Coaching Debriefing: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Yesterday I had a coaching session for my audition set.

First the good.

I did some of the best singing I have ever done.  Particularly the first runthrough of "Re dell' Abisso," Dido, and the second runthrough of "Acerba Volutta" beginning "verra, m'obblio".

My voice has lightened up a bit (the coach said that might not be great for "Re") but what I mean is it feels lighter and has more spin.

The bad.

The first runthrough of "Acerba Volutta" after a few stumbles with entrances in the section beginning "verra, m'obblio" I sang a not very good high A at the end.  I just didn't have the energy balance.  Although the coach said it was okay.  I hung onto it the requisite amount.  It just got "straight" and I portamento'd down from it too soon.

Also it seems I had pasted the pages of Re back to back in the wrong order.  How could I do something like that?  Am I into "senior moments" now?  I mean I earn my living dealing with the written word, and various documents (although most of these are electronic now).  I can thank my lucky stars that I asked the coach to play from my binder so that the first person to use it was not the pianist for the audition.

Also, I seemed not to know "Voce di Donna" at all.I muffed the words several times and sang the second ending instead of the first ending. My teacher had told me to end it when the solo section ends.) I don't have much time left, but I need to drill this,  just to make sure I know the words. This is where listening comes in. I am at the point with these arias where I don't like to listen to recordings because I don't want to pick up other singer's idiosyncrasies.I use recordings in the beginning of the learning process because I can memorize what I hear faster than notes on a page, particularly because I don't read key signatures. But I need to listen to this one both for the words and for the endings!

Now for the ugly.

I don't know how "ugly" this actually is, but after singing each aria at least once, and singing "Voce di Donna" two or three times, I went back to "Re" and totally conked out at the end.  It wasn't even a question of that last G going "straight" and ugly.  It just wasn't there.  My whole infrastructure collapsed.

In real life I don't think I would have done that much singing without a break.  Even when we rehearsed the Verdi concert there were times when other people were singing and I could recoup. But it really really irks me.

I think what is holding me back vocally now is primarily my inability to replicate the whole support/strength/energy connection (I can't think of a better technical description) at will.  When I sing well, I sound like a professional dramatic mezzo.  But I can't always do this.  And I don't really know what it is I do right when it's right (my teacher has commented on this).  A lot of it has to do with getting the right burst of energy (I think, Zachary if you're still reading, this is what I mean by "letting it rip") and connecting it to my lower abdominal muscles, my ribcage, and my pharyngeal space.  And I can't always do this.  It's like faking a smile, where you smile with your mouth but not your eyes.  If I don't give that extra "oomph", I don't have the intrastructure to sing well, certainly not in that repertoire.  And I seem to be very vulnerable to being tired, and I seem to get tired easily.  This was always a problem, even when I was younger.  I mean if I'm comparing myself to laypeople, I am not someone who gets tired easily.  If I didn't sing I would never notice this.  It's that I don't have that something extra. Professional singers go to the gym all the time I understand, although, interestingly, the didn't in past eras and there were still plenty of big voices with energy behind them.  For example yesterday I did all the right things.  I got enough sleep, ate healthily, chugged some Muscle Milk (something I haven't had in a long time - in fact the bottles in  my fridge were out of date).  But it wasn't enough to make me superhuman.  And Verdi mezzos need to be superhuman.

So what I have to tell myself is this.  On Saturday I am sure if I start with "Re" after not oversinging Friday (I will ask my teacher what to sing/not sing tomorrow and Friday - tonight I am singing a high soprano part in a Bach cantata, which moves quickly, and has not given me any problems) I will not be tired.  So I will sing it the way I sang it the first go around with the coach.  If they ask for something else (the coach agreed) it will be unlikely to be the Adriana or the Gioconda aria.  They will probably ask for Dido or Dalila, both of which I can sing in my sleep (they are actually the first two things I sang with the Mentor along with Wagner's "Angel").

Interestingly, I think one problem (actually this is a good thing) is that my standards are much higher.  When I was rehearsing Samson et Dalila I muffed quite a few high B flats. One afternoon I even conked out and couldn't hit the high A in Act 3.  But I just considered that all in a day's work.  I was so excited about singing this role in this opera and getting to be hot and all Dalila-ish, and impressing my friends, that that was all I cared about.  If I didn't sound like one of the stars at the Met so what?

I think where I have become chastened is that when I have heard singers at these meeups or at some of these amateur or low level semi professional groups, they sound more like the singers at the met than they do like me.

Well, maybe I will be happy in the same way about my Requiem. It is something for the church to observe Lent, and so I should be able to get a good audience (even if they don't care about  me, or Verdi, they will probably want to give something to the food pantry or whatever the money will be going to), not to mention that I have the biggest set of brass ovaries on the planet for organizing even a small-scale pocket version of this major work!

So wish me luck Saturday.

As some of my friends say, it is T minus 3 (I think?)

Valentine's Day and Beyond

I wasn't going to post anything about Valentine's Day as there is not much left to say about it after all these years. If you aren't familiar with my story you can read here.

But I posted this on my Facebook page, because every year on this anniversary I think it is important to take stock.

it is now 8 years since that fateful Samson et Dalila duet. Every V-Day I think about the Mentor (sometimes I don't think about him for months at a time, amazingly). Do I thank him for my big dramatic mezzo voice that I discovered in my mid50s? The passion for my art that has never waned not even for one day? The fact that nothing will ever be the same? Nonetheless, I am still going out for a simple meal with the love of my life, who never asked to come along on this journey. I am blessed that she is still here when so many are gone.

I also posted this on the Forum because the pseudonym I've used for so long relates to this anniversary, and I thought I ought to just say something about it. The Forum is to me what young people call a "frenemy". I have gotten a lot of help from it but it has made me sad too, as being yet another place to read about the lives of "real" singers.

Right now we're friends again. I got suggestions from two people I really respect, which have spurred me on (if I needed more spurring) to proceed with the Verdi Requiem project. And I got a cute response to my posting about Valentine's Day and my name. This was from a gentleman whom I mostly knew through my pseudonymous blog. He was never a friend of mine but he was a friend of one of the women who wrote there, probably my number one envy-idol, because she not only had the singer-life I wished I had, but also had a lot of the kind of natural sex appeal that I seem not to have unless I work very hard at it (or am in a private situation with someone where we're all clear about what's what). Which is why, despite my leftward leaning political views, I am one of those women feminists love to hate because I still am not convinced that someone like Clarence Thomas is legion in the world of office work. I certainly never encountered anyone who ever even noticed my decolletage let alone commented on it or anything else in an untoward way and I worked in offices for 35 years.

In any event this gentleman was always flirting online with the lady in question, in a way no one has ever flirted with me, except in private, so I was quite startled when he responded to my off-topic post.

Here is my response to his kind comment that "music finds us":

This wasn't just any music. This was a moment of magic, during which I felt like a big diva, not to mention the sexiest and most beautiful woman in the world singing the sexiest aria ever written, and in a church no less!

How could life ever be the same after that?

And there you have it.

I have worked hard in the past eight years, put in hours of blood and sweat in my "practice room" (the loo), sung an entire concert version of Samson et Dalila (minus the chorus), several opera scenes in concert, and numerous church solos, but I have never found that ever again.

As for the Forum itself, it seems that the posted topics are a bit different from the last time I perused it (several years ago?) There are quite a few posts from people with much less experience than I have, and I can answer people like that if I choose. I know about vocal technique, fachs, church repertoire, even what arias and other music might be suitable for different voice types.

I also know quite a bit about health issues.

What I don't know much about are costume fittings, stage makeup (the real kind, not the DIY kind I wear all the time even to do the laundry), travel as work, travel as infidelity trap (the last time I had any hopes of that I was on a business trip for my last job and I fell and fractured my kneecap - a punishment, perhaps?), and dodging passes (if you want to dodge them) during love scenes onstage.

So I don't need to read those posts.

We will see if the Forum and I stay friends.

Now it's back to work, and off to choir practice.

I will wait until the 26th before checking back with the choir director about "Lux Aeterna"

Valentine's Day

For the past six years, I have done most of my writing of a personal nature under a pseudonymn, where I could write about things I can't write about here, but as time goes on I get somewhat bolder (the more compellingly I write here, the more readers I will get) albeit still careful not to write anything that would cause anyone else hurt, or me, embarrassment.

But as my life, for good or ill, changed forever on February 15, 2004, in ways that I both can and can't write about in a public blog, I began rooting around my pseudonymous posts for something profound to say about that day, and about how far I've come.

It has been 7 years since The Mentor Who Shall Not Be Discussed and I sang "Mon Coeur S'Ouvre a ta Voix" together,ending with his spinning me around in his arms, bending me over backwards, staring into my eyes like Svengali, and changing me forever. It has been a long and painful journey, but I would never want to go back. In that moment I changed from a rather stuffy middle-aged woman, who had once sung opera, once been sensual and passionate, and now worked in a corporate job, wore suits that were two sizes too big, and had recently begun attending church, to someone who wanted to sing and embrace life with passion more than anything else in the world, even if it meant burning every bridge I'd ever walked over. I found God in that church, and my voice after more than two decades, but I also found passion that was painfully unrequited, a mentor who gave me my voice but tore me to shreds, and, later, my voice as a playwright, a new voice teacher (actually my old one from the 1970s), and a new church to sing in where I loved the music and was welcomed with nothing but love and respect despite my skepticism about their theology.

In 2008 I got to sing Dalila with a real Samson and now am a bona fide dramatic mezzo working on Amneris and Azucena (although God knows where I'll get to sing that material!)

Every Valentine's Day I ponder my pre-2/15/04 self, and wonder if I would be happier if I could turn the clock back and have things as they were. I don't think so.

Now I am off to have a nice lunch with my partner at La Petit Auberge, a charming French restaurant barely ten paces from her apartment, where we can always eat without worrying about getting her there. Old fashioned and charming. My pre-2/15/04 self would have been happy to do that, and I will be too!

Turned A Corner?

I'm about to start my workday and thought I would post something first.

I think I am beginning to move in the direction of coming out of the funk I've been in since the Carmelites incident. It wasn't enough to stop me from singing or from singing well, but it was enough to stop me from taking myself seriously as a singer - aka making plans.

That and feeling totally overshadowed by the young woman in the choir with the very high, well trained voice, not to mention a conservatory degree. (On the other hand, mezzos are always overshadowed by high sopranos. It goes with the territory.)

I was starting to feel a little better when I began collecting some Bach pieces to sing with the violinist (who definitely takes me seriously) but then my spirits tanked again when I started working on Azucena and saw that there was a bloody high C actually written in the score!

Well, it turns out that Mignon Dunn, at least, doesn't sing it.

When I bought a score at the Juilliard Store, I also bought a cheap recording with Dunn as Azucena. She goes up to an A and back in that run, that's it.

The Condotta is going well if I don't panic. I've scrapped the idea of singing "Va" on the B flat and instead will try to use my teacher's trusty portamento technique. Singing "bruciaaaaato" on an A is easy. Then the tenor sings an A (OK - I probably won't have a tenor most times I'm singing this but I can hear it in my ear). So when I go for the scream, the trick is to start to sing an A (easy) and then just sort of slide up. There's one other B flat at the very end of the opera, which I won't be singing unless I actually sing the entire role, but that's in the middle of a phrase, which I've never had trouble with.

On another note, I got an email out of the blue from one of the other soloists about singing at a special service at the Lutheran church on May 22 when they will be rededicating their magnificent Tiffany windows (which had been repaired). Several years ago they had a concert series to raise money for this effort, which is how I got to put on my concert version of Samson et Dalila. The woman who emailed me had coordinated the concert series and thought it would be nice for me to sing at the rededication, as I had been a major player in the campaign. I would really love to do that. The choir will be singing the anthem, so I volunteered to sing Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" at Communion, which would fit in with the theme.

I really hope this lights a fire under me. (OOPS! If I'm thinking about Azucena that's not funny.)

Anyhow, I need to get motivated again.

More from May 17, 2008 Samson et Dalila in Concert

OK. this came as a total surprise. I had expected to receive the earlier one seen here, because my friend, who took it with a digital camera and then had to figure out how to make a print of it, told me it was coming. But this one was a complete surprise.

If I haven't mentioned it already, this performance was the culmination of over four years of planning and dreaming of singing this role. It should have allowed me an afterglow lasting several weeks, at least, where I could have been the person who sang that role, talking about it to friends, the way one talks about a prom or a wedding, but it just so happened that the very next day there was some ugliness at work, caused by mistakes that, yes, I was partially responsible for, but that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't outsourced a lot of work to the Philippines! So that work problem ended up front and center on my screen (and everyone else's) which meant no one asked about or was interested in hearing about my special day. (Even I didn't have the energy to deliciously daydream about it.)

I don't know about other people, but for me, a major achievement is special not only in and of itself, but also in that it affects my feelings about myself. So no matter how dreary my daylife was (and believe me, it was dreary!!) to a handful of people on one afternoon, I was a real diva. I mean what I did wouldn't bear discussing with the Forum crowd, who are off auditioning for C and D houses for a paycheck, but to laypeople, I'm a singer.

I've often thought if I had lived in a small town, I would really have been a diva doing something like that, since it would have been the extent of most people's exposure to opera. But not here in the Big Apple, alas.

So now it's back to work. On my art, I mean. And yes, on my freelance editing, which is nice because it's something I do but it doesn't define me. If I walk into the supermarket with all my makeup on, no one knows if I'm a copy editor, a paid performing artist, or a lady of the evening in the morning (apologies to Rogers and Hart).

On the Right Track

Why is it that I always forget that if I want to sing well in this new fach that I've sort of fallen into, I have to monitor every note I sing and everything I do, particularly what I eat and don't eat, how much rest I get, and how much (and how) I talk.

For the past several weeks now, we haven't had any gas to cook with (details over at "the other place" because it involves money and an adversarial relationship). So my main protein staple, fish, is impossible to cook for myself. It's a bummer because now that I'm an underemployed freelancer, I had been trying to cook at home to save money. I do live around the corner from Gourmet Garage, which has a lot of prepared foods that are not that expensive, but they haven't had much fish. So I was eating a lot of ravioli and manicotti with cheese. Eating this high a percentage of carbohydrate really saps my energy. It's not something I would notice if I weren't singing material written for a voice (like mine) that's huge and requires major support, but I can really tell when I don't have that extra oomph (and with out it, sweetie, those B flats ain't happening). Anyhow, yesterday I really lucked out and bought some prepared tilapia (I know a woman I respect enormously, both re: singing and nutrition says tilapia tastes like papers towels, but nevertheless, I really like it)and had it for lunch two days running and last night I had some more tilapia (cooked from scratch) at my partner's house.

I also have been sleeping better since the little dachshund isn't in danger of death, just needs to be confined and not handled (which is very hard for everyone).

So today I cautiously attacked "Chi ti salva". First I just sang that section and that note was ok-ish. Ditto singing beginning with "Ma s'io ti salva, giurami". Then I started from the very beginning of the scene ("L'abborita rivale a me sfuggia"). I watched every single note and allowed myself all breaks. One important thing I have to do is not be lazy about the recits. If I am lazy either by singing too bombastically or too softly, my larynx is not in the right place. So in any event I got through the first B flat just barely (it was straight, and not held for one second more than the note value) but I decided to move on and of course in the reprise it was glorious, ditto when I made myself sing again from "Chi ti salva".

So how do I sing like that all the time??? I wish I knew. I will have a big confab with my teacher about it Tuesday. We can focus on this because since I liked how the Judgment Scene sounded I can give it a rest for a few weeks.

Then I did some work on the Dalila and Daddy duet, again, not letting myself get funky with it.

I don't know where my bad habit of getting "funky" (by which I mean singing too loud in the chest register, dropping the volume suddenly here and there, like a jazz singer, playing with the words in ways that are not vocally healthy) came from. I never sang jazz or pop, just Gilbert and Sullivan. Possibly it's because very early on, when I was a heavy smoker, I sang easy things (meaning nothing that went above an F or F sharp) and fooled around with the sex, the drama, the comedy, whatever, and people were forgiving because I was young and svelte and had a lot of chutzpah. So it's easy to slip back into that sort of pattern particularly singing Dalila, who has very little to sing that's vocally challenging other than two exposed high B flats and a bit of monologue in the Third Act.

I was very pleased with how I handled this issue in the Judgment Scene - namely, observing the dynamic markings to a T and that's it!! No getting "emo" as the young people say. So I need to revisit the score of Samson et Dalila and look at the dynamic markings in the same way. The roulade (AKA the "battle cry") in the duet is sounding more under control.

My Big Day - May 17, 2008

It's taken two years and three days, but I finally got a photo ( a print, that I had to scan with my new printer)of My Big Day, aka, the concert production of Samson et Dalila that I put on at the Lutheran church where I sing.

For people who perform operatic roles all the time, this may not seem like much, but to me, let's just say it was a big expletive deleted deal, to quote Vice President Joe Biden.

It was as big a deal as a prom, a wedding, or a senior recital.

Ever since my life was changed forever on February 15, 2004 when I sang "Mon Coeur" in a Valentine's Day service at the Unitarian Church, with my oft-discussed mentor as my strongman , I had a little plan in the back of my mind to sing the role of Dalila somewhere, somehow.

This just sort of fell into my lap. The Lutheran church was having a concert series as part of a capital campaign so I put Samson et Dalila in concert on the schedule. We didn't have a chorus or a ballet, or an orchestra, just three singers (the bass, who did yeoman duty in three roles, isn't shown here) and a fabulous pianist.

I don't know if the role is a totally perfect fit for my voice - the tessitura is a bit low and at the end of 45 minutes of singing I had to open my mouth and sing a high B flat (had me in mortal terror for six months but thanks to chugging a quart of Muscle Milk I actually did it) but the role sure is a totally perfect fit for my personality and I had a ball.

For a variety of reasons, I haven't had the energy to try this again with another opera, but my wheels are spinning now, and if I don't get cast in someone else's production, I am going to come up with something.