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!