Carmen Videos

I finally got back the Carmen videos.  They are extremely well done (by the narrator's father, for no charge - other than my giving him all the leftover food because the number of attendees was so much lower than I had budgeted for).  He knows how to pan in to the singers' faces, which is key.  The woman who was paid to video the September 11 concert did not do nearly as good a job, mostly because she just videoed the entire stage, with the piano at the left, and the singer at the right, leaving the singer very small.

First of all, I will say that except for the B flat (written as a B natural) at the end of the Sequidilla, I am happy with how everything sounded.  I sound better than I ever have.  A lot of things have come together this past year (except that my range has not increased and perhaps never will).  My voice is much bigger, has less tension, and the notes that I do have at the top and the bottom within my "Wikipedia" two octave range from low A to high A sound much better and are just easier to sing.  I also think I acted well with one or two exceptions.  I am certainly pleasantly surprised by how well I move onstage, considering that I have bad scoliosis, age-related deterioration of the lumbar spine, arthritic hips, and a fractured knee that never healed properly.  The only concession I made to "disability" was to change into my flat shoes for the final scene because I wasn't able to fall easily in heels.  If anything, my one shortcoming is that I still use my upper body a lot as an aide to vocal technique (raising my arms, for example) rather than to create a character.  And of course the humongous gaffe was that my glasses were on a lot of the time.  This was not a staged reading from books (other than Micaela singing her aria from a book, which should not have happened) and I had all my music and words memorized.  I had my glasses on when I was offstage so I could look at the score and read the narration.  As I said in another posting, if this had been a professional performance or even a well organized amateur one, there would have been a stage manager of some kind who would have noticed that I had my glasses on and taken them off.

The only video I am almost completely happy with is Act IV, so I have sent it to friends and posted it on my Facebook page.  I sent all of them to the concert producer, the other singers, and my voice teacher, and will of course send more to any friends who ask for them.

I am mostly happy today, of course, but also a bit sad, because I can see all the rough edges that need smoothing, and I know that people who went to conservatories and young artist programs got to get up and sing in front of people over and over and get constructive criticism that would help them smooth those rough edges, and of course I do so rarely. So I fall further and further behind.  Even if I count from when I started singing again at 54, which is 10 years ago, I have not advanced as far as someone like Little Miss Conservatory, who at 22 has probably been studying for less than that, because she has had total immersion and I have not.  It's a miracle even that I practice 6 days a week.

In other news, the producer got back to me about the Handel and said it was too long, and that she would find two shorter songs for me to sing on September 11.  I am game for anything, I am just now wondering what she has in mind, as she thought the two shorter churchly pieces in English ("The Call" by Vaughan Williams and "He that Keepeth Israel" by Schlosser) were "dull".

I debated whether or not to post the video here and have decided not.  I posted it on my Facebook page.  If anyone here wants to see it, just leave a comment with your email address.  I screen all comments, so it won't be public.