the superhuman energy and "bounce" (I can't think of a better word) to nail the big climaxes in my arias, even familiar ones.

This is not an issue of being seriously fatigued.  I have had enough sleep and have eaten healthfully, and have not been talking excessively (BTW my teacher said yes indeed the way New Yorkers naturally speak - harsh, nasal, and down on the cords with a tight throat - is very bad for singing and that yes indeed there are not very many opera singers who were born here).

It is an issue of not having that "something extra".  Athletes need it (I can see this from watching skaters and gymnasts, really the only athletes I follow other than tennis players), normal people don't.  I can't write a good essay (or produce error-free editing) if I have been sleep deprived for several days or am hypoglycemic from hunger, but I certainly can if I am mildly depressed.  Which may be what I am.  (I hesitate to use that word because I think it is overused and that people these days are overdiagnosed and overmedicated.)

Singing (certainly singing big climactic phrases with high notes) is another story.

One thing the Mentor once said to me is that "all singing stems from joy".  This is certainly true.  Either from real joy or from physically being able to replicate the physiognomy of joy - the raised palate, the relaxed throat, the buoyant abdominal muscles.

I know that my technique has improved a great deal in the last few months as is evidenced by how I sound when I vocalize.  Even this past week, that has held.

But I have not been able to nail the ending to "Acerba Volutta" to my liking, and that is an aria that I thought I had a lock on.  If my abdominal muscles are not buoyant, that top A goes "straight".  I know it's not a technical thing because if I isolate that phrase I don't have a problem, but when I try to sing the aria from the beginning, or even from the middle (it has a lot of breaks in it) a lot of old bad habits creep in.  Most of these have to do with somatized anxiety and depression that result in my "core" becoming rigid and my not breathing.  I have said before it is like a horse balking at a fence.  And once I get into that vicious cycle with a phrase I am sunk.  I know it's not a technical thing because once I isolated that phrase and sang it a half step higher (without realizing it) and the B flat sounded as good as the A does when it's good, which would not have been true several months ago.

"Re dell'Abisso" sounds really good.  Whether that's because it's a new piece or because the highest note I have to sustain is a G, I don't know.

The reason I am working on both these arias is that I am supposed to have an audition on October 20.  I say "supposed" because I have not heard back from the woman I sent materials to, which included an audition fee, which didn't bother me, although the fact that it had to be a money order did. Are singers really that irresponsible that they let checks bounce? The only people who use money orders are the destitute; the same people who use check cashing places.  As a point of reference I hadn't bought one in 40 years, not since I've had a checking account.  I sent the package certified mail and in fact I have not even gotten back the slip showing that it was signed for, which is troubling.

The Requiem is not going badly.  I seem to be OK with the phrase in "Liber Scriptus" (it is similar to the phrase in "Acerba Volutta" but is a half step lower) but I have not tried to sing it since my partner was taken to the hospital.  I think I will do well with the Requiem.  It is in a comfortable range and what is at issue is my musicianship.  And it will be sung in the church as an offering for Lent, which will take the focus off me and my performance.  I have a soprano and a bass, and my teacher gave me contact information for a tenor but he hasn't yet answered my email.

I am just so tired (or depressed?)

A week ago I sat with my partner as she was in the throes of delirium and I thought she was going to die.  I have been forced to deal with the idea of her mortality which is like being beaten by a gang of thugs.  Yes, she annoys me and yes, she is not supportive of most of what I want to do with my singing, and yes she is a ridiculous prude, and yes, I am glad I have my own apartment and don't have her underfoot 24/7 but my heart is heavy.  I don't want to lose her.  If she died I don't think I could get up and do anything much more than sit at my laptop and work and read and watch tv and snuggle with my cat for a loooooong time.

She is out of danger now, so I can sleep, but this was a body blow, literally.  I don't feel all bouncy and perk-y.

But the serious question is: probably most singers have things like this in their lives that they go through, but whatever technique they have enables their bodies to go through the motions no matter how they are feeling.  So how many more years will it take?  I am fighting gravity now!

Singing and Life are Such a Bad Mix - How Do People Do It?

Among the many reasons I gave up singing at age 30, along with that it was too expensive for a hobby and I needed to go to college at night so I could get a decent job, and that it was considered a "politically incorrect" choice for Lesbians in 1980, was that I simply could not manage the amount of self care required.  It was too much fun to be skinny, sleep-deprived, and hoarse after a night of clubbing (even if I myself was no longer smoking).

When I went back to singing I was 54, and took good care of myself anyhow so it was no longer as big an issue.

But despite no longer crash dieting or clubbing, well, there's life.  And most of life is not lived with the buoyantly lifted ribcage, the serene breath, and the open pharyngeal space.

Even if one eats properly and sleeps adequately, sadness deflates the ribs, annoyance constricts the back of the throat, minor depression makes it oh, so hard to give that extra lower abdominal "push" needed for those high notes to sail out.

When I was growing up, my mother, who loved classical music but had little respect for classical musicians, referred to singers as "bovine".  One of her friends (whom I didn't really know) taught voice at one of the big conservatories and when she went to his house she met several singers (and there was an up and coming young male opera singer who lived next door to us).  According to my mother, most of these people were placid, very few if any came from New York, and none of them could carry on a particularly intelligent or animated conversation about the issues of the day.

In the "olden days", I think singers led very sheltered lives (remember all the jokes about female singers and their mothers?).  They were not exposed to much that would make them want to scream, cry, or sink into the sort of angst that is best fed with cigarettes, alcohol, or if not those, lots of coffee and interminable talking.

If anyone is wondering why I am thinking about this now, it's that for so much of last three years, I have been stressed to the breaking point by eldercare.  Not just the sadness of seeing someone you love in decline, but dealing with the logistics of another person's life as well as your own, worrying, being deprived of sleep, arguing to get a point across with a service provider. It's draining, it makes you hoarse, it's sad, and it's extremely difficult to then go (if I can even find the time) and joyfully or pseudojoyfully muster up the superhuman, tension-free, golden throated energy balance to sing my opera repertoire.

I mean I have enough basic technique to enable me to go on autopilot and sing through a church solo that doesn't go above a G.  But nothing more strenuous.

I mean there seem to be singers who can keep the back of their throats open and speak musically no matter how angry or sad they are (is that what my mother meant by "bovine"?) but I am certainly not one of them.  (That also may be why it seems that there are not a lot of singers who were born in New York City - the way we speak is absolutely the worst thing a singer can do.)  Or maybe some people have been blessed with so much natural energy balance and stamina that they can get all that infrastructure to hold up an evening of Amneris or Azucena even if they are depressed, angry, nervous, or tired.  I don't know.  I am not one of them, certainly not now.

Some days now I so just want to wallow in all the things that are bad for singing (I think that's what 12 step programs call "feeling your feelings") like talking, eating and sleeping too little, letting my body crumple up and my ribcage collapse, and enjoying the pain of exhaustion as it mirrors the pain in my heart.

(I say pain in my heart because even if the immediate danger has passed, this is probably a downhill slope from which there is no scrambling back to wellness and happiness for my loved one.)

But I have fought too hard for what I have.

So I am going to my lesson tomorrow.

And I will see if I can squeeze in a practice some time this week.

Pondering What is Really Important

Thursday my partner was rushed to the hospital with weakness, dizziness, and a fever.  She may have a kidney infection, she may have pneumonia.  Today she is worse.  I sat by her bedside from 3 to 9 pm.  She was delirious a lot of the time.  She didn't want to eat.  I kept saying to myself I would go home when she had dinner, but she didn't want dinner.

I finally left when she was able to pull herself together and tell me to leave.  Also, I like and trust the night nurse.

I held her hand and she said she loved me.  At one point she said "I have to go" and it sent chills through me.  I have edited enough articles about palliative care (not to mention sitting at my mother's death bed) that I know those words could mean what they say.

I cried with the nurse, who said no, she doesn't think my partner is near death, only that she has a bad fever.

A month after we first got together, in December of 1976, we each had pneumonia.  Actually her fever was higher then than it is now.  Hers was 105, mine was 102.  I wasn't in the hospital, but after taking her there I was told to stay home.  Back then I was still smoking.

Yesterday when I got home from the hospital at 6:30 (when she was not as bad as she was today) I tried to sing through some of my big arias and was too tired.  The whole back of my throat felt raw from lack of sleep and bad speaking habits.

If I (or anyone else) wonders why I keep singing in that choir that doesn't pay me, here's why.

I posted something on Facebook about my situation (being discreet, because my partner does not know I use Facebook) and in less than an hour a group from the church got together to make a prayer circle for me and for my partner, even though I am not Christian.  This is what is important.  If I were singing a big role with a small opera group (basically the extent of my ambition at this point), that would not have happened.  People might not even care all that much.

Tomorrow morning, barring a crisis, I am going to sing with the choir.

Requiem plans continue.

But right now I know what my priorities are.

9-11 Wrap Up and Some Reasons Why I am Happiest Singing in Church

Overall, I would say that the September 11 concert was a success.  I enjoyed participating in it and I hope the woman who produced it will ask me to sing in her Christmas concert.  (She said she would.)

Interestingly (or distressingly) I don't think I sang "Et Exsultavit" as well as I normally do. (I barely got through "salutari", which is usually a walk in the park for me, and took a breath before "meo", which I haven't done in a long time.)  I realize that this is probably because I was at the end of the program and so was probably singing it at 8 pm or later.  And that there was a huge lag time between my last meal (a cheese omelette at 5, because call was at 6) and when I sang.

There was a videographer there and they are going to put it on the producer's YouTube channel.  So I will see what I look and sound like.  If I like it I can post it somewhere.  I also asked if there would be a CD or DVD so that I could show it to my partner, who does not use computers.

My aria was the first piece after the intermission and during the intermission I could feel my energy flagging.  I had a protein bar with me but I worried if I ate it I would have too much phlegm.

In any event, I got a lot of compliments including from two friends whom I just recently reconnected with after over 20 years, so they had never heard me sing.

Mulling this over in my mind made me realize two things about why I love singing in church, which sort of amazes me as I was raised by two atheists, for whom atheism was a prominent belief system, not the result of being too lazy or too busy to attend worship services.

I realize that the reasons for this are twofold.  First, unlike most singers, I sing much better at 11 in the morning than I do at 8 at night.  I certainly wouldn't describe myself as a morning person, on the other hand I am not a night person either.  On the one hand, when I worked in an office I usually arranged things so I could work from 10 to 6, but if I went to the theater or the opera I would always try to go to a matinee (which of course is not in the morning) so that I didn't have to stumble home at night when I was sleepy.  (A dangerous thing for me, walking the short distance from Lincoln Center, which involves crossing six lanes of traffic.)  Probably the time of day when I feel best is between 11 am and about 4 pm, after a healthy breakfast and/or a healthy lunch.  So when I schedule a concert myself it's usually at 3.

Second, and this says a lot about me, I suppose, a church service is about so many other things besides me and my performance that I have spiritual tools right there at hand to keep me calm and centered.  There are prayers to say and a great sermon to listen to.  So by the time I have to get up and sing (usually the anthem or during communion) I know that God is with me.  (Maybe I have such an affinity for church because when I began attending - in 2003, which is when I met the Mentor - I had already spent almost three decades in AA meetings?)  And kidding aside, there is something comforting about looking at the stained-glass window depicting Jesus.  Whether or not he was divine, or rose from the dead, he is a kindly presence.

Well, when all was said and done it was a good experience and a good connection to have made.

One thing The Artist's Way says is that if you go shake an apple tree, you might get oranges, and that you shouldn't throw the oranges in the trash. So maybe my involvement with this woman has shown me that there are many thing one can do with a lovely classically trained voice that are not as demanding or as competitive as singing opera, but that don't require that you lapse into different vocal idioms (e.g. belting) that are not vocally or spiritually comfortable.

But I'm still going to fill out that application for the Ulrica audition.  My artist's "date" for this week is to do that (and reorganize my audition binder) at 4 pm this afternoon.

Making Plans

I don't usually post more than once in a day, but some interesting things came up during my lesson.

First of all, Ulrica rocks!  That low G is sort of a growl, but the rest of the piece sounds really really good. And despite it's being thought of as "contralto", other than that low G it is not a low piece and has quite a few sustained Gs and A flats.  And as this is a new piece I have no bad muscle memories.

So my teacher said, yes, I should go to this audition.  The man who played for our "Viva Verdi" concert is the pianist for that group, I think, so I wrote to him and asked him if he had any "inside scoop".

Also my teacher agreed that I should make my "top five" more age appropriate.  I don't know if I will keep Ulrica in the batch but I will use it for this audition.  And I will swap "Voce di Donna" for "Stella del Marinar".  I just have to memorize it.  And memorize the Ulrica aria.  And I will take out the Favorita aria even though I sing it well and replace it with "Dido's Lament" since they usually want something in English.  I suppose Dido, as a classical figure, could be any age.  Likewise Dalila, so I will keep "Mon Coeur" for now.

I will also try to add new things.  There is an aria from Cilea's L'Arlesiana that he said might be nice for the "Viva Verismo" concert - which, BTW he is very excited about.  And he said yes, I should get a score of Hamlet and work on Gertrude.  I can maybe eventually add her aria "J'ai Peur" into my set. 

The bad news is he is not going to sing the Requiem.  He said it is too lyric for his voice. So he is going to see if he can find me someone.  I have quite a lot of lead time.

Synchronicity

Just as the breakthrough with my singing has held, the breakthrough with my spirit has held also.


The Artist's Way mentions the concept of syncronicity, which no matter how hard I try, I can't wrap my head around. Actually reading this Wikipedia entry has helped a little. In some ways it sounds a bit like New Age blather: if you ask the Universe for something and listen, it will appear.

I think what does happen is that if you become unconflicted about something, you are more likely to say "yes" to things along the way, which will bring you closer to your goal.

I am very happy about the relationship I have formed with the woman producing the September 11 concert.  She is a highly trained professional classical singer, who is also a teacher and coach, but is not immersed in the world of aspiring opera singers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who can sing, act, and talk circles around someone like me.  She is probably about my age.  So, for example, when I asked if I could produce a concert of opera scenes in the space in her apartment complex, she said yes, I could do it if she sponsored me, and that we could talk about it.  So "Viva Verismo!" may have a home.

I also am really excited about some new music I discovered - songs by Jake Heggie set to poems by     Sister Helen Prejean.  Heggie wrote the opera Dead Man Walking which is about Sister Helen and a man who is executed for murder. One of the songs, "I Live My Life in Primary Colors", would be suitable for church, and another, "More is Required" might work for next year's September 11 concert, if I get asked back.  And the songs have a flute accompaniment.  And this woman knows a flutist and has performed a concert of songs for voice and flute.  So who knows where that could lead?

This afternoon I have a voice lesson and will see how I sound singing Ulrica's aria.  I don't know about the low G at the end.  The rest of it should not be difficult.  I have never sung it, but I have heard it numerous times.  If not, I will wait for the next audition opportunity, and think about how/whether to make my aria package more age appropriate.

Winding Up with The Artist's Way

As usual, I should be working, not blogging, but this is my "lunch hour" and I felt a blog post coming on...

I am now on Chapter 12, the last chapter, of The Artist's Way. One thing they suggest is that before you bid the workbook au revoir, you reread it. So I am doing that. It is sometimes hard to tear myself away from my latest mystery novel, but I exercise discipline.

I notice that I enjoy life more since beginning this journey.  I don't know that I am on my way to being more "successful" either as a singer or in a new career path that would use my "diva" soul, but I find pleasure in small things.  After all, the book is called The Artist's Way, not The Artist's Career, How to Succeed in the Arts, or How to Excel in the Art Form of Your Choice.  It is about a way of life.  I think the Mentor had that way of life, and that I picked up quite a bit of it through my painfully yearning to emulate him.  In fact, many of the things the book suggests that you do I already did when I was making that painful transition toward art and sensuality: I got rid of a ton of clothing that was too big (not because I had lost weight but because I had dumped the "pc dyke" persona that mandates that you do not show your curves and if you must wear a dress it should be baggy and long or corporate and swimming on you) and a ton of pastel bedding and replaced both with things that signaled Dalila not Miss Marple.

What's interesting is that I find myself feeling more loving toward my partner.  It was her "artist's soul" that attracted her to me in the first place.  If she had $25, she would buy a ticket to an avante garde dance concert and live on saltines.  The place was always a mess but there would be some marvelous colorful object or swath of red somewhere.  I think we both held each other back.  She didn't like my singing opera, I didn't like her avante garde feminist filmmaking.  Interestingly, whatever I feel about her and however that has changed over the years, I pretty much believe that one on one monogamous relationships where the goal is domestic bliss stifle people, full stop.  People are better off "single" and then involving themselves in relationships, physical or otherwise, to varying degrees with people they care about and observing strict boundaries.  Which is why I have zero interest in same sex marriage.  I am more interested in whether or not we can have a single payer health system (marriage as a gateway to a spouse's health benefits is one reason people like being married).  I suppose if you have children you should stay together as a couple for the duration of the children's childhood (and probably be monogamous, too) but that's about 20 years.  Hardly a lifetime these days!

So how has this affected my singing?  I am still holding onto most of the gains with my upper register but unfortunately it has not translated into a surge of confidence.  I just have too much baggage.  Which is why young voice students (or beginners of any age) are told to stay away from the rep I've been singing for years, until their technique is secure.  As I said, I don't think I ever hurt my voice but I created a slew of very bad memories.

Well, I have retooled "Liber Scriptus" which only goes up to an A flat.  Maybe I will try something else next.

I read about an audition for Un Ballo in Maschera.  Ulrica is not a role I would have thought of for my voice (too much singing below middle C) but I will take a look at the score at my teacher's house.  He said he will see how he thinks I sound.  To go to that audition I will need to give them a list of five arias.  I wonder if I should swap out Laura for Cieca?  Cieca is a role I could sing because it does not go very low.  There is a lot of low-ish singing around middle C but that is easy for me.  It is certainly more age appropriate.  And I have always wanted to learn Gertrude's "J'ai Peur" from Hamlet.  I don't think it goes above an A or an A flat.  Maybe I should eventually swap that for Dalila although that would be hard.  That would leave Favorita as the only "young" role represented.  The Principessa in Adriana could be older.  Or maybe something from Dead Man Walking.

I ordered a set of Jake Heggie songs that are based on Sister Helen's poetry. I heard Joyce DiDonato sing one of them in a concert on tv. They are with flute accompaniment and might be suitable for church solos or something else. I am still enjoying the rehearsals from the September 11 concert. I feel more comfortable singing a non-operatic (but still classical) piece in a group of beginner singers of all ages than I did singing opera rep amidst young people with conservatory degrees and managed singers in their 40s. I think the people who showed up for this September concert are more like what I had expected at the opera singer meetups. People who were working on vocal technique who were not professionals, but had the voice and the passion to sing opera. So we will see how I progress after my work with the Artist's Way workbook is finished.  I joined an Artist's Way meetup and will see what comes of that.

And I made a long-range plan to take a short vacation for my partner's 80th birthday, which will be in 2014.  I haven't had a vacation since 2009, when I left my last full time job.  And this doesn't feel like a bone I'm throwing her to make up for all the time and money I spend on singing.  Not everyone gets to have an 80th birthday.

One the The Artist's Way stresses is to keep an open mind.  Maybe I will find a niche for myself singing song literature and sacred music, where I can use the solid technique I do have and let go of my love-hate relationship with big arias with high notes.  Although not quite yet...

And I may come back from tonight's rehearsals with some photos.  The director asked people with smart phone cameras (not me!) to bring them.  So I am going to be sure to wear something diva-ish and hot!