Requiem Went Well

Today's Verdi Requiem concert went well.  I let it rip with "Liber Scriptus", was solid on all the ensembles, and got through most of "Lux Aeterna" pianissimo,  except for that top G, which I sang full voice, but everyone ended together. I really felt that I held my own with three other experienced singers, two of whom are working professionals.

My only disappointment was that there weren't very many people there, but the people who were there were very appreciative and we got a lot of applause.

My partner was there with the visiting nurse, and she was genuinely happy for me and said I sounded great.

The sound engineer (with whom I have had so many ups and downs) recorded it, and he said this was the best he had ever heard me sing.  (And we have had many ups and downs, as I have written about.)

So now my goal is not to get depressed.

I will be singing "Qui Sedes al Dextram Patris" from the Bach B Minor Mass in the Spanish service at 3 on Good Friday.   I am only a chorus alto in the Brahms Requiem in the big evening service but how I will look at it is that this is a major work, and if I can say I have sung the alto part, this is something marketable.  And actually the alto choristers sing quite a bit on their own and having me there will noticeably beef up the sound.  (I have worked a lot of my lower register for the Verdi and now have a usable low G.)

The two solos have gone to the two new young people from the big conservatory.  The woman singing the soprano solo is only 20!!! and her singing is near perfect.  She has a voice like silk.  And she is not a very light soprano.  Her voice has a lot of maturity.  It's when I hear someone like that that I feel tremendous despair.  I don't feel despair when I listen to the soprano who sang with me today.  She has a spectacular voice but she is a few years younger than I am and has been singing all her life.  But to feel that someone who is 20 (this is someone one third my age!) already has a handle on such vocal perfection and I have so far to go, makes me want to cry and cry and cry, and believe me, I have.  I definitely feel everything is moving in the right direction (other people say this, so I can believe that it is true and not just my perception) but it has taken me almost nine years now and I still am not secure with the top notes, and my voice still has "grit" in it (my teacher says some voices are like that - I think of Callas and Agnes Baltsa, for example).

I think what made me feel so sad at the last choir rehearsal was that when this young woman finished singing through her solo (and she just sort of tossed it off, really sitting there in jeans looking unprepossessing) everyone in the choir looked bowled over.  And I realized that there is nothing I can do that will ever ever ever elicit that kind of response.  Certainly not from that crowd.

So now I have to think about my next project.

For church solos, since there is a new crackerjack violinist there (he is a paid staff member who teaches music to the children and is the boyfriend of the young soprano) I was thinking of "Domine Deus" from the Vivaldi Gloria, which I sang in the past with the elderly violinist who has since become too ill to play (or even to listen to music - it is telling that he was not there this afternoon). That is quiet enough for communion, but the words are upbeat enough for the Easter season.

And then I'm hoping the two of us can do the Bach "Laudamus te" in the summer (something else I sang with the elderly violinist).

But for a big project.  Originally I was going to do a concert called "Viva Verismo" as a sort of companion to the "Viva Verdi" but I have lost interest in it.  There are too many people who sing that sort of material better.

Maybe excerpts from Hamlet?  I am going to buy a score, because I think the role of Gertrude will be perfect for me.  She is an age appropriate character who also has a lot of sex appeal and the music is very lush, and sits high-ish, but I don't think goes above an A or an A flat.

Or some kind of song recital (with someone else - I am not interested in, nor do I have the stamina for, singing one by myself).  I have really quite fallen in love with Spanish art songs, and I also have started looking at the song cycle by Jake Heggie with words by Sister Helen Prejean.  And maybe throw in a a few gay 90s songs, which my partner loves so much.

My therapist (who did come to the concert, by the way) was talking about how if you can't get into something through the front door, you have to use the back door.  So if no one is going to cast me as Azucena, or even La Zia Principessa, I have to find something else.

Because when all is said and done, although it would be wonderful to be able to sing through a role like Azucena in a full scale production, all I really want is that applause.  I have a very magnetic stage personality (that I have been told by dozens of people).  So I just need to find something that no one else is doing.