Old Foes Become New Friends

Last night at choir practice we got Sunday's anthem, a piece by Alice Parker called "Hark I Hear the Harps Eternal".  It has three women's parts.  We have sung this piece at least twice.  The first time I sang the top part (which is the only soprano part) which sits at the top of the staff and goes up to a high A.  That was about 7 years ago when I still had to muster all my forces, gird my loins, and scream up there.  My doing that elicited a very negative response from the choir director in the form of a personal email.  The second time we sang it I sang the top alto part, which is a decent part - it goes up to an F.  When I came in last night I decided to beat him to the punch so I said, "you want the second sopranos to sing the top alto part, right" (just as a point of information, only one of the now five second sopranos, other than  Yours Truly, can sing a G let alone an A) and he said "well, we'll have to wait to see if the high sopranos [Little Miss and another woman that age who has come to New York to act] show up, so just sing it as written for now".  So I said "OK, I will give it a try".  I figured, ok, I'm following instructions.  I will sing the note with my real voice, and if he says no I can sing an F in its place, which would fit in the melody, but still stay on the top part otherwise.

Well, it was not hard at all.  It stayed "in line" and all I had to do was think "dark and deep", keep my larynx down, but my mouth not too wide open.  So that's that.  If on Sunday one of the high sopranos shows up and he doesn't want me to sing that note, I made my point.  Yes I can sing up there.  So all I have to do is keep talking to a minimum today and tomorrow because that's always the killer for me.

An in perfect synchronicity, this picture, with quote, showed up on Facebook.

In other news, at my last lesson I had some trouble with the high C sharp (I had had an allergy attack the night before and also my humidifier conked out and I hadn't bought a new one yet) so my teacher said to give it a rest.  Just to vocalize up to a B.  He also said to give the "Seguidilla" a rest and work on other scenes in the opera, which I need to do because he has added some recitative.