So many good things are happening to my voice it is like an avalanche that I can't stop. Just as I spent years trying to pick apart what was wrong, why things were stalled, why I was struggling, now I am, in a way, amid all the excitement, trying to make sense of what has been going right. Why now? I am a month away from my 65th birthday and when I am not singing, copyediting, or taking care of my partner, I am taking care of the business of getting old: getting a Medicare card, filling out forms to get my reduced fare Metrocard. Looking forward to my next birthday when I can start getting an extra $2000 a month and really can just work 25 hours a week without pillaging my savings.
So the question is "why now"? I still have the same teacher, whom at some points a few years ago people had wondered if I should leave, and who, himself, was frustrated with me. He only gave me one new suggestion really: to begin all my vocalizing with a slightly aspirated "h" sound. Am I reaping the benefits of having used the Neti pot every day? Were so many of my problems not the result of years of smoking, or of being a New Yorker who spoke only in chest voice (my speaking voice has not changed), but of liberating my head resonators which had been clogged up for decades?
Every day I hear improvements, My voice soars up into a head space I never knew I had. The ascending scales in the Amneris/Radames duet require little effort. And when I returned to the sections of the role that I had sung well, but with hard work (the feeling of girding my loins and making that extra biiiiiig effort to push out those A flats and A naturals) they were so easy. My teacher was, actually, quite astonished as he has heard me struggle with those B flats for a good five years or more. (This was actually the second time in a year that he has had that reaction: the first was after I read through the Giovanna/Enrico duet a number of months ago.)
It is hard to believe that this is really me. That this is my voice.
Of course part of me says so what? Who cares?
I just finished reading this article and thought about dreams. My dreams, going back fifty years now.
I didn't stay with them. Too many things intervened. My excitement over my instrument "caught fire" three times before that fateful Valentine's Day in 2004, but something always put the fire out.
The first time I was only 15 and a friend of my mother's, a high school music teacher, got really excited at what she heard when I opened my mouth to sing. I had spent my childhood imitating Julie Andrews and by my teen years I could sing all the soprano solos from all the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But weeks went by, and to me it was more important to smoke to stay thin (I was built like Kim Novak and yearned to look like Twiggy - it was 1964) and anyhow, singing classical music wasn't cool (interestingly, it never occurred to me to sing anything else; if I wasn't going to sing classical music, I would smoke and write instead).
More years went by, I continued to smoke (and drink) and had a sometimes (not often) paying gig singing as a Gilbert and Sullivan contralto (yes, a real whiskey contralto, but still singing in the classical style). It was through someone I sang with that I met the voice teacher I have referred to as Mr. B.. He got me to sing "O Don Fatale", which was rather amazing considering that I was still smoking and drinking. But the more I smoked and drank, and sang 8 shows a week (mostly in the chorus except on days when the official lead contralto had other commitments or was ill), the worse I sounded. So the fire fizzled out.
I had one last chance. After I stopped drinking and smoking, I dusted off the dream and found the teacher I am studying with now. (I think I had been offered a small role in one of the no pay opera companies - which in those days really were for amateurs - by a former G&S colleague.) My voice was about one third the size it is now and I never could really sing above a high A although I somehow managed to squeak my way up to that B at the end of the "Seguidilla" to sing at auditions. And in my persona as Amazon Dyke Warrior I could be typecast in trouser roles. After five years, I really was sounding good and even finally had a usable B flat. I even got cast as Laura in La Gioconda. But the time was not right. The was opera before Patricia Racette and as an un-closeted Lesbian with a passion for singing opera (including big dramatic mezzo roles where I had to play "straight") I simply didn't know what to do with myself.
At 54 I got another chance. I knew that the magic I had felt on that fateful Valentine's Day could not be for nothing. That I had to see this journey through to the end. I suffered a lot (as you have read in these pages; the entries are too numerous to link back to). I struggled with my upper register. I felt like The Ugly Dachshund at choir rehearsals. My partner didn't want me to sing (other than in church) because it reminded her of my obsession with The Mentor. I was rejected by all 10 of the opera companies in the city that don't pay people, by some less than kindly.
And now I'm even older. I really do think I am now on the cusp of sounding like the semi-professionals who sing at those companies but so what? I still have nothing on my resume to speak of and am even less mobile (I seriously doubt that I could perform in any opera involving staging, even as an "old lady" character.) And I really look old. And really. Maybe if I opened my mouth for someone tomorrow and was even, well, 40! someone (with some clout) might be excited by how I sound, but not now.
So I guess I just have to be excited all by myself. Or with my teacher.
But yes, there is a future. Maybe not one involving internship programs, but one involving Carmen. I said that program had "legs" and I just put in a bid to perform it at the LGBT center where my partner gets social services. They have a huge room with a piano where they provide entertainment. The accompanist who played for Carmen and for my latest concert said that he put on a concert of opera scenes there with a group of students. So we will see.
And I am going to sing "O Rest in the Lord" next Sunday when the choir is singing an excerpt from Elijah. (Ever the zwischen there, I will be singing in that piece in the soprano section.) The way things are going I am sure I can still be singing oratorio solos when I'm 80.
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