Totally Amazing

All the breakthroughs I have made with my singing have held.  There has been steady progress in 2014 (I began to notice it with Carmen) and there has been no backsliding.

Well, all in all it has taken me 10 years!!! to learn how to

1. Lift my soft palate (this involved also dealing with my mucus and sinus problems)
2. Relax my jaw
3. Keep my larynx down to prevent the "gag" reflex that interfered with my high notes.

Using item 3, and starting with a woofy "h" (which actually effects item 3) I have been singing B flats and B naturals off the cuff without singing a lower note first and without having to force through a barricade of tension.  And I have been able to do this for several weeks now.  This is something I never ever was able to do before.

By singing the lowest notes very low, with a very low larynx, I can now sing arpeggios up to a high C and back almost every day.

And even though I have not jumped on the fitness bandwagon (there were plenty of powerhouse singers before this was all the rage, if people have forgotten) I have defied the odds and get much less tired and have much more stamina at 64 than I did when I started at 54.

I think I may have a handle on those two pages of the Amneris/Radames with the B flats.  (There is no fermata over those B flats; therefore I should sing the progression like an exercise, with no breath in the middle.)

Yesterday I brought the score of Aida to my lesson thinking I was going to work on the Aida/Amneris duet first (which I really might be singing somewhere) and then take a crack at the duet with Radames.  But it turned out that my teacher just got a gig singing Enrico in Anna Bolena on very short notice, so he said "Let's look at the duet between Enrico and Giovanna."  (One of the great things about having him as a teacher is that he is still singing, so sometimes he does things like that.)

Giovanna Seymour is a role that I squeaked and sqwawked my way through  sang 35 years ago.  I have no idea why I was cast in that role as I did not have a usable high B natural.  I had auditioned to sing Smeaton (a trouser role in a lower range, with two nice arias) but that role had gone to a woman who was bigger and taller, with a darker voice.  My teacher (with whom I was studying with back then) said I was probably cast as Giovanna because I was slim and had red hair.  In any event, I did do a good job with the duet with Enrico, so I thought, well, why not give it a go.

To my amazement I sailed through it (it was there somewhere in my phonographic memory bank) despite the high tessitura.  My teacher, who certainly is not usually impressed or amazed, said he was speechless.  He said he had never heard me sing like that.  He also said that the production he was in was double cast and that one of the Giovannas did not sing the B naturals in the last aria but sang G sharps instead, which fit in the chords being played as sounded just fine.  So he told me to buy a copy of the score.

Part of me walked out of that lesson like I was floating on air.  But why ten years?? Why did it take so long?? I'm bloody 64!!! My teacher said among the reasons all this took so long is that muscles and cartilage in older people are not flexible and take longer to train.  Other reasons cited were that I only take two lessons a month, have a lot of stress as a caregiver, and had been singing incorrectly a lot of the time to try to "blend" in the choir (I seem to do less of this now and can sing a real supported pianissimo, at least up to a G.)

So now that I have half of what I've been yearning for all these years, what do I do about the other half (breaking into the huge crowd of mega-talented people who have a stranglehold on the all the opportunities)?