This sounds so simple. When I was growing up, I always seemed to have a friend who was thinner and more self-confident, who made me feel fat and coarse (details here ). That, in and of itself is not surprising as that scenario is played out over and over again. It's just human nature, I suppose, and probably there were girls who felt that way around me (probably not at 9 or 10, but certainly by the time I was 13 or 14). Just read Great Expectations.
As I got older, of course, these things became harder to detect. I have done a good job of cutting all the snarky diva/vocal pedagogue/opinionators off my Facebook and blog feeds. I still read things from voice teachers who stick to vocal technique and repertoire suggestions, but I really don't need to hear about how amateur(ish) classical singers are murdering Art. It's not really that different from telling a woman who wears a size 16 that she's "murdering" someone's high fashion dress originally designed for a size 0. Somewhere there will be people who think the size 16 woman looks beautiful in the dress, just as somewhere there will be people who think my singing (at its best, today, right now, which is all I can do right now) sounds "professional".
But people who snark are not the only enemy (and FWIW, snark is bad even if it's not directed at me personally; people who see the need to write this way are not spiritually healthy people). People who ignore and snub me, whether intentionally or unintentionally, are not my friends either, and I should stop expecting things from them.
So basically it boils down to this. The choir director is never going to thank me for anything in front of the group (never mind that Wednesday I held together the entire alto section because, in the absence of the only trained alto, I was the only one who can sing that part, which regularly goes up to an E and an F). He will thank Little Miss for her high C, and the operatic tenor for his high A (did that Wednesday), but he will never thank me. (I had to laugh because he said "well altos, you seem to be doing pretty well singing up there. See?" as if it was some kind of mystery that he hadn't figured out!!!!) He is also never going to be proactive about inviting anyone to anything that I am performing in, never going to forward electronic flyers, never going to say "Let's come and show our support".
So I need to just write him off. Show up there (because right now for me it's the only game in town; even the Alzheimer chorus is on the line because my partner may back out regardless of the time of year) sing my part perfectly, if it's something that I can sing like a solo do so, pretend I am a professional section leader in terms of my level of "professionalism" and, if I want to sing a solo, contact the new Director and arrange to schedule something. If I mostly only get to sing in the Spanish service, that's fine. It has gotten very large and I can sing things in Spanish or Latin. And sometimes people from the regular services come, because they want to improve their Spanish. I was going to sing one of the Nin Christmas songs, but that got scrapped because of a scheduling conflict, so I will sing "Et Exsultavit" on Transfiguration Sunday. It will be such a pleasure to be able to sing with my "real" voice and not try to make myself sound like a light soprano to please the choir director, or my other coach, who because she herself is a light soprano, tries to get me to use technical tricks that are not suitable for my voice type.
In more optimistic news, the Giovanna Seymour scene is going very well. I am a bit nervous about that one top A in the beginning that I have to hold for a long time, but if I drop my larynx, raise my palate, and stay buoyant (the last is the hardest because I so often feel down and discouraged and it somatizes itself) I can do it. As for the very high part at the end, there is one top A that my teacher told me not to sing. It is the very last one before the high climax (which is easy because I will have had plenty of rest) and is part of a fast passage - the last one, so it is easy to run out of breath. It all goes so fast he said I should just stay on the F sharp. He also told me that I should try singing the entire scene as I would in the concert, giving myself the full amount of rest I would have if he were singing. So to do that, I had to use the keyboard rather than the pitch pipe. The keyboard is near my front door, which meant that yesterday I sang through the entire scene fairly close to my front door, which meant that it was fully audible to the music critic down the hall. People don't understand how intimidating it is to sing with neighbors like that. He is someone else who pretty much ignores me. I mean he is a lovely gentleman (even once offered to take my garbage down when we met in the elevator) but he mostly ignores the fact that I sing and chooses not to engage with me about it.
What's good is that I think my teacher is (finally) impressed with all the progress I have made and now takes me seriously, which I don't think he did before.
I am also spinning my wheels regarding what to do about Carmen. I think that performance piece has "legs", either to be performed as I did it last year, or to repackage as a one woman show, where I did all the readings and interspersed the singing in little fragments (I have seen plenty of one woman shows with music where this kind of thing was done). The question is how to market it. One big problem is that I have no "partner", by which I mean a prestigious institution to piggy-back it onto. Considering how big and diverse this city is, there have to groups of people who want to (or think they should want to) learn something about classical music and wouldn't know Juilliard from a hole in the ground. I could get them excited about the story because it has lots of sex and violence and is about racial minorities of a sort.
So let's make 2015 the year of Marketing.
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