Age Equals Stage - Not

When I opened up the OpEd page of my TIMES, I found this article, originally titled "What's So Great about Being Young?"

It is talking about writing contests with an age cutoff but of course so much of it speaks to me as a late blooming singer.

It addresses that age and stage are not equivalent, that "emerging" shouldn't automatically mean "young", and that early-blooming talent often requires coming from privilege. Or, as I've written about before, having the right mentor find you at the right time.

OK, so it's true that with certain sports, ballet, and playing certain musical instruments, the older you are when you start the harder it is, and at some point it is more or less too late (to be competitive).  With singing less so.  I mean I can see age as part of the picture in that it took me 10 years of lessons to learn what a younger person might learn in 4, because as my teacher has told me, cartilage and small muscles are stiffer and less flexible in older people.  And most older people cannot afford (and/or do not have time for) the "total immersion" that conservatory students get.

But all I can say is that I will be 65 in three months and I am singing better than I ever did.  And not just for short periods.  I can sing for much longer without getting tired.

I can understand people wanting to cast young people to play young roles.  I mean I've been watching Wolf Hall, and when I first laid eyes on the child playing Jane Seymour, I had to laugh.  No.  I certainly wouldn't do in a costume in a small opera house.  But it still smarts to this day that I was rejected by an opera company looking for "emerging" talent to play La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica because I was not a "future investment".  I was about 59, and it's almost 6 years later and I sound better now than I did then.

I guess this subject was on my mind because this summer Little Miss is doing her YAP stint with that very company.  She is playing Rosina.  Yes, that's as it should be.  But why couldn't I be an emerging talent who specialized in roles where I would look appropriate?

Or oratorio?  Why should the Oratorio Society of New York's solo competition have an age requirement? Why does that need to be part of the picture.  If it turns out that the older contestants don't sound as good as the younger contestants on a given evening, whatever the reason, then they won't win.  But why shut us out???

Whatever the obstacles, I am not giving up now.  I feel strongly that this is my "call".  I wasn't sure before, but I am now.  I had an insight recently that made me feel somewhat better about how I spent my time "then" and how I am spending it "now".  I recently sent some photos of me as a baton twirler to the Lesbian Herstory Archives. That was the kind of diva I was then. That was my call. To be "out and "proud" and "pretty", which was for that time and place, unique.  I realized that instead of being angry that the movement has passed me by and is now taken over by middle class women who want to marry (not my thing), I can say OK, they don't need me now.  What I want to do is sing.  That's my identity now.  And if I want to be the public face of a movement, it can be for older women who discover our passion late in life.