2018 Recital, Take Three, and How I Got Happy

This afternoon I sang my 2018 recital program for the third time.  It was at a new senior residence, with a room that was too small for me to invite guests, although the piano was good.  I didn't feel that I sang as well as the first two times (my highest notes didn't sound as good) but my teacher said that the problem was that the room had a low ceiling which muffled the sound, so that my voice didn't "spin".

But the audience was appreciative, except for one woman who glared and only applauded selectively (she did not applaud for "Tanti Affetti" but did for "Cruda Sorte" and "Mon Coeur"), and then left.

I certainly would be happy to sing there again.

I think this is the last time for this particular program, and I may retire "Tanti Affetti" for quite some time now.

My teacher and I are discussing reviving our 2015 concert of duets.  We may replace the Gioconda material with a duet from Favorita, which means that I will sing the aria from Favorita as well.  Actually, I should call it Favorite, because my teacher is singing one of the bass roles in French, so he will give me a copy of the music for the duet and my aria in French.

And if we do that particular concert we will do the Enrico/Giovanna duet from Anna Bolena, which I love.

Something I realized yesterday is that I am probably happier now than I have been in close to 15 years.  I was very happy for the most part in my 30s and 40s (I was not singing then, but did a lot of traveling and socializing and had one "fun" job, which, although mainly about paper pushing, had all sorts of meetings, lunches, and business trips interspersed between the dull work, which was how things were back before the Internet.  I mean I love the Internet, but it definitely drained all the "social" out of a lot of boring jobs.)  In my 50s I was happy somewhat, but my relationship with my partner definitely had begun to deterioriate.  I was working very hard at a senior management job, and coming home and making dinner because - what - she had arthritis??? And she was becoming more and more disagreeable.  Then I discovered singing, and The Mentor, and all bets were off.  I became someone else.  I don't want to rehash all that here; I have done it enough.  During that period I was often euphoric, so I suppose that was a form of happiness, but then everything came crashing down.  My relationship with him became abusive, I found the minister to be unsympathetic, and she decided to do away with all the classical music.  So I was pretty much vocally homeless.  I discovered (over a period of 10 years at least) that no matter how well I thought I sang, I would never be competitive on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where as soon as one group of "emerging professionals" moved on, another took their place.  No "amateur" opera group wanted me; they could get professionals.  And I felt beset on all sides.  If I wanted to produce something myself it was hard to get people to come (who would want to come to a homemade concert of opera scenes if they could hear real music - aka someone's senior recital at one of the three conservatories here?)

And on top of all that I had taken early retirement from my job (which I had come to hate) only to replace it with working at home, alone, at my laptop hour after hour, taking breaks by reading blogs of real singers who were never in the same city for more than a few weeks and endlessly posted pictures of themselves in costume or solicited feedback on their latest head shots.  And I felt totally misunderstood. If I posted or blogged things about how unhappy my colorless life was making me, I was told to just "pull up my socks" because of all the people who had suffered major tragedies who nonetheless always had a full social calendar (I am thinking of one woman in particular who trashed me in a comment to a personal blog - not this one - when she hardly knew me). 

Things began to improve when I turned 66 and could collect Social Security.  I decided that I would never have a "dream career" (musical or not) so I just had to hold my nose, spend 20 hours a week at home copyediting, and then fill my life with nonremunerative activities that I found fulfilling.  Then my partner got on Medicaid.  In some ways, my life as a caregiver looks harder, because I am responsible for coordinating her round the clock care and managing her business affairs, but it really isn't.  I'm an unpaid Geriatric Care Manager, which is certainly a much more interesting "job" than being a full-time freelance copyeditor (being a part-time one I can stomach) and more importantly, I feel that what I do matters.  I am making the end of someone's life more comfortable and sweeter than it would be otherwise.

As for singing, ironically, despite the fact that I keep singing better and better, that singing is easier and easier, my range is wider, and I have more stamina, I have made my peace with the fact that there is no place for me in the "world" of singing as singers (I mean the "Forum Crowd") experience it.  That's OK.  I have made a specialty now of singing in nursing homes.  The audiences are appreciative and I don't have to worry if my friends do or don't come.  Some of the facilities are large enough to accommodate guests, others are not, but for the ones that are, if five of my friends come, that's enough.  And I even got some nice videos.  I don't go to the opera, even though it's around the corner.  And while I would go to something at Lincoln Center if someone bought me a ticket (or someone wanted to go and we made it a social thing), I will never go to any performances by all those opera companies that rejected me.  And except for a handful of people who have gone out of their way to be supportive and nice, I have unfriended all the singers I once friended because I envied and admired them.  My mornings with Facebook are much happier now that most of my interactions (usually with people from church or former coworkers) involve more parity and less of a feeling that I am an unwanted tagalong, only suffered if I know my place.

For now, anyhow, I am contented being a small town girl who just happened to be born in a big city and never moved.

Second Recital and Some Random Thoughts

The second recital went well.  The setting was less formal than that in the other nursing home and senior centers where I've sung, but that was OK.  Most of the "noise" came from the area near the front door of the facility.  The people in the room (including a girl who looked about 8 or 9) were very quiet.

I felt as if I sang better than before, but as there won't be any videos, I can't be sure. 

I like the new accompanist.  He is a wonderful musician and very supportive.  I will probably stay with my primary accompanist as a first choice (he charges less and lives in a more convenient location, for one thing) but it's good to have a backup.  Of course I had a tiny "ouch" moment when he said he would like to come back there and play because a setting like that is "a good place to try out" repertoire that he is going to be playing in a more formal setting.  This made me wince because it is precisely that phenomenon that has shut me out of so many of even the humblest venues. The most blatant example to me is "Sing-Through Central" (a chance to sing operas from a book with other people, for a coaching fee) which is used by professionals and emergings to learn or test-drive roles, when an outfit like that should really be for amateur "living room singers" like me who want a chance to do something they love that they will never be able to do anywhere else. Will all the "outreach" venues go that route, I wonder? 

But I can't think that way.  I am now getting back into gear to find a new place to sing. I guess singing for seniors is my "niche".  I have an affinity for the elderly, partly because I take care of one, and doing this is a chance to "give back" (although I don't really see it that way as it's my only chance to sing for an audience other than church, not something I do out of the goodness of my heart despite other opportunities beckoning) and a low-stress setting in which I can sing whatever I want to, more or less.  And I refuse to think of what I'm doing as "second best" any more than I would ever think I've settled for "second best" because the charming, funny, sweet, romantic love of my life turned out to be someone bone idle and totally unable to manage time, money, or a living space.  And now she's a frail senior.  Which makes it easier because a frail senior by definition no longer can manage those things, so I no longer resent doing them for her.  I can't see myself as a failure because neither I nor my spouse was ever an "upper-middle class professional".  Our minister said something interesting in last Sunday's sermon.  She said we as a society shouldn't only value people according to their ability to be "productive".  That the "endless cycle of producing and consuming" is not what life is about.

Speaking of church, my voice keeps getting higher and I am more and more comfortable singing even a high soprano part if the alternative is a low alto part, or in any event, one that has such a minimal "arc" that I can't get my voice to do what it does best: make a big beautiful sound somewhere between the middle and the top of the staff.  We sang the final chorus from Elijah, and the compromise was that the second sopranos sang soprano until we got to the little chunks of music where the sopranos were singing a high A at which point we sang with the altos.  Of course I got completely lost.  I wouldn't have if I had had time to rehearse, which I hadn't.  I am not a natural harmonizer, don't sightread, and know nothing about music theory, so unless I am singing the top part (which is all I hear if I listen to any kind of recording) I have to drill my part over and over, singing "against" a recording with the volume turned way up.  I probably should have just stuck with the soprano part and might even have been able to sing the high As.  At this point I am not only "reaching" but blossoming on B flats, B naturals, even the occasional C, when I vocalize.  Next week we are singing a tiny snippet of Bernstein's Mass.  The sopranos have four piano/pianissimo high As, which I can definitely sing because there is a big break before each set of two. 

As for the "random thoughts", I posted an article on Facebook about all the downsides to marijuana use.  Yes, I begrudgingly (very begrudgingly) support legalizing recreational use if only so that young people of color don't end up with a criminal record for being caught smoking it or carrying it, but I am dubious.  Social drinking is one thing; it can be considered part of fine dining.  But the only reason for nonmedical use of marijuana is to get "high" or "stoned" and to me that is such a waste of human potential (ditto for drinking to get drunk or "wasted") that why make it easier for people.  The people who will go hog-wild with it will mostly be under 25, which is the time period when young people need to be alert and at their best so that they can make plans about their future and carry these out.  I know that the tragedy of my life isn't that I drank alcoholically and abused diet pills (I was never much of a marijuana smoker - I didn't like the way it made me feel; never mind that it made me hungry which was a deal breaker) but that I did it during the years between 18 and 25 when I could have been going to college, exploring extracurricular activities, making connections with people that could last a lifetime, and charting a course through adulthood.  And I saw this with a great many of my peers.  And some of them ended up dead, in prison, or permanently psychotic from taking LSD or even smoking hashish.  Scrambling to earn a living and get a college degree at night between the ages of 27 and 40 did not allow me to accrue any of the advantages that young people are accruing today beginning in high school (at which point in my life I was so deep in an eating disorder that I might as well have been out of it on drugs).  Theater kids?  Did that concept even exist when I was growing up?  That's who I'm competing with if I want to perform somewhere.  The conservatory kids and theater kids who are now in their 30s, even 40s.  Even the ones who never made a profession out of performing have that to draw on when all I have is a lovely voice and a good ear.  And the nonperforming young people were deep into summer immersion programs when they were as young as 12 or 13.  Those things stay with you.   Which brings me back to my original point about marijuana.  Smoking it when you're young and impressionable (a phase that neuropsychology believes lasts until the age of 25) is like deliberately saddling yourself with a handicap.  The world is a harsh, difficult, treacherous, and competitive enough place to navigate.  Why make it harder for yourself?  If I remember and repeat to myself daily any slogan from AA it's "There's no situation so bad that drinking won't make it worse."   Yes, there's no situation so hard that doing it stoned (or hung over) won't make it harder.

The Bitter and the Sweet (2018 Version)

This is a title I use frequently, but have not used this year so far.  I guess it's just life.

I got the videos from the recital and thought everything sounded good except for the Handel (which I knew didn't sound good because I sang too fast and didn't take breaths that I should have taken).

But

I just hate how awkward I look.  As the evening wore on, I looked less and less awkward, but that's because as the evening wore on, the pieces I sang became vocally easier and easier so I was able to relax and have fun.  But I don't want to give up the difficult pieces that I sing well.  Here's the problem.  I fidget, look worried, do things with my arms to "aid" in vocal production (do these things really aid anything?) and worst of all, for whatever reason, I walked off the stage at the end of "Tanti Affetti" when the pianist had not yet finished playing, to get some water between songs.  Getting water was OK; doing it without letting the pianist finish was not.  It was like when I sang Carmen in costume and forgot to take my glasses off.  What upsets me about this isn't that I don't like how I look; it's that I know these problems are the result of my never having had the right kind of "grooming".  Over the past 14 years I have just about had the time to devote to refining my vocal technique and learning music.  I have not been in any setting where I would be coached on how to walk on and off the stage, look at the audience, and look poised while I'm singing.  This is the kind of thing that someone like "Little Miss" has had going for her since she was 10, and now I guess she's in her mid 20s.

The good news is that I had my first rehearsal with the new pianist today.  I had gotten very little sleep because after looking at the videos last night around 10 pm I was upset and found it hard to stay asleep (I didn't have a problem falling asleep, but woke up several times, the last being at 5:50 am, after which I could not go back to sleep).  Well, I can sleep tonight, I hope.  Anyhow I really sang well, including "Tanti Affetti" so I guess I really own all those high notes and fancy gimmicks and can do them at will (the way I can sing "Rejoice Greatly", which sounds hard to other people).  This pianist is more of a coach than my other pianist, who is predominatly an accompanist (I have never heard him tell me anything about style for example). This new pianist gave me a number of pointers, including about "Mon Coeur", which I have been singing for over a decade.  These subtleties are very interesting and I hope to do them justice.

So now I just have to rest (we have choir rehearsal tomorrow, for which - I think - all I have to do is sing an alto part on a chorus from Elijah) for the next few days.  I have a lesson on the 29th, last rehearsal on the 31st, and the concert on June 2.  Then I will decide what to do next.

This new pianist aspires to be a conductor and has conducted operas with a small company in Brooklyn that has an orchestra.  He asked me if I would want to sing in their opera chorus and I said no (politely).  There is no pay involved and there would be a lot of rehearsal time.  I would rather sing recitals of songs and arias in front of a small audience than be lost in a big opera chorus. I might do it if I were younger and could see it as a step toward singing a leading role, but now, no.

A Personal Best

Well, I would say that taken as a whole, last night's recital was a "personal best".  Certainly "Tanti Affetti!"  I would never have been able to sing that even two years ago.  I guess I now really "own" a B flat.  Back to the dreaded Amneris/Radames some day? Maybe, or maybe not.  I just have lost my palate for that kind of thing.  Too bad, because that probably would have been my fach if I had started singing younger and been out there in the mix.  I just want to sing bel canto, Handel, Bach.  Speaking of Handel, the one piece I was not please with was "Had I Jubal's Lyre".  This was the first time I sang it in public without taking breaths in the long runs and I think it sounded a little sloppy.  I asked the accompanist to play it fast and maybe it was too fast.  Also it was the first thing I sang.

The videographer was there.  I offered to pay her and she refused.  She is such a lovely person and does such a professional job.  I'm sure when I see and hear the videos I will find things to criticize but that's the whole point.  If I like something, I can post it.  If I don't, I can learn something from it.

Now I have a respite and then I have to do the whole thing again.  I have never done a recital twice, so that will be interesting.  And next week I will meet the new accompanist for the first time.  My teacher's wife knows him.  And I talked to a friend about the neighborhood and she said it should be fine to go up there during the day. 

Here's a picture.

Second and Final Rehearsal for My First Recital, and Some Additional Thoughts on What Should be Sung in Church

Today we had a runthrough (start to finish) for the recital.  I am still congested.  So is everyone, so it seems.  My partner had a friendly visitor on Sunday who was congested (not sick, just congested).  A nurse came to see her yesterday and she was coughing and clearing her throat (allergies, not a cold).  Everyone says it's the worst season for allergies on record (I don't know if I have any; I just feel congested, not sneezy).  My teacher said he couldn't hear the congestion.  He was having an allergy attack because the accompanist has two cats.  The high Rossini didn't go as well as last time (I didn't hold the last high B flat) but I got through it and nailed every note cleanly.  And I sang the high and low Rossini arias back to back with no glitches.  I still felt congested singing "Mon Coeur" (the easiest thing on the planet for me to sing) but after my teacher sang his second number and I started the third part of the program with "Amapola", suddenly I felt fine.  Then I felt congested again singing "I Dreamt I Dwelt" but did not have any tension creeping in; mostly because I took the breaks I had planned to. 

My teacher told me not to sing much tomorrow, just to do some exercises, and then to sing my regular routine on Thursday, the day of the recital.  He said I can try a section of the high Rossini cabaletta if I want to, right before the recital.

I'm lucky I work at home, so I can basically just "cocoon" for 48 hours and sit here and edit manuscripts and make some money.  And not have to talk.

After my last post (which got a lot of hits; I also posted it on Facebook and shared it with people from church) I realized that I had some lingering thoughts about music and church.  First and foremost, for good or ill, is self-interest.  I want to sing.  I want to sing music that allows my voice to soar.  A church is a comfortable place to do that, and a church with a smallish choir is a good place to get enough exposure (solos, being the obvious "leader" on a second soprano part) to make me happy.

But secondarily, if I am going even to hear music in a church, I want it to go high. I mean this partly literally but also figuratively.  Of course everyone loves a low bass and choirs need them! But I want to hear something that soars.  (I used that word before; I guess I'm thinking that church should mean the Heavens.)  Classical music soars, African-American spirituals soar, gospel soars.  I could be happy hearing Aretha Franklin in a church (she's a pastor's daughter, by the way).  Bob Dylan never.  (I realized that my gut loathing of him centers around the sound of his voice, not his words.  I recently edited an article that used some of his "poetry" and I tried to look at it divorced from that horrible drug-damaged, raspy voice, and was somewhat able to do so.) 

I don't want to hear gutteral voices, raspy voices, voices that sound like they are in tatters from years of drug abuse, drinking, or smoking and I don't want to sing music in a key so low that it is best sung that way.  (And I'm not talking about a low classical piece like "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings to Zion!  I'm talking about "Someone to Lean On" in a bass - not an alto - range, which was what was on offer at the UU General Assembly I went to in 2005.)  I know that I ruined my chances of ever being the singer I could have been by smoking, drinking, and abuse of diet pills and speed, and there are days when I would give everything that I have to go back to 1964 and do it over.  I don't want those memories triggered in a church, which for me (and many others) is meant to feel like "sanctuary".

First Rehearsal for the First Recital

Today I had the first rehearsal for my first recital.  There were some pleasant (and one unpleasant) surprises.

The overall takeaway from this is that for whatever reason (my voice is changing, my technique is changing, or I just have lost a lot of chest resonance because I'm now on my fourth week of chest congestion although it is slowly getting better) I get less tired singing high than singing low.

Pleasant surprises: "Tanti Affetti" went really well despite my never having sung it with an accompanist.  Not only the cabaletta, with all the high notes, but also the cavatina, which is difficult rhythmically.  The "Drinking Song" was a piece of cake.  The lighter pieces, including "Amapola", which I had never sung with an accompaniment, went well, except for a wrong note or two in "Waltz Me Around Again Willy".  I figured out where to take two breaks in "I Dreamt I Dwelt" so that I don't get tired at the end.  That was one thing that didn't sound good last year.

Unpleasant surprise: After singing "Tanti Affetti" brilliantly, I could not get through the end of  "Cruda Sorte" which is a fifth lower.  One point of note is that in "Tanti Affetti" I take the standard "bel canto cuts" whereas in "Cruda Sorte" I have not historically taken any cuts because it is in such a low range I figure I don't need breaks.  Well, my accompanist told me to take breaks.  He showed me where I can stay stumm while he plays.  He thinks if I do that I will be fine.

A mixed bag:  I started out with the Handel "Had I Jubal's Lyre" and although I still am able to sing the long runs without taking catch breaths (something I couldn't do last year - thank you to all the work I did on "Rejoice Greatly") I sounded like I could barely make it.  So I asked the accompanist to play faster on the long runs.  He did (and also took the tempo faster in general, which I think helped, and which he liked).

Tomorrow I have my lesson and I will talk to my teacher about the two Rossini pieces.  Then Tuesday we have the final runthrough.

I am still taking Mucinex pills.  It would really be wonderful if I could just be rid of this thing!