This afternoon I took my "artist's date" (something required as part of The Artist's Way program), which consisted of my going to Richard Tucker Park around the corner before setting off to do some errands, to hear an opera group whose mission is community outreach.
Now I remember when I posted something on The Forum about wanting to find older singers to network with, someone I respect very much suggested starting a community opera group. Now the problem is, if you live in New York, there are already 20 such groups and they are filled with the spillover from the minor opera houses, YAPpers, and managed singers looking to do a role that they're not getting cast in for pay. These groups are not for amateurs like me. They might have been 30 years ago (I remember singing in various schools and senior centers as part of an existing group back then) but not now.
This group was mostly young (none of the women looked a day over 30 although the only two men could have been close to 40) and very polished. Except for one mezzo, none of them had big voices but they looked and sounded like they have been getting up in front of groups, classes, juries, whatever, since they were in their teens.
Just as I was feeling so happy (or at least momentarily satisfied) about this September 11 concert, I now just feel so that everything I want is out of reach.
What's interesting is that I don't know that I thought these young women sounded that much better than I do, just different.
I would say I have a bigger, more impressive natural instrument, but so what? It has taken me into my 60s even to begin to know what to do with it outside the limited range I use for church solos. I certainly don't have that kind of confidence. I mean people say I'm a good actress but I am not comfortable. And when I sing church solos I don't have to do anything except remember my music and look other worldly.
I know that part of the issue with my voice is that as Susan Eichhorn Young (whom I am always quoting) says in her latest blog post, I did everything ass backwards.
What I mean is I didn't cosset my voice from the yellow Italian aria book through lieder through "Va Laisse Couler Mes Larmes" year by year, inch by inch, until every note was perfectly matched to every other note. Never picking up a dramatic aria with high notes in it until those notes were there securely.
If I wanted to sing the Habanera at 14 (as I burned my vocal cords with Kools), I sang the Habanera at 14. If someone cast me as Giovanna Seymour at 28, I asked my teacher what exercises to sing so that I could pull myself through it.
Now I want to make one thing clear. Except for my brief stint with the teacher I call Mr. B., I never did anything technically that abused my voice. In fact one compliment I always get from people is that despite being a large-voiced mezzo I don't "push" my voice, but always sing lyrically. Except when I would get to a note that I was not comfortable singing; in which case I would sort of gird my loins and scream. Not in a way that hurt my throat, just in a way that hurt other people's ears, and did not sound integrated with the rest of my voice.
I know there are things I sing beautifully, but I do not have a scale that is perfectly even from top to bottom. On the other hand I have heard that this is a problem with many dramatic mezzos. I read a review recently that totally savaged a dramatic mezzo whom I heard do quite an impressive rendition of "O Don Fatale" at a concert. Whether the review was deserved I don't know, but it mentioned her voice being in three different pieces, and cited that it was a problem in the fach in general.
But what I realize is that although I didn't harm my instrument, I may have harmed my psyche in that I sang things badly that I was not ready to sing, which left bad muscle and other memories imprinted somewhere, and which makes it harder now to sing those things well even though I can (a lot of the time).
Getting back to this afternoon's concert, I decided to pull myself out of my funk by watching what the various singers did with vowels, since I am now juggling two different schools of thought. Interestingly, on the whole the lighter voiced women sang brighter vowels and the mezzo sang darker vowels. And it wasn't just a question of their different natural instruments. I watched what they were doing with their mouths.
In other news, I am seriously reworking "Liber Scriptus". That is an example of a piece that I sang badly (panicking and gulping for air before the phrase with the big climactic A flat) and that now I can sing well, so I need to start from scratch. I found a way of singing that phrase on one breath by keeping my jaw loose, and that is what I am going to do. It is not a very high note, considering that I am now vocalizing up to a high C every day, although sometimes that newly found headspace is there and sometimes it's not.
And I will enjoy the concert I am in on September 11. It is like living in a small town where I'm one of a handful of singers with classical training on a program with singers without.
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