Last night I watched Maytime again. My sense of it was quite different from my sense of it four years ago. First, I realized how dated some of it was. The girl's young fiance makes her choose between going to New York to study voice and try to have a career, and marrying him. That wouldn't happen today, certainly not among Millennials of a certain socioeconomic class. The girl would go to New York, launch her career, then "pair off" with someone she might want to marry with the understanding that the marriage would be a partnership in which instance by instance, they negotiated whose career was more important (that year, that month). Even after children arrived.
The first time I realized that we were into new territory in that regard was when a friend's daughter (who was born in 1970, so she's more Gen X) decided to go to graduate school in a different city from where her fiance was living, which was where, eventually, they planned to settle. That would have been unheard of in my day. If you were lucky enough to "nail" a partner that you were madly in love with, everything else just sort of fell by the wayside if necessary. I was thinking, for example, of my giving up singing at 30. I mean there were a myriad factors, most notably that I wasn't really willing to put in the work to take care of my instrument (although by the end I was singing very well from a technical standpoint). But in addition to needing to earn a living and get a college degree in my off hours (getting a degree in music never occurred to me; my one exposure to music theory bored me to tears) and the fact that "political dykes" didn't "invest themselves in a patriarchal art form like opera", there was the relationship. My partner would never have countenanced my doing anything that took me away from her for extended periods. In fact, I remember one of our ugliest quarrels (during the 20 years of our time together that I recall as "happy") took place when, while I was enrolled in college, taking a course called "Women in the Law", I got a chance to go to a conference on Women in the Law (in Detroit of all places) over a weekend. She kicked and screamed and yelled and we didn't speak to each other for the days leading up to my departure. I think the thaw broke when I got back but I never did anything similar again unless it was something required by work.
And getting back to Maytime, of course no doubt today, the older teacher/mentor's attraction to his pupil and his request that she marry him (the subject comes up when she tells him how much he has done for her and asks what she can do in return) would be loosely categorized under the heading of "sexual harrassment" (and "marry" probably wouldn't have been the word used, although it might have been; he seemed more interested in "possessing" her than in a roll in the hay).
On another subject, yesterday I went to a free conference called "Aging Artfully". It was a series of lectures and panel discussions aimed at showing seniors how engaging with the arts (as a participant, not a passive viewer or listener) can keep a person young and engaged. I didn't learn much there that would help me with my quest for venues to produce concerts in, but there was much that I identified with: the need to be seen, how being "seen" makes you an artist, the need to feel safe being "seen", the need to feel grounded, the need to feel safe but that "unfamiliar" and "unsafe" are not synonyms (a big one for me), and how listening to music can calm people with dementia.
Actually, I probably learned more techniques that I can use with my partner, many of which I already use: playing music for her on Youtube, showing her paintings and photographs on my iPad, looking through her old art books.
And they addressed ageism. One man mentioned that people (including older adults!) make stupid and disparaging jokes about "getting old" and "old people" of a sort that no one (at least no civilized person who moves in the circles we move in) would make about a racial or ethnic group.
One disappointment. I saw clips of a number of senior choruses but no performance classes (free or low fee) for seniors. That is what I would be most interested in. Coaching for solo performers ending in a concert (even just for each other and our friends).
Showing posts with label ageism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ageism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 9, 2018
Thursday, July 6, 2017
On Ageism (2)
Almost exactly two years ago I wrote this article and thought that this would be a good time for a second pass.
The "triggering event" was the posting, by an incredibly troubled gay trans man, of a picture of Heidi Klum in a costume, which, silly out of touch me (!), I thought was a real picture of a woman in her late 70s or 80s. I do not attribute his being "troubled" to his being trans or gay; I only mention these things because here is someone super-sensitive to his own issues, yet totally clueless about the sting of ageism. (He posted the picture with a comment saying "this is how I feel if people ask me out after 9 pm.) Quite frankly, it doesn't matter if this was a real picture of an elderly woman, or not. I skimmed the Heidi Klum article to see what her rationale was for choosing this costume for Hallowe'en but couldn't find anything other than that she liked to work hard to make costumes realistic (someone is shown painting varicose veins on her legs). If she had done this as a teachable moment, to teach people about ageism (similarly to slim women who have put on a "fat suit" to highlight that fat people are treated with less respect than slim people) that would have been fine, and I am not judging her, only questioning the taste and sensitivity shown by the person who posted the picture. (I mean long ago people decided it was offensive for white people to dress up in blackface whether those people themselves were actually racist or not. Ditto posting photographs of white people dressed up in blackface.) I quite frankly don't see any difference here.) I unfriended him. I am sick of him anyhow. He is one of the most self-absorbed, narcissistic people I have ever met. I gave him a pass on all that because of his own struggles, including that his mother died recently (she was younger than I am), but enough is enough. Grow up! Despite having unfriended him, I got a comment to my comment by one of his (female) friends that was insulting, childish, full of coarse language, and basically beside the point. I should pity these children. God help them if they ever decide to grow up.
I mean I have spent the past nine months caring for a woman in her 80s who may be near death, fighting bureaucracies that would be just as happy if she died, especially now. I have become knowledgeable about services that are available to seniors (which I may need to avail myself of as well at some point - I am going to be 67). I have had serious, real, conversations with people about aging. These are real problems.
After reading the inane offensive commentary of this young man and his friends I feel that I need a bath.
With that, I will end with paraphrasing a quote from Law and Order's Jack McCoy (in a far darker, uglier context): "I guess there are some people who don't deserve to grow old." Growing old is a privilege, young pup, not a joke.
The "triggering event" was the posting, by an incredibly troubled gay trans man, of a picture of Heidi Klum in a costume, which, silly out of touch me (!), I thought was a real picture of a woman in her late 70s or 80s. I do not attribute his being "troubled" to his being trans or gay; I only mention these things because here is someone super-sensitive to his own issues, yet totally clueless about the sting of ageism. (He posted the picture with a comment saying "this is how I feel if people ask me out after 9 pm.) Quite frankly, it doesn't matter if this was a real picture of an elderly woman, or not. I skimmed the Heidi Klum article to see what her rationale was for choosing this costume for Hallowe'en but couldn't find anything other than that she liked to work hard to make costumes realistic (someone is shown painting varicose veins on her legs). If she had done this as a teachable moment, to teach people about ageism (similarly to slim women who have put on a "fat suit" to highlight that fat people are treated with less respect than slim people) that would have been fine, and I am not judging her, only questioning the taste and sensitivity shown by the person who posted the picture. (I mean long ago people decided it was offensive for white people to dress up in blackface whether those people themselves were actually racist or not. Ditto posting photographs of white people dressed up in blackface.) I quite frankly don't see any difference here.) I unfriended him. I am sick of him anyhow. He is one of the most self-absorbed, narcissistic people I have ever met. I gave him a pass on all that because of his own struggles, including that his mother died recently (she was younger than I am), but enough is enough. Grow up! Despite having unfriended him, I got a comment to my comment by one of his (female) friends that was insulting, childish, full of coarse language, and basically beside the point. I should pity these children. God help them if they ever decide to grow up.
I mean I have spent the past nine months caring for a woman in her 80s who may be near death, fighting bureaucracies that would be just as happy if she died, especially now. I have become knowledgeable about services that are available to seniors (which I may need to avail myself of as well at some point - I am going to be 67). I have had serious, real, conversations with people about aging. These are real problems.
After reading the inane offensive commentary of this young man and his friends I feel that I need a bath.
With that, I will end with paraphrasing a quote from Law and Order's Jack McCoy (in a far darker, uglier context): "I guess there are some people who don't deserve to grow old." Growing old is a privilege, young pup, not a joke.
Wednesday, May 25, 2016
This is Long Overdue (Now Where's my Videographer?)
I have written so much about the short-sightedness and ignorance of age discrimination in the performing arts, and everywhere, so three cheers to this well-respected blogger (which I apparently am not) for posting this.
http://kashu-do.blogspot.cz/2016/05/the-aging-operatic-voice-baseless.html
The video of the "amateur" soprano singing "La Vergine degli'Angeli" is beyond amazing. So yes, this is possible. There is no reason to throw in the towel if you're over 50 or over 60. There's no reason why I should assume (or other people should assume) that how I sounded at 57 must be the best I'm ever going to sound and that after that it will be downhill all the way. There's no reason to assume that someone over 55 is "not a future investment". I can understand people worrying when it comes to playing a character, or doing certain kinds of staging, but why does the Oratorio Society of New York have an age limit of 40 for their solo competition? Does it matter what you look like if you're singing with a chorus and an orchestra? Does it matter if you have mobility challenges that make it hard for you to look graceful running down a flight of stairs if you can sing Bach glorioiusly?
But this does underscore the need for people to have people in their lives who know what to do with a video camera. If the elderly soprano hadn't had someone to make that Youtube video, no one would know about her. So who did that, I wonder?
If nothing else, it gives me hope. I am my own future investment.
http://kashu-do.blogspot.cz/2016/05/the-aging-operatic-voice-baseless.html
The video of the "amateur" soprano singing "La Vergine degli'Angeli" is beyond amazing. So yes, this is possible. There is no reason to throw in the towel if you're over 50 or over 60. There's no reason why I should assume (or other people should assume) that how I sounded at 57 must be the best I'm ever going to sound and that after that it will be downhill all the way. There's no reason to assume that someone over 55 is "not a future investment". I can understand people worrying when it comes to playing a character, or doing certain kinds of staging, but why does the Oratorio Society of New York have an age limit of 40 for their solo competition? Does it matter what you look like if you're singing with a chorus and an orchestra? Does it matter if you have mobility challenges that make it hard for you to look graceful running down a flight of stairs if you can sing Bach glorioiusly?
But this does underscore the need for people to have people in their lives who know what to do with a video camera. If the elderly soprano hadn't had someone to make that Youtube video, no one would know about her. So who did that, I wonder?
If nothing else, it gives me hope. I am my own future investment.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Young Venus
I am loathe to post anything negative on my birthday, on the other hand, when better than the actual day of my 65th birthday to call out yet another egregious instance of ageism in opera.
When I get the Times in the morning, naturally the first thing I read is the arts section, and today the first thing I read was this.
Yes, it's wonderful that someone had the ambition, imagination, and vision to mount a Wagner opera on a shoestring, with an orchestra no less. And if this person was a 25-year-old conducting student, bravo! I was just about waking up, putting down my last glass of bourbon, and rubbing my eyes at that age.
But why in Heaven's name do the singers in this production have to be young??? Does Wagner have to be hijacked by YAPPers too? OK, so most of these no pay opera companies (the ones that rejected me out of hand for the most part) want to use young singers, so they produce things like The Marriage of Figaro or La Boheme, occasionally making a foray into heavier operas with large female casts (you always get more women than men interested in these things) like Suor Angelica or Dialogue of the Carmelites, using, by choice a heavily made up 30something in roles like La Zia Principessa or the Old Prioress. But Wagner??? Yes, there is an outlet for older people to sing Wagner, I know. The pay to sing that my teacher is involved in does concert productions of Wagner and Strauss (as well as other things) and many of their stalwarts are singers in their 50s (and some of the men, like my teacher, are in their 60s) who have been singing for decades and have moved into this repertoire slowly.
But how about something new and exciting for older singers who may be new and exciting? Reading the article the word "young" was used 8 times; 6 times to describe the singers they wanted to use and gear this new company toward, once to describe the tenor singing the role of Tannhauser, and once as a synonym for "new" as in "young opera companies". Their source of singers to cast this Tannhauser with? YAP tracker.
This made me really really really angry. Yes, I am way too old to play Rosina (nor would I want to). But I am not too old to play Venus!! I even have a usable B natural now. And it doesn't matter if I have physical challenges. All she does is lie on a couch. Marjorie Lawrence played Venus after she had polio for Pete's sake.
I am not saying that I am such a stellar package that I would have been cast in a role by that company. But I would like to have known about it!!
When I get the Times in the morning, naturally the first thing I read is the arts section, and today the first thing I read was this.
Yes, it's wonderful that someone had the ambition, imagination, and vision to mount a Wagner opera on a shoestring, with an orchestra no less. And if this person was a 25-year-old conducting student, bravo! I was just about waking up, putting down my last glass of bourbon, and rubbing my eyes at that age.
But why in Heaven's name do the singers in this production have to be young??? Does Wagner have to be hijacked by YAPPers too? OK, so most of these no pay opera companies (the ones that rejected me out of hand for the most part) want to use young singers, so they produce things like The Marriage of Figaro or La Boheme, occasionally making a foray into heavier operas with large female casts (you always get more women than men interested in these things) like Suor Angelica or Dialogue of the Carmelites, using, by choice a heavily made up 30something in roles like La Zia Principessa or the Old Prioress. But Wagner??? Yes, there is an outlet for older people to sing Wagner, I know. The pay to sing that my teacher is involved in does concert productions of Wagner and Strauss (as well as other things) and many of their stalwarts are singers in their 50s (and some of the men, like my teacher, are in their 60s) who have been singing for decades and have moved into this repertoire slowly.
But how about something new and exciting for older singers who may be new and exciting? Reading the article the word "young" was used 8 times; 6 times to describe the singers they wanted to use and gear this new company toward, once to describe the tenor singing the role of Tannhauser, and once as a synonym for "new" as in "young opera companies". Their source of singers to cast this Tannhauser with? YAP tracker.
This made me really really really angry. Yes, I am way too old to play Rosina (nor would I want to). But I am not too old to play Venus!! I even have a usable B natural now. And it doesn't matter if I have physical challenges. All she does is lie on a couch. Marjorie Lawrence played Venus after she had polio for Pete's sake.
I am not saying that I am such a stellar package that I would have been cast in a role by that company. But I would like to have known about it!!
Thursday, July 23, 2015
On Ageism
Over a year ago, I wrote a post on Sexism. So as I am now less than a week away from my 65th birthday, a post on ageism is way overdue.
For whatever reason, ageism has stung me in ways that no other "isms" ever did.
Sexism, to me, anyhow, can be taken to be in the eye of the beholder. Other than laws preventing women, for example, from voting or practicing medicine or law, a lot is subjective. Yes, I'm glad we have a lot of women doctors (I usually prefer them) but is life better now that there are practically no full-time "homemakers" to take care of not only children and elderly parents but also distressed or homebound neighbors? And maybe life was sweeter and more humane when for women, at least, there was still the option, married or not, to be unambitious.
Then there was homophobia. I never looked gay, so I never encountered it in public places. Much as I clung to my older (and butch-dressing) partner, people were mind-bogglingly clueless as to the fact that we were a couple. And regarding those who knew (many of whom were not only embarrassed, but embarrassed that they were embarrassed), hey, it was fun knowing that people thought you were a bit louche.
But ageism has smarted and stung (and often come as a surprise). My first encounter with it was when I was in my mid 40s, finally feeling my oats as someone mature enough to be a good boss, and was told that I had been turned down for a management position because I was too "stuffy". Mmmm, isn't being a bit "stuffy" part of being a boss? (And this had nothing to do with technology, which wasn't yet around then. And I'm the last person in the world that most people would consider "stuffy"...it was only a corporate persona I had adopted).
Then there's the feeling of being ignored. Women who refer to "catcalling" as a universal scourge have no idea that the statute of limitations runs out when you're about 45, not matter how great a body you have. For example, I wore this
one day when it was close to 100 degrees, here, there, and yonder all over the city and no one gave me a second look.
And of course no one thinks you have any sort of a future. As I've written before in these "pages", the most hurtful rejection I got after an audition had nothing to do with my singing, my acting, or even that I looked to old for the part (it was La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica), but rather to the fact that I was "not a future investment". That was about 7 years ago and I sing 200 times better now OK, I probably am no longer mobile enough to do certain kinds of staging, but I can sing a concert opera from a book, and in a fully staged production of Suor Angelica the Principessa often has a cane!
Worst of all are the jokes. People who would never make sweeping generalizations about racial, ethnic, or sexual identity groups in polite company (or in a public post on Facebook) think it's perfectly OK to do this about "old people". Yesterday I was outraged by a woman (probably in her 30s) who not only said she hated the condescending tone that "old people" use, but, when I tried to make a teachable moment by commenting that condescending is an attitude not an age, she got herself into deeper and deeper doo doo by explaining why old people are condescending. Then she said "well not all of them, but everyone I know who's condescending is old". Can you imagine the uproar there would have been if instead of "old" she had written "black" or "Jewish" and instead of "condescending" she had used some other generic put-down?? And thinking she was getting herself out of the doo doo by saying "not all old people are like that????" (Again, think of a substitution, and read it back to yourself.)
Maybe I am not aging gracefully. I don't mind having some orthopedic problems (unless it's snowing), and I am ecstatic that I no longer have to throw myself into the ratrace of hateful, stressful, boring jobs to pay my bills and have health insurance. And I know I'm still hot, even if you think (out of deference?) you have to know me in person to say so.
But I haven't had my moment yet. I'm still waiting for it. I have a lot of growing and learning to do. I'm not yet ready to pass the baton on to the 20somethings fresh out of music school (which I never went to) and kvell over them in a motherly way. Hey!!! I still see them as my competition!!
I don't mean something tacky and silly like "I'm young at heart". There's nothing that makes me squirm as much as women (it's usually women) over a certain age in tv commercials being "cute" about how young they feel, hoping to elicit the same response that children get. I'm so not like that. I'm not "cute"; I'm a serious woman and a serious artist who can still raise the temperature in a room by playing Dalila.
For whatever reason, ageism has stung me in ways that no other "isms" ever did.
Sexism, to me, anyhow, can be taken to be in the eye of the beholder. Other than laws preventing women, for example, from voting or practicing medicine or law, a lot is subjective. Yes, I'm glad we have a lot of women doctors (I usually prefer them) but is life better now that there are practically no full-time "homemakers" to take care of not only children and elderly parents but also distressed or homebound neighbors? And maybe life was sweeter and more humane when for women, at least, there was still the option, married or not, to be unambitious.
Then there was homophobia. I never looked gay, so I never encountered it in public places. Much as I clung to my older (and butch-dressing) partner, people were mind-bogglingly clueless as to the fact that we were a couple. And regarding those who knew (many of whom were not only embarrassed, but embarrassed that they were embarrassed), hey, it was fun knowing that people thought you were a bit louche.
But ageism has smarted and stung (and often come as a surprise). My first encounter with it was when I was in my mid 40s, finally feeling my oats as someone mature enough to be a good boss, and was told that I had been turned down for a management position because I was too "stuffy". Mmmm, isn't being a bit "stuffy" part of being a boss? (And this had nothing to do with technology, which wasn't yet around then. And I'm the last person in the world that most people would consider "stuffy"...it was only a corporate persona I had adopted).
Then there's the feeling of being ignored. Women who refer to "catcalling" as a universal scourge have no idea that the statute of limitations runs out when you're about 45, not matter how great a body you have. For example, I wore this
one day when it was close to 100 degrees, here, there, and yonder all over the city and no one gave me a second look.
And of course no one thinks you have any sort of a future. As I've written before in these "pages", the most hurtful rejection I got after an audition had nothing to do with my singing, my acting, or even that I looked to old for the part (it was La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica), but rather to the fact that I was "not a future investment". That was about 7 years ago and I sing 200 times better now OK, I probably am no longer mobile enough to do certain kinds of staging, but I can sing a concert opera from a book, and in a fully staged production of Suor Angelica the Principessa often has a cane!
Worst of all are the jokes. People who would never make sweeping generalizations about racial, ethnic, or sexual identity groups in polite company (or in a public post on Facebook) think it's perfectly OK to do this about "old people". Yesterday I was outraged by a woman (probably in her 30s) who not only said she hated the condescending tone that "old people" use, but, when I tried to make a teachable moment by commenting that condescending is an attitude not an age, she got herself into deeper and deeper doo doo by explaining why old people are condescending. Then she said "well not all of them, but everyone I know who's condescending is old". Can you imagine the uproar there would have been if instead of "old" she had written "black" or "Jewish" and instead of "condescending" she had used some other generic put-down?? And thinking she was getting herself out of the doo doo by saying "not all old people are like that????" (Again, think of a substitution, and read it back to yourself.)
Maybe I am not aging gracefully. I don't mind having some orthopedic problems (unless it's snowing), and I am ecstatic that I no longer have to throw myself into the ratrace of hateful, stressful, boring jobs to pay my bills and have health insurance. And I know I'm still hot, even if you think (out of deference?) you have to know me in person to say so.
But I haven't had my moment yet. I'm still waiting for it. I have a lot of growing and learning to do. I'm not yet ready to pass the baton on to the 20somethings fresh out of music school (which I never went to) and kvell over them in a motherly way. Hey!!! I still see them as my competition!!
I don't mean something tacky and silly like "I'm young at heart". There's nothing that makes me squirm as much as women (it's usually women) over a certain age in tv commercials being "cute" about how young they feel, hoping to elicit the same response that children get. I'm so not like that. I'm not "cute"; I'm a serious woman and a serious artist who can still raise the temperature in a room by playing Dalila.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
A Dream Deferred Whose Hour Has Come
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.
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.
Saturday, April 25, 2015
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.
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.
Thursday, February 19, 2015
Lent is Better Than New Year's
Even though I don't consider myself Christian (I do consider myself partially Christian as Unitarianism is a blend of everything), I like the idea of observing Lent. As I jokingly said, observing one or more spiritual disciplines for 40 days definitely beats the Jewish alternative of making yourself sick for 24 hours by not eating or drinking water.
This year there was an article circulating on Facebook about 10 ways to observe Lent, and I have picked four, the last one being the most relevant here.
The first two have to do with not acquiring and getting rid of "stuff", which is always a good thing to do, and the third said "no gossiping". I am not always sure what constitutes "gossiping", but I will try not to pass along stories I have heard about people that sound "juicy" but that come from a third party and may not even be true. I suppose "gossiping" can also be construed to mean repeating things told to one in confidence, which of course I would never do, unless I found a way to tell the story anonymously if I thought it was necessary in a particular context, to help other people.
The fourth observance that I really plan to stick to is "no complaining". For me that means in writing as well as out loud. Who knows? Maybe it will make me feel better. I feel that I am constantly working at feeling grateful, which sometimes feels as hard as working out. I know that a lot of my bad feelings come from what my therapist calls "affluenza" (in my case the issue has less to do with money than with artistic and professional success), that is, being surrounded by extremely successful people all the time because of where I live.
So I will focus on positive things. We got the choir schedule running from Lent through Easter so my task now (in addition to learning all that music) is to look around for an occasion to sing an appropriate solo, either at the regular service when there is no choir or at one of the Spanish services. The "sexy Agnus Dei" is too long, but it might be OK for the Spanish Good Friday service, or I could make a cut in it. I would also love to do the Bach "Qui Sedes" again. Maybe on the Sunday when the choir is not singing (I think the informal choir sings on that day) I could sing it during communion. (I have already sung it in the Spanish service, on Good Friday two years ago.) Or there are two other settings of the "Qui Sedes" text, both by Vivaldi. On Good Friday the choir will be singing the Dvorak Requiem. I am going to see if there is a mezzo solo. If so, I will see what the politic thing to do would be a propos of finding a place to sing it. Or I could look at the Inflammatus from the Dvorak Stabat Mater. This is a favorite with some contraltos I know, but it is not terribly low (in a similar range to "O Rest in the Lord").
Lastly, the issue of Classical Singer for which I was interviewed has come out. The article was about singers who started late. From reading it, I can see that we run the gamut from people who began in their mid 30s who are singing either professionally or in high level amateur productions, to people like me, who really didn't develop our voices fully until we were much older. If there was a takeaway from the article for me, it had less to do with singing per se than with he fact that people (because everyone is living longer) are starting all sorts of things when we're older and it's stupid to write us off. I mean there's the issue of looks, but there's all sorts of classical singing going on where looks shouldn't matter. As I said in my quote about ageism, if it's about looks, that's one thing, but to write people in their 50s and 60s off because we are probably on a downward trajectory is very wrong-headed nowadays.
This year there was an article circulating on Facebook about 10 ways to observe Lent, and I have picked four, the last one being the most relevant here.
The first two have to do with not acquiring and getting rid of "stuff", which is always a good thing to do, and the third said "no gossiping". I am not always sure what constitutes "gossiping", but I will try not to pass along stories I have heard about people that sound "juicy" but that come from a third party and may not even be true. I suppose "gossiping" can also be construed to mean repeating things told to one in confidence, which of course I would never do, unless I found a way to tell the story anonymously if I thought it was necessary in a particular context, to help other people.
The fourth observance that I really plan to stick to is "no complaining". For me that means in writing as well as out loud. Who knows? Maybe it will make me feel better. I feel that I am constantly working at feeling grateful, which sometimes feels as hard as working out. I know that a lot of my bad feelings come from what my therapist calls "affluenza" (in my case the issue has less to do with money than with artistic and professional success), that is, being surrounded by extremely successful people all the time because of where I live.
So I will focus on positive things. We got the choir schedule running from Lent through Easter so my task now (in addition to learning all that music) is to look around for an occasion to sing an appropriate solo, either at the regular service when there is no choir or at one of the Spanish services. The "sexy Agnus Dei" is too long, but it might be OK for the Spanish Good Friday service, or I could make a cut in it. I would also love to do the Bach "Qui Sedes" again. Maybe on the Sunday when the choir is not singing (I think the informal choir sings on that day) I could sing it during communion. (I have already sung it in the Spanish service, on Good Friday two years ago.) Or there are two other settings of the "Qui Sedes" text, both by Vivaldi. On Good Friday the choir will be singing the Dvorak Requiem. I am going to see if there is a mezzo solo. If so, I will see what the politic thing to do would be a propos of finding a place to sing it. Or I could look at the Inflammatus from the Dvorak Stabat Mater. This is a favorite with some contraltos I know, but it is not terribly low (in a similar range to "O Rest in the Lord").
Lastly, the issue of Classical Singer for which I was interviewed has come out. The article was about singers who started late. From reading it, I can see that we run the gamut from people who began in their mid 30s who are singing either professionally or in high level amateur productions, to people like me, who really didn't develop our voices fully until we were much older. If there was a takeaway from the article for me, it had less to do with singing per se than with he fact that people (because everyone is living longer) are starting all sorts of things when we're older and it's stupid to write us off. I mean there's the issue of looks, but there's all sorts of classical singing going on where looks shouldn't matter. As I said in my quote about ageism, if it's about looks, that's one thing, but to write people in their 50s and 60s off because we are probably on a downward trajectory is very wrong-headed nowadays.
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
Don't Mourn, Organize!
I don't think I have used this phrase as a blog post title, although apparently I quoted it in another post. Good. One thing my therapist told me to do was try to make this blog more searchable through key words. And this is a saying that people will search, albeit for totally other purposes. But then, who knows?
Yesterday I had another "Little Miss"-related source of fury. Apparently she sang something this past Sunday (our choir wasn't there) and someone made a videotape (she has oodles of these whereas I have only one - from church at any rate, and not many more otherwise) and then I saw it because a woman from church (who is actually a personal friend of mine and did come to my Carmen and make a video from her phone, which she posted to my Facebook page although she didn't circulate it) posted it somewhere for public viewing with a gushing paean to Little Miss saying how lucky the church was to have such wonderful young talent.
When I was going over my New Year's resolutions with my therapist, she was confused by number 5
Talk about myself and write about myself broadly. I still believe there is someone out there who would find my whole "package" intriguing, even with all the imperfections and the lack of a traditional history (and the uncertainty of my "future"). Remember, there are guys who love girls with acne and scars (I hope this doesn't offend anyone).
and asked me what I was looking for here, friends? a "guy"? (The latter, no! I used that as a metaphor.)
What I am looking for is someone who is interested in me because I am 64 and singing so much better than I did when I was 54 (in fact, I feel that I have made more progress in the past year than I made in the preceding 9, probably because all those tiny muscles are finally doing what they are supposed to). To stop seeing myself as a less-desirable version of what people desire most: a singer in her 20s or at least her 30s (there are almost no singers in my fach in their 20s), but to see myself as valuable for what I actually am. That was what prompted the comment about acne and scars. I need to appeal to someone - a journalist, a physician, a DMus who is studying older singers - who wants to showcase me (or other people whose studies took a similar trajectory) just the way I am.
The other problem with being older is that younger people (I mean today, in 2015) have access to all sorts of technology, and, more importantly, their friends and family do too (and their family is still living). I am probably more tech savvy than most people my age, because of what I do for a living, but I don't have friends who come to hear me sing equipped with recording devices that they will automatically whip out. The one friend who tried to do this on September 11 had problems, and the woman I referred to earlier managed to make one short video of Carmen but that was it. My teacher always would make an audiotape of my performances but this was in the form of a CD of very poor quality and anyhow CDs have gone the way of the Edsel. Also, young people are more likely to have a gaggle of "fans" whether they be blood relatives, parents, or BFFs who have a quid pro quo setup with attending performances and applauding. My friends who are my age are either too busy or have too many health problems, or would rather go hear free chamber music at Juilliard.
So as for the title of this post, after noticing the video posting (I did not play it or comment on it) I messaged the man who started the Spanish service (who is lovely and always made nice comments about my singing) and asked if he would bring his video camera or phone with video capabilities on the 15th when I am singing "Et Exsultavit" in the Spanish service and he said "it would be his pleasure".
Speaking of "Et Exsultavit", I sang through it after not having sung it for several years and it is like the difference between night and day. I am singing it now with my big, dark, dramatic voice (although it is a melismatic piece, not a dramatic one) and my voice moves as easily as it ever did, and the long run (which many professional singers opt out of and break up) was easier than it ever was, singing full voice with a big pharyngeal space. And Giovanna Seymour continues to rock.
I just now need a claque. One that loves older women.
Yesterday I had another "Little Miss"-related source of fury. Apparently she sang something this past Sunday (our choir wasn't there) and someone made a videotape (she has oodles of these whereas I have only one - from church at any rate, and not many more otherwise) and then I saw it because a woman from church (who is actually a personal friend of mine and did come to my Carmen and make a video from her phone, which she posted to my Facebook page although she didn't circulate it) posted it somewhere for public viewing with a gushing paean to Little Miss saying how lucky the church was to have such wonderful young talent.
When I was going over my New Year's resolutions with my therapist, she was confused by number 5
Talk about myself and write about myself broadly. I still believe there is someone out there who would find my whole "package" intriguing, even with all the imperfections and the lack of a traditional history (and the uncertainty of my "future"). Remember, there are guys who love girls with acne and scars (I hope this doesn't offend anyone).
and asked me what I was looking for here, friends? a "guy"? (The latter, no! I used that as a metaphor.)
What I am looking for is someone who is interested in me because I am 64 and singing so much better than I did when I was 54 (in fact, I feel that I have made more progress in the past year than I made in the preceding 9, probably because all those tiny muscles are finally doing what they are supposed to). To stop seeing myself as a less-desirable version of what people desire most: a singer in her 20s or at least her 30s (there are almost no singers in my fach in their 20s), but to see myself as valuable for what I actually am. That was what prompted the comment about acne and scars. I need to appeal to someone - a journalist, a physician, a DMus who is studying older singers - who wants to showcase me (or other people whose studies took a similar trajectory) just the way I am.
The other problem with being older is that younger people (I mean today, in 2015) have access to all sorts of technology, and, more importantly, their friends and family do too (and their family is still living). I am probably more tech savvy than most people my age, because of what I do for a living, but I don't have friends who come to hear me sing equipped with recording devices that they will automatically whip out. The one friend who tried to do this on September 11 had problems, and the woman I referred to earlier managed to make one short video of Carmen but that was it. My teacher always would make an audiotape of my performances but this was in the form of a CD of very poor quality and anyhow CDs have gone the way of the Edsel. Also, young people are more likely to have a gaggle of "fans" whether they be blood relatives, parents, or BFFs who have a quid pro quo setup with attending performances and applauding. My friends who are my age are either too busy or have too many health problems, or would rather go hear free chamber music at Juilliard.
So as for the title of this post, after noticing the video posting (I did not play it or comment on it) I messaged the man who started the Spanish service (who is lovely and always made nice comments about my singing) and asked if he would bring his video camera or phone with video capabilities on the 15th when I am singing "Et Exsultavit" in the Spanish service and he said "it would be his pleasure".
Speaking of "Et Exsultavit", I sang through it after not having sung it for several years and it is like the difference between night and day. I am singing it now with my big, dark, dramatic voice (although it is a melismatic piece, not a dramatic one) and my voice moves as easily as it ever did, and the long run (which many professional singers opt out of and break up) was easier than it ever was, singing full voice with a big pharyngeal space. And Giovanna Seymour continues to rock.
I just now need a claque. One that loves older women.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Another Audition
I had an audition yesterday, the first in two years. I don't want to say too much about it, because I have no idea who might read this blog, but here are a few things that I feel I can make public.
First, I had stopped going to auditions because none of the opera groups here that don't pay people are interested in avocational singers (unless we've been doing it for decades and started out in music schools) no matter how well we sing. And the last time I actually got cast in something, a role consisting of about four chunks of music, the conductor was so abusive for unknown reasons (no one had any idea what I was doing that he didn't like) while mollycoddling a woman less than half my age to whom he had assigned the larger role for which I had auditioned (by "mollycoddling" I mean he put up with her coming in not only unprepared to sing her part, but unprepared to speak the words in rhythm and clueless about how to pronounce French).
I went to this particular audition because it was for a Handel opera and Handel is something I sing well. The fact that I have a church rep background not a 19th Century opera background (I am speaking of the things that I sing regularly in public) means that I probably know as much if not more about Handel style than a lot of singers.
I sang Bradamante's aria "Vorrei Vendicarmi". For me that sort of thing is not difficult. What is difficult for me is anything with big climactic high notes although I am getting much better with those. In fact the woman I auditioned for complimented me on my middle voice and my top A (which I had interpolated into one of the runs). She said my Italian pronunciation needed work. No one had ever told me that before, on the other hand this woman speaks Italian fluently and lived in Italy. So this is something I need to work on.
The bad news is I think I will be squeezed out by professionals or emerging professionals who have or will have or might have a gig to sing this role (or one like it) in a real professional performance. Even if I sang that aria as well as they did (which I might not have, which is another story).
This has made me sad and frustrated. If I need to work on vocal technique, or Italian pronunciation to be competitive, I can do those things. But I can't rewind the tape and be somewhere else in my life trajectory. I am not young (although I still look hot - men in their 30s and 40s are always hitting on me) and have no "future" in singing other than what I can make for myself (this does not mean that I will not keep singing better, just that other people's interest will not be there), so I will be pushed farther and farther into the background.
It makes me sad that there is nothing for us - people who discovered our passion for singing later in life and want to perform. I am not asking to be paid. I am only asking to be given a chance based on my own merits, not my resume or what people think my "future" might be. The professionals snatch up everything and use these no pay groups, even the pay-to-sings, as places to test drive roles. So they basically encroach on every sphere, no matter how humble. I was told, in fact, that people might come from as far afield as Chicago to read through one of these operas for a fee.
Well, the woman I sang for was very nice. She might find something for me. I said I was not interested in singing a comprimaria role (unless it was for money). I would rather sing two arias or art songs in a studio recital and get my share of the applause and the attention.
So now I have to ward off postpartum depression again.
It's so bittersweet. I keep singing better but the older I get the less "marketable" I am. Not because of my looks (if nothing else I have a better figure than a lot of 35 year olds) but because of how my "future" is perceived.
So OK, as for what I think about my future:
1. I bought two aria books: one of Handel opera arias and the other of Vivaldi opera arias (I have fallen in love with the little snippets of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso that I have heard).
2. I am going to order the piano/vocal score of Verdi's "Ave Maria with Strings," which was written for a mezzo. I will see if something can be excerpted for Magnificat Sunday.
3. I will keep working on Amneris, including the dreaded scene with the two high B flats.
4. I will plan something and come up with a better marketing plan than whatever the one was that I used for Carmen.
First, I had stopped going to auditions because none of the opera groups here that don't pay people are interested in avocational singers (unless we've been doing it for decades and started out in music schools) no matter how well we sing. And the last time I actually got cast in something, a role consisting of about four chunks of music, the conductor was so abusive for unknown reasons (no one had any idea what I was doing that he didn't like) while mollycoddling a woman less than half my age to whom he had assigned the larger role for which I had auditioned (by "mollycoddling" I mean he put up with her coming in not only unprepared to sing her part, but unprepared to speak the words in rhythm and clueless about how to pronounce French).
I went to this particular audition because it was for a Handel opera and Handel is something I sing well. The fact that I have a church rep background not a 19th Century opera background (I am speaking of the things that I sing regularly in public) means that I probably know as much if not more about Handel style than a lot of singers.
I sang Bradamante's aria "Vorrei Vendicarmi". For me that sort of thing is not difficult. What is difficult for me is anything with big climactic high notes although I am getting much better with those. In fact the woman I auditioned for complimented me on my middle voice and my top A (which I had interpolated into one of the runs). She said my Italian pronunciation needed work. No one had ever told me that before, on the other hand this woman speaks Italian fluently and lived in Italy. So this is something I need to work on.
The bad news is I think I will be squeezed out by professionals or emerging professionals who have or will have or might have a gig to sing this role (or one like it) in a real professional performance. Even if I sang that aria as well as they did (which I might not have, which is another story).
This has made me sad and frustrated. If I need to work on vocal technique, or Italian pronunciation to be competitive, I can do those things. But I can't rewind the tape and be somewhere else in my life trajectory. I am not young (although I still look hot - men in their 30s and 40s are always hitting on me) and have no "future" in singing other than what I can make for myself (this does not mean that I will not keep singing better, just that other people's interest will not be there), so I will be pushed farther and farther into the background.
It makes me sad that there is nothing for us - people who discovered our passion for singing later in life and want to perform. I am not asking to be paid. I am only asking to be given a chance based on my own merits, not my resume or what people think my "future" might be. The professionals snatch up everything and use these no pay groups, even the pay-to-sings, as places to test drive roles. So they basically encroach on every sphere, no matter how humble. I was told, in fact, that people might come from as far afield as Chicago to read through one of these operas for a fee.
Well, the woman I sang for was very nice. She might find something for me. I said I was not interested in singing a comprimaria role (unless it was for money). I would rather sing two arias or art songs in a studio recital and get my share of the applause and the attention.
So now I have to ward off postpartum depression again.
It's so bittersweet. I keep singing better but the older I get the less "marketable" I am. Not because of my looks (if nothing else I have a better figure than a lot of 35 year olds) but because of how my "future" is perceived.
So OK, as for what I think about my future:
1. I bought two aria books: one of Handel opera arias and the other of Vivaldi opera arias (I have fallen in love with the little snippets of Vivaldi's Orlando Furioso that I have heard).
2. I am going to order the piano/vocal score of Verdi's "Ave Maria with Strings," which was written for a mezzo. I will see if something can be excerpted for Magnificat Sunday.
3. I will keep working on Amneris, including the dreaded scene with the two high B flats.
4. I will plan something and come up with a better marketing plan than whatever the one was that I used for Carmen.
Friday, August 15, 2014
A Toxic Environment
Yesterday I almost lost it. By "lost it" I mean got into such a rage that I crossed some kind of line between mental health and mental unwellness.
I hesitate to use the term "mental illness" because these are serious illnesses. Severe depression kills, as was evidenced by what happened to Robin Williams. Severe depression cripples. Mental "unwellness" is another thing, a state that I can get into frequently if I have enough external triggers (I am never one of these people who says "everything is going so well, but I'm miserable"). If I'm miserable, it's because I'm having my nose rubbed, on a daily basis, in other people's talent, exciting careers, large families, interesting travels, new opportunities, you name it.
Yesterday I was in a situation that was a metaphor for everything that makes me angry and despairing. No, I don't feel suicidal. I am more apt to want to kick out a window than slit my wrists, quite frankly. So yesterday I was bringing my SO home from a doctor's appointment in Soho. I forgot just how awful Soho is. I have written at length about how living on the Upper West Side, I feel about the size of a gnat, and about as relevant. But Soho is where everyone seems to be glamorous and, oh so young! So, waiting for a cab with my SO on the corner of Houston St. and Broadway, I was virtually trapped under what I will call a tsunami of young, glamorous, people ignoring me and my SO, some of them trying to hail cabs. A seemingly nice young man started to help us find one (with no luck) but abandoned the task once his eye was caught by an extremely glamorous and trendy looking heavily made up (yes, I usually am that, too) woman in her 30s, probably, who didn't speak much English (was she Italian? maybe). So he began chatting her up, was rebuffed, and scarpered off. And then, when this (expletive deleted) started hailing a cab, I just bloody lost it!! I tried to gesture to her that I was trying to get a cab for someone elderly (I pointed to my SO's cane), but who knows if this woman even understood my words. On the other hand, she could see, right???
I truly think I was saved from committing a murder (I wanted to throw her into the traffic) by my SO grabbing me and our skittering across the street to an island, where, Heaven be praised, a taxi appeared.
I did not feel good about myself after this. My SO was angry with me. Later I realized that this was not about getting a cab (although I have been known to almost get into fistfights with young healthy people who try to take cabs away from me and my SO from under our noses) it was about my endless frustration at feeling at the bottom of a tsunami of talented young people who suck up all the opportunities, the attention, the concert attendees, the water cooler conversation at the church, and the list goes on.
Last night I had a dream I was in prison. Not a hardcore prison and I don't think I was expecting to be there long because I was trying to figure out how to get hold of someone who could pay my rent. At the crux of the dream was my anxiety that I hadn't been given intake forms to fill out, which was supposed to happen. I know that that was a stand in for my desperately wanting people to know who I am; that I am a performer too, that my life revolves around what I am singing and where I am singing, and sometimes about my photographs and my writing. That I am not ordinary.
Overall, I have been in a better mood than usual. My therapist always comes back to that a lot of my bad feelings stem from living here in New York, where the best of everything is in my face 24/7. Well, that's just the way it is. My maternal grandparents moved here in 1919, and I'm a third generation apartment dwelling non driver. I have a cheap apartment. At my last session my therapist used a phrase I had never used either aloud or too myself. She said "well, so let's start from that you are in a toxic environment and then take it from there".
I never used to feel that way and I have lived here all my life. The city (so it seems) used to be full of ordinary people who lived in cramped apartments and went to ordinary jobs, who weren't especially stylish, and who, although they may have loved to go to performances, did not and had no plans to work in the performing arts. So where are those people now?
For the most part, things have been going well. I have two definite solos for the September 11 concert: Handel's "O Had I Jubal's Lyre" and "Domine Deus" from the Vivaldi Gloria. The concert producer is happy with them. There will be seven singers on the program, four classical singers and three musical theater singers. I am able to hold my own quite nicely in that setting. And on Sunday August 31 I will sing "Erfreute Zeit" as a solo in the church service.
And I keep singing better and better. Those exercises with the "h" have really done something to open up my voice. I am singing regularly up to a high C again. I had a nice time singing with the informal summer choir. "Little Miss Conservatory" is not there. She is away performing in a real opera with real singers who are going places. I don't have to think about that. So I wonder how things will be when she is back? Will there be "room" for me as a serious performer? Another issue is that I think one unwritten mission that this church has is to be a "home" for "young people" who have come to New York to work (for pay or not) in the performing arts. So OK. What about the older people who want to perform, who want to be taken seriously? This is a continuing source of discontent for me. Finding visibility. Finding visibility in a toxic environment. Without ending up in prison for real.
I hesitate to use the term "mental illness" because these are serious illnesses. Severe depression kills, as was evidenced by what happened to Robin Williams. Severe depression cripples. Mental "unwellness" is another thing, a state that I can get into frequently if I have enough external triggers (I am never one of these people who says "everything is going so well, but I'm miserable"). If I'm miserable, it's because I'm having my nose rubbed, on a daily basis, in other people's talent, exciting careers, large families, interesting travels, new opportunities, you name it.
Yesterday I was in a situation that was a metaphor for everything that makes me angry and despairing. No, I don't feel suicidal. I am more apt to want to kick out a window than slit my wrists, quite frankly. So yesterday I was bringing my SO home from a doctor's appointment in Soho. I forgot just how awful Soho is. I have written at length about how living on the Upper West Side, I feel about the size of a gnat, and about as relevant. But Soho is where everyone seems to be glamorous and, oh so young! So, waiting for a cab with my SO on the corner of Houston St. and Broadway, I was virtually trapped under what I will call a tsunami of young, glamorous, people ignoring me and my SO, some of them trying to hail cabs. A seemingly nice young man started to help us find one (with no luck) but abandoned the task once his eye was caught by an extremely glamorous and trendy looking heavily made up (yes, I usually am that, too) woman in her 30s, probably, who didn't speak much English (was she Italian? maybe). So he began chatting her up, was rebuffed, and scarpered off. And then, when this (expletive deleted) started hailing a cab, I just bloody lost it!! I tried to gesture to her that I was trying to get a cab for someone elderly (I pointed to my SO's cane), but who knows if this woman even understood my words. On the other hand, she could see, right???
I truly think I was saved from committing a murder (I wanted to throw her into the traffic) by my SO grabbing me and our skittering across the street to an island, where, Heaven be praised, a taxi appeared.
I did not feel good about myself after this. My SO was angry with me. Later I realized that this was not about getting a cab (although I have been known to almost get into fistfights with young healthy people who try to take cabs away from me and my SO from under our noses) it was about my endless frustration at feeling at the bottom of a tsunami of talented young people who suck up all the opportunities, the attention, the concert attendees, the water cooler conversation at the church, and the list goes on.
Last night I had a dream I was in prison. Not a hardcore prison and I don't think I was expecting to be there long because I was trying to figure out how to get hold of someone who could pay my rent. At the crux of the dream was my anxiety that I hadn't been given intake forms to fill out, which was supposed to happen. I know that that was a stand in for my desperately wanting people to know who I am; that I am a performer too, that my life revolves around what I am singing and where I am singing, and sometimes about my photographs and my writing. That I am not ordinary.
Overall, I have been in a better mood than usual. My therapist always comes back to that a lot of my bad feelings stem from living here in New York, where the best of everything is in my face 24/7. Well, that's just the way it is. My maternal grandparents moved here in 1919, and I'm a third generation apartment dwelling non driver. I have a cheap apartment. At my last session my therapist used a phrase I had never used either aloud or too myself. She said "well, so let's start from that you are in a toxic environment and then take it from there".
I never used to feel that way and I have lived here all my life. The city (so it seems) used to be full of ordinary people who lived in cramped apartments and went to ordinary jobs, who weren't especially stylish, and who, although they may have loved to go to performances, did not and had no plans to work in the performing arts. So where are those people now?
For the most part, things have been going well. I have two definite solos for the September 11 concert: Handel's "O Had I Jubal's Lyre" and "Domine Deus" from the Vivaldi Gloria. The concert producer is happy with them. There will be seven singers on the program, four classical singers and three musical theater singers. I am able to hold my own quite nicely in that setting. And on Sunday August 31 I will sing "Erfreute Zeit" as a solo in the church service.
And I keep singing better and better. Those exercises with the "h" have really done something to open up my voice. I am singing regularly up to a high C again. I had a nice time singing with the informal summer choir. "Little Miss Conservatory" is not there. She is away performing in a real opera with real singers who are going places. I don't have to think about that. So I wonder how things will be when she is back? Will there be "room" for me as a serious performer? Another issue is that I think one unwritten mission that this church has is to be a "home" for "young people" who have come to New York to work (for pay or not) in the performing arts. So OK. What about the older people who want to perform, who want to be taken seriously? This is a continuing source of discontent for me. Finding visibility. Finding visibility in a toxic environment. Without ending up in prison for real.
Thursday, March 13, 2014
The Year of Self-Esteem
At the beginning of this year, I made a number of New Year's resolutions, most of which had to do with nurturing my self-esteem, as I wrote here.
I began with removing people from my Facebook friends list who never commented on anything I wrote, and continued on with my resolve by "unsubscribing" from the email list of opera companies that had treated me badly. What's interesting is that in both instances I was asked why I was unsubscribing, and in the first instance I said I had been told by the director that I was too old (not because of how I looked - I was auditioning to sing La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica - but because I was not a "future investment") and in the second instance I said I had had an unpleasant experience with the company (the one with the orchestra that cast me as Mother Jeanne in Carmelites). So "good riddance to bad rubbish" as they say.
The latest example of my resolve had to do with someone suggested to me for Micaela in Carmen. Now OK, this is my project, and I am sinking a certain amount of money into it, and this is OK (I would rather do this than audition for a pay to sing - I can choose what role I sing and when we rehearse, and people will treat me respectfully), but I have limits. The accompanist is, of course charging me a (totally reasonable) fee, and as the tenor I am using is an experienced professional singer who is probably not that much younger than I am (he is certainly over 40 at any rate) I am not expecting him to contribute. But when he suggested someone for Micaela (who, based on the year she graduated from college is probably no more than 25 or 26) and she said she didn't want to contribute something (I prorated what I would charge her based on the percentage of singing she would be doing) I really blew my stack. Not out loud, but enough to make me want to move to an island where no one is under 50, none of us had ever performed professionally, and we can have our own theater/opera company/concert venue or whatever. And I decided to make myself a Facebook "fan" page. If this young squirt can have a web site full of gushing prose (probably written by her) I can certainly make myself into a public figure if that's what I long for. Long ago my therapist said to me that I should do something like this. Because so much of my life feels Wizard of Oz-ish in that the issue isn't that I don't have a voice, it's that I don't have a diploma or a testimonial.
Anyhow, I was hoping not to have to talk to her until I had spoken with the tenor, because she was his pick, but she called me on the phone. I restrained myself from losing my temper, but instead said that "I would not like myself if I let someone your age piggyback on a project that I had put a lot of time and money into." She said she didn't want to "pay to sing" (which actually isn't what I asked her to do; the producer of this concert pointed out that if the young woman went to a coach to learn a role she would have to pay that person, so she could think of this rehearsal accompanist that way). She did say she respected my honesty and wanted to come to the concert. And I think she is working as a waitress. She does seem to have gotten cast in one of those community opera productions of the sort that were not interested in me (this particular one doesn't ring a bell) and she has a lovely voice, but then so do lots of young women. I wonder where she will be at my age? Any happier or more successful?
In other news, I was pleased to see that there will, in fact, be no solos for Good Friday. The music by Mendelssohn that we are singing is taken from Elijah and other of his oratorios and is in four parts, so I am singing alto. That is fine. The part is mostly in a middle register (not down in the basement) and I can enjoy having the biggest voice in the alto section. There are already three trained singers in the soprano section (who all sing first, so I am in my element leading second) and only one in the alto section who has had some health problems and does not sing out full voice all the time. And I may still get a solo spot on Maundy Thursday.
I began with removing people from my Facebook friends list who never commented on anything I wrote, and continued on with my resolve by "unsubscribing" from the email list of opera companies that had treated me badly. What's interesting is that in both instances I was asked why I was unsubscribing, and in the first instance I said I had been told by the director that I was too old (not because of how I looked - I was auditioning to sing La Zia Principessa in Suor Angelica - but because I was not a "future investment") and in the second instance I said I had had an unpleasant experience with the company (the one with the orchestra that cast me as Mother Jeanne in Carmelites). So "good riddance to bad rubbish" as they say.
The latest example of my resolve had to do with someone suggested to me for Micaela in Carmen. Now OK, this is my project, and I am sinking a certain amount of money into it, and this is OK (I would rather do this than audition for a pay to sing - I can choose what role I sing and when we rehearse, and people will treat me respectfully), but I have limits. The accompanist is, of course charging me a (totally reasonable) fee, and as the tenor I am using is an experienced professional singer who is probably not that much younger than I am (he is certainly over 40 at any rate) I am not expecting him to contribute. But when he suggested someone for Micaela (who, based on the year she graduated from college is probably no more than 25 or 26) and she said she didn't want to contribute something (I prorated what I would charge her based on the percentage of singing she would be doing) I really blew my stack. Not out loud, but enough to make me want to move to an island where no one is under 50, none of us had ever performed professionally, and we can have our own theater/opera company/concert venue or whatever. And I decided to make myself a Facebook "fan" page. If this young squirt can have a web site full of gushing prose (probably written by her) I can certainly make myself into a public figure if that's what I long for. Long ago my therapist said to me that I should do something like this. Because so much of my life feels Wizard of Oz-ish in that the issue isn't that I don't have a voice, it's that I don't have a diploma or a testimonial.
Anyhow, I was hoping not to have to talk to her until I had spoken with the tenor, because she was his pick, but she called me on the phone. I restrained myself from losing my temper, but instead said that "I would not like myself if I let someone your age piggyback on a project that I had put a lot of time and money into." She said she didn't want to "pay to sing" (which actually isn't what I asked her to do; the producer of this concert pointed out that if the young woman went to a coach to learn a role she would have to pay that person, so she could think of this rehearsal accompanist that way). She did say she respected my honesty and wanted to come to the concert. And I think she is working as a waitress. She does seem to have gotten cast in one of those community opera productions of the sort that were not interested in me (this particular one doesn't ring a bell) and she has a lovely voice, but then so do lots of young women. I wonder where she will be at my age? Any happier or more successful?
In other news, I was pleased to see that there will, in fact, be no solos for Good Friday. The music by Mendelssohn that we are singing is taken from Elijah and other of his oratorios and is in four parts, so I am singing alto. That is fine. The part is mostly in a middle register (not down in the basement) and I can enjoy having the biggest voice in the alto section. There are already three trained singers in the soprano section (who all sing first, so I am in my element leading second) and only one in the alto section who has had some health problems and does not sing out full voice all the time. And I may still get a solo spot on Maundy Thursday.
Monday, April 29, 2013
The Tragedy of Lost Creativity
I am taking a break from work, which I had intended to use marking up the score of Werther, but which I also now would like to use to write a blog post on this article , which really moved me.
So much of what the author says is true. Why is is it, as he says, that "We seem to have evolved into a society of mourned and misplaced creativity"?
Children are encouraged to be creative. Certainly I was. But I soon learned that having and fostering an imagination was "childish" (and this by about age 11). I went to school with two types of girls: those who talked about boys and clothes all the time and those who did nothing but study. There were a handful of kids I grew up with who really excelled at playing a musical instrument, or at art or writing, for example, but "really excel" meant just that. If you were not Juilliard or Pratt material, it was like, "enough already". Be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. (I don't think anyone was encouraged to go into banking - the author of the cited article mentions working in "the City", London's equivalent of Wall Street. That, at least, was too crass.)
And women were not encouraged, really, to do anything at all. Yes, we were supposed to be educated, because educated women are interesting. But jobs were something you did until you married, or after you got divorced, or, like my mother, widowed. It's sort of hard to imagine, as I was encouraged to be brainy, not decorative, but I never thought about having a "career", and just ended up doing what most of the "bookish" women I knew did: get a secretarial job in publishing and then become an editor.
And if you were female, even a Lesbian like me, the most important thing was "the relationship". Don't pursue activities that will take time away from "the relationship". That, and the fact that I was told that Lesbians shouldn't be involved in a "patriarchal art form" like opera, put a premature end to my hope of a singing life, if not a singing career.
So what do you do if you've found what you love but are too old to do it in any way that other people care about? Not because you don't have talent and ability, but because too many people in too close proximity to where you live, have more talent and ability. My problem with singing isn't that different from the general problem with the middle class. It isn't really that people have gotten poorer, but rather that the rich have gotten so much richer and so much more numerous that everyone else is poor or might as well be.
Being older, the issue isn't just ageism or lost time, it's that what I'm competing with now are at least three generations (is a generation a decade, I wonder?) of people, most specifically women, who have been encouraged to pursue dreams of some kind. And are doing interesting things. When I was only looking at my own generation, very few women had high powered careers that they enjoyed and the ones who did were considered odd (many never married or found a satisfactory life with a significant other), and there were only a tiny handful of highly trained professional singers, so as I've said 100 times if I've said it once, the community opera groups, such as there were, were for amateurs with day jobs whose singing was less than perfect but who loved doing it. Now almost every school in the country seems to offer a degree in vocal performance and they vomit out their graduates in the five boroughs of the Big Apple (not to mention the three conservatories that are right here).
I think however sad it is that there is so much lost creativity, there is less than there used to be. An awful lot of people, particularly women, are doing interesting creative things, if not successfully in a monetary sense, successfully enough that their picture is in the newspaper or they get a spot talking on tv.
So I've found something I love and it's killing me, to paraphrase the author of this article. But it hasn't killed me yet, and I am going to go down fighting.
So much of what the author says is true. Why is is it, as he says, that "We seem to have evolved into a society of mourned and misplaced creativity"?
Children are encouraged to be creative. Certainly I was. But I soon learned that having and fostering an imagination was "childish" (and this by about age 11). I went to school with two types of girls: those who talked about boys and clothes all the time and those who did nothing but study. There were a handful of kids I grew up with who really excelled at playing a musical instrument, or at art or writing, for example, but "really excel" meant just that. If you were not Juilliard or Pratt material, it was like, "enough already". Be a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant. (I don't think anyone was encouraged to go into banking - the author of the cited article mentions working in "the City", London's equivalent of Wall Street. That, at least, was too crass.)
And women were not encouraged, really, to do anything at all. Yes, we were supposed to be educated, because educated women are interesting. But jobs were something you did until you married, or after you got divorced, or, like my mother, widowed. It's sort of hard to imagine, as I was encouraged to be brainy, not decorative, but I never thought about having a "career", and just ended up doing what most of the "bookish" women I knew did: get a secretarial job in publishing and then become an editor.
And if you were female, even a Lesbian like me, the most important thing was "the relationship". Don't pursue activities that will take time away from "the relationship". That, and the fact that I was told that Lesbians shouldn't be involved in a "patriarchal art form" like opera, put a premature end to my hope of a singing life, if not a singing career.
So what do you do if you've found what you love but are too old to do it in any way that other people care about? Not because you don't have talent and ability, but because too many people in too close proximity to where you live, have more talent and ability. My problem with singing isn't that different from the general problem with the middle class. It isn't really that people have gotten poorer, but rather that the rich have gotten so much richer and so much more numerous that everyone else is poor or might as well be.
Being older, the issue isn't just ageism or lost time, it's that what I'm competing with now are at least three generations (is a generation a decade, I wonder?) of people, most specifically women, who have been encouraged to pursue dreams of some kind. And are doing interesting things. When I was only looking at my own generation, very few women had high powered careers that they enjoyed and the ones who did were considered odd (many never married or found a satisfactory life with a significant other), and there were only a tiny handful of highly trained professional singers, so as I've said 100 times if I've said it once, the community opera groups, such as there were, were for amateurs with day jobs whose singing was less than perfect but who loved doing it. Now almost every school in the country seems to offer a degree in vocal performance and they vomit out their graduates in the five boroughs of the Big Apple (not to mention the three conservatories that are right here).
I think however sad it is that there is so much lost creativity, there is less than there used to be. An awful lot of people, particularly women, are doing interesting creative things, if not successfully in a monetary sense, successfully enough that their picture is in the newspaper or they get a spot talking on tv.
So I've found something I love and it's killing me, to paraphrase the author of this article. But it hasn't killed me yet, and I am going to go down fighting.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Where My LGBT Persona and My Singer Persona Meet
All the talk about LGBT issues (most notably marriage, which doesn't interest me on a personal level - I would only marry someone with a lot of money, gender immaterial) made me think of my exciting past as an LGBT crusader, back when being out was something brave and novel to do, and I decided, as I was not going to post the equality sign on Facebook (too ordinary now) I would post this picture, from my days as a baton twirler with the Big Apple Corps Marching Band.
Seeing this I had a real "epiphany". This is what I want, full stop. It's so obvious. I was not a great baton twirler. I learned a few tricks at the age of 40 because a friend in the band said they wanted some "girlie" interest. They had men in sequins and the band in its uniforms (once a female clarinet player showed up in a tux and nothing but fishnet tights) but no real girls. So the friend said I could probably learn a few twirling moves and I did. No fancy splits or jumps, but I could do a few high tosses and lots of choreography (I had studied ballet as a child). But the outfit!!! I had it specially made for me. A dream come true.
Now how can I replicate this?
I was thinking that as far as singing is concerned, what I would probably like best is being an alto/mezzo soloist with a group that performs oratorios. Then I would never have to sing any high notes, and I could be one of four "stars" in a big group. Technically my age wouldn't matter and my smashed up knee (from an accident in 2004) wouldn't be a liability.
So I thought of the Oratorio Society of New York.
But if you look at their solo competition rules, it says: "The Solo Competition is open to singers of all nationalities who were born on or after January 1, 1973 and who have not made a formal oratorio debut in a major concert hall."
I think this is outrageous! I can understand wanting younger people to play younger roles, and I can understand wanting someone with more experience than I have to play a role like Azucena or Ulrica, even for no money, apparently, but to sing in an oratorio???
I am just so tired of having to think of everything myself.
In other news, I enjoyed last night (rehearsal where I am an anonymous chorus alto for the Brahms Requiem) more than I thought I would. Although I don't consider low notes my special star turn, I am the only one in the section who can produce a real, old-fashioned Italian mezzo-style (or Wagnerian, if you like) chest tone on a middle C or a B.
Seeing this I had a real "epiphany". This is what I want, full stop. It's so obvious. I was not a great baton twirler. I learned a few tricks at the age of 40 because a friend in the band said they wanted some "girlie" interest. They had men in sequins and the band in its uniforms (once a female clarinet player showed up in a tux and nothing but fishnet tights) but no real girls. So the friend said I could probably learn a few twirling moves and I did. No fancy splits or jumps, but I could do a few high tosses and lots of choreography (I had studied ballet as a child). But the outfit!!! I had it specially made for me. A dream come true.
Now how can I replicate this?
I was thinking that as far as singing is concerned, what I would probably like best is being an alto/mezzo soloist with a group that performs oratorios. Then I would never have to sing any high notes, and I could be one of four "stars" in a big group. Technically my age wouldn't matter and my smashed up knee (from an accident in 2004) wouldn't be a liability.
So I thought of the Oratorio Society of New York.
But if you look at their solo competition rules, it says: "The Solo Competition is open to singers of all nationalities who were born on or after January 1, 1973 and who have not made a formal oratorio debut in a major concert hall."
I think this is outrageous! I can understand wanting younger people to play younger roles, and I can understand wanting someone with more experience than I have to play a role like Azucena or Ulrica, even for no money, apparently, but to sing in an oratorio???
I am just so tired of having to think of everything myself.
In other news, I enjoyed last night (rehearsal where I am an anonymous chorus alto for the Brahms Requiem) more than I thought I would. Although I don't consider low notes my special star turn, I am the only one in the section who can produce a real, old-fashioned Italian mezzo-style (or Wagnerian, if you like) chest tone on a middle C or a B.
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Thankful Thursday - and Musings on "Location, location, location"
First "thankful Thursday".
The church where I sing posts a "thankful Thursday" prompt, and people can respond to it. I am a bit shy of doing that, but I need to remind myself of a few things.
First, I'm alive. I was reading a post on Facebook from a young woman whose mother died of breast cancer when she (the mother) was 10 years younger than I am now. I am certainly now of an age when people die and although it might be considered tragic, it is not considered unusual.
Second, however depressed I often feel because of my lack of varied stimuli (I think this is at the crux of it - the fewer hours I spend alone in the house the less depressed I am), I have long since stopped feeling depressed by the holidays. For years I got flak about why did my mother celebrate, and raise me to celebrate, Christmas, if she was Jewish? She never really had a satisfactory answer, which made me feel put on the spot when I had to answer for her (and me). Now that I consider myself a Unitarian (which for me is a mix of Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism - actually they would include Buddhism, but that particular tradition doesn't speak to me) I can celebrate any holiday I feel like, and anyhow, I'm a "high art" snob, so if I can sing church music I can decorate for Christmas. I don't particularly feel sorry for myself that I have no family and will not get or give any presents. Music and decorating are enough for me. If I desperately need a sweater or more opera CDs I can buy these for myself. So I am enjoying the holiday season quite a bit, actually.
Third, I have conquered four "tech" problems basically on my own, with only the help of company personnel, in other words, sans a "foreign language interpreter"! I took care of getting a new hard drive for my laptop, downloaded a printer driver from the Epson web site, reconnected my external hard drive, and got an iphone to replace my rinky dink cell phone. The iphone did not come with an instruction manual but I figured out how to do everything except take decent pictures of myself. Yes, it has a reverse camera, but I hardly look "hawt" if I am trying to take a photograph. I have one set of facial expressions and body language when I'm posing/vamping and a totally different one when I'm concentrating on looking into a camera viewfinder.
For the second subject of this post...
I was asking myself whether watching the Richard Tucker gala on tv tonight would be inspirational or depressing.
I think what I find the most depressing is that I am literally in the armpit of Lincoln Center where the greatest singers in the world congregate to perform, and their successors go to school. What role is there for a 62 year old with a pleasant large-ish voice in a limited range who can sing a handful of excerpts from great operas (cherry picked so that she doesn't get too tired), and some church solos? How am I relevant? Who cares?
Someone had said a while back that I should start a "community opera group", but there are probably 10-15 of these in Manhattan (and the other boroughs, but I would not want to travel outside Manhattan at night if I was not getting paid) and I have been rejected by all of them, except one that wanted to charge me $450 to sing a role. (I wasn't insulted, I just don't have that kind of money, and if I am going to spend money, I would rather produce my own thing as a tax deductible charity event.)
It would be too self-piteous to blame it all on ageism, but what I do think is that no one is interested in someone obviously over 45 (I don't think I look 62....I'm 62 like Bette Midler or Bernadette Peters, not like an image of someone's grandma) who has minimal experience, no music-oriented formal education, and sounds, even at best, like she still needs a little polish. (I think if I sounded exactly like I do now and was 27, people would be very interested, although they might instruct me how and where to get more polishing, and I think if I looked and sounded like I do now but had sung 20 roles over 20 years, people would also be interested, but the mix of my skills, age, and background are a nonstarter.)
So OK. I can always produce something myself, and as someone said "if you build it, they will come".
What I really keep hoping is that someone will be interested in my story if not in my singing.
Before the day is over I promise to write to someone I know who writes for Classical Singer and ask her how to pique someone's interest.
The church where I sing posts a "thankful Thursday" prompt, and people can respond to it. I am a bit shy of doing that, but I need to remind myself of a few things.
First, I'm alive. I was reading a post on Facebook from a young woman whose mother died of breast cancer when she (the mother) was 10 years younger than I am now. I am certainly now of an age when people die and although it might be considered tragic, it is not considered unusual.
Second, however depressed I often feel because of my lack of varied stimuli (I think this is at the crux of it - the fewer hours I spend alone in the house the less depressed I am), I have long since stopped feeling depressed by the holidays. For years I got flak about why did my mother celebrate, and raise me to celebrate, Christmas, if she was Jewish? She never really had a satisfactory answer, which made me feel put on the spot when I had to answer for her (and me). Now that I consider myself a Unitarian (which for me is a mix of Christianity, Judaism, and Paganism - actually they would include Buddhism, but that particular tradition doesn't speak to me) I can celebrate any holiday I feel like, and anyhow, I'm a "high art" snob, so if I can sing church music I can decorate for Christmas. I don't particularly feel sorry for myself that I have no family and will not get or give any presents. Music and decorating are enough for me. If I desperately need a sweater or more opera CDs I can buy these for myself. So I am enjoying the holiday season quite a bit, actually.
Third, I have conquered four "tech" problems basically on my own, with only the help of company personnel, in other words, sans a "foreign language interpreter"! I took care of getting a new hard drive for my laptop, downloaded a printer driver from the Epson web site, reconnected my external hard drive, and got an iphone to replace my rinky dink cell phone. The iphone did not come with an instruction manual but I figured out how to do everything except take decent pictures of myself. Yes, it has a reverse camera, but I hardly look "hawt" if I am trying to take a photograph. I have one set of facial expressions and body language when I'm posing/vamping and a totally different one when I'm concentrating on looking into a camera viewfinder.
For the second subject of this post...
I was asking myself whether watching the Richard Tucker gala on tv tonight would be inspirational or depressing.
I think what I find the most depressing is that I am literally in the armpit of Lincoln Center where the greatest singers in the world congregate to perform, and their successors go to school. What role is there for a 62 year old with a pleasant large-ish voice in a limited range who can sing a handful of excerpts from great operas (cherry picked so that she doesn't get too tired), and some church solos? How am I relevant? Who cares?
Someone had said a while back that I should start a "community opera group", but there are probably 10-15 of these in Manhattan (and the other boroughs, but I would not want to travel outside Manhattan at night if I was not getting paid) and I have been rejected by all of them, except one that wanted to charge me $450 to sing a role. (I wasn't insulted, I just don't have that kind of money, and if I am going to spend money, I would rather produce my own thing as a tax deductible charity event.)
It would be too self-piteous to blame it all on ageism, but what I do think is that no one is interested in someone obviously over 45 (I don't think I look 62....I'm 62 like Bette Midler or Bernadette Peters, not like an image of someone's grandma) who has minimal experience, no music-oriented formal education, and sounds, even at best, like she still needs a little polish. (I think if I sounded exactly like I do now and was 27, people would be very interested, although they might instruct me how and where to get more polishing, and I think if I looked and sounded like I do now but had sung 20 roles over 20 years, people would also be interested, but the mix of my skills, age, and background are a nonstarter.)
So OK. I can always produce something myself, and as someone said "if you build it, they will come".
What I really keep hoping is that someone will be interested in my story if not in my singing.
Before the day is over I promise to write to someone I know who writes for Classical Singer and ask her how to pique someone's interest.
Thursday, October 25, 2012
The Bitter and the Sweet (New Edition)
I suppose that is really what life is, when it boils down to it.
After feeling really good about how I sang at my audition, and about the myriad opportunities on the horizon, I sank into a funk yesterday at choir practice.
First a pat on the back. I sounded really really good on the soprano part in the Bach. This is not easy for a mezzo to sing, although the tessitura is no higher than that of the three mezzo roles in Donizetti's the Three Queens. I finally did get tired at the end, but that was after singing through quite a bit of it several times. Singing that, I can really tell how much both my technique and my stamina have improved.
We now have another young high soprano, this one still at the prestigious conservatory. I would say she is a "lite" version of the woman who left, whom I referred to as the "young coloratura". This woman is about five years younger and has less confidence, but she still sings better up in the Bach soprano tessitura than anyone else we have. Fine. If she is around for the next cantata we do, I can sing alto, if the alto part is in a decent range (up to at least the E at the top of the staff, with not too much florid singing below middle C).
I was not bothered that she was there. There is plenty of room for a variety of trained singers who can take turns as soloists.
What bothered me was that, by going to that conservatory and studying with a prestigious former Metropolitan Opera star (which does not make this woman necessarily a good teacher, although she might be) she is part of an exclusive club, so the tenor, who had been to that same prestigious conservatory (the one whose wife told me I needed a new voice teacher, more or less), and who has mostly ignored me unless he is leading the choir, buddied up to her with interest, and it all made me feel very B list. It's like people who have been to Harvard or Yale, who bond instantly with other people who have been to Harvard or Yale, and will ignore someone who is equally intelligent who only has an Associate Degree from a community college.
This is yet again, a situation in which I feel very like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. No matter how well I sing, I am not worth bothering with because I have no credentials and no history, and when you add to that the fact that I am not young, I am basically worthless. I mean I can always find little nooks and crannies into which to insert myself where I can sing, or I can organize things myself, and I can sing well, and am singing better than ever, but I am made to feel invisible.
Is it really all about youth? People who are more experienced are interested in younger people who are less experienced but they are not interested in older people who are less experienced (unless they are in a position of authority over them of some kind) or in older people who are growing and learning and improving. As I said to someone, they are usually just embarrassed, so the older people are ignored.
On the other hand, the other day I was at an event (with my partner) for LGBT seniors and their care partners and needless to say I was the best looking female in the room for miles around, which did not escape notice. One of the older woman told me I looked so glamorous she wanted to ask for my autograph (and that was in jeans and a simple top, but with my red hair and stage makeup, of course.)
So what is the sweet, you might ask?
I now have a full quartet for my Requiem. These are all singers with much more experience than I have, which is a good thing. It will raise the level of the performance and I am glad that they are willing to work with me.
I have an opportunity to sing in several holiday concerts and I am going to show the Spanish songs both to my choir director and to the man who organizes the music for the Spanish services at the church.
My partner at least for now seems to be less bristly about my wanting to spread my wings a little regarding singing. She said she really heard me when I said that singing in church was like taking a pleasant stroll, but singing opera was like running a marathon, and as long as I still can run a marathon, it is something I feel I must do.
After feeling really good about how I sang at my audition, and about the myriad opportunities on the horizon, I sank into a funk yesterday at choir practice.
First a pat on the back. I sounded really really good on the soprano part in the Bach. This is not easy for a mezzo to sing, although the tessitura is no higher than that of the three mezzo roles in Donizetti's the Three Queens. I finally did get tired at the end, but that was after singing through quite a bit of it several times. Singing that, I can really tell how much both my technique and my stamina have improved.
We now have another young high soprano, this one still at the prestigious conservatory. I would say she is a "lite" version of the woman who left, whom I referred to as the "young coloratura". This woman is about five years younger and has less confidence, but she still sings better up in the Bach soprano tessitura than anyone else we have. Fine. If she is around for the next cantata we do, I can sing alto, if the alto part is in a decent range (up to at least the E at the top of the staff, with not too much florid singing below middle C).
I was not bothered that she was there. There is plenty of room for a variety of trained singers who can take turns as soloists.
What bothered me was that, by going to that conservatory and studying with a prestigious former Metropolitan Opera star (which does not make this woman necessarily a good teacher, although she might be) she is part of an exclusive club, so the tenor, who had been to that same prestigious conservatory (the one whose wife told me I needed a new voice teacher, more or less), and who has mostly ignored me unless he is leading the choir, buddied up to her with interest, and it all made me feel very B list. It's like people who have been to Harvard or Yale, who bond instantly with other people who have been to Harvard or Yale, and will ignore someone who is equally intelligent who only has an Associate Degree from a community college.
This is yet again, a situation in which I feel very like the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz. No matter how well I sing, I am not worth bothering with because I have no credentials and no history, and when you add to that the fact that I am not young, I am basically worthless. I mean I can always find little nooks and crannies into which to insert myself where I can sing, or I can organize things myself, and I can sing well, and am singing better than ever, but I am made to feel invisible.
Is it really all about youth? People who are more experienced are interested in younger people who are less experienced but they are not interested in older people who are less experienced (unless they are in a position of authority over them of some kind) or in older people who are growing and learning and improving. As I said to someone, they are usually just embarrassed, so the older people are ignored.
On the other hand, the other day I was at an event (with my partner) for LGBT seniors and their care partners and needless to say I was the best looking female in the room for miles around, which did not escape notice. One of the older woman told me I looked so glamorous she wanted to ask for my autograph (and that was in jeans and a simple top, but with my red hair and stage makeup, of course.)
So what is the sweet, you might ask?
I now have a full quartet for my Requiem. These are all singers with much more experience than I have, which is a good thing. It will raise the level of the performance and I am glad that they are willing to work with me.
I have an opportunity to sing in several holiday concerts and I am going to show the Spanish songs both to my choir director and to the man who organizes the music for the Spanish services at the church.
My partner at least for now seems to be less bristly about my wanting to spread my wings a little regarding singing. She said she really heard me when I said that singing in church was like taking a pleasant stroll, but singing opera was like running a marathon, and as long as I still can run a marathon, it is something I feel I must do.
Monday, October 1, 2012
Why am I So Hard To See
The title of this post was inspired by this post . Something I seem to struggle with over and over, is the fact that I seem to be invisible most of the time.
Is it my age? I am 62 but I don't look 62. (One of my sources of discontent is how few pictures I have of myself; if I had one that was that different or better than the one I use for a profile picture I would post it.) I am certainly not skinny (I have a BMI of 25, which is teetering on the borderline of being overweight) but I am extremely fit and mostly carry my weight in the right places. I have a gorgeous hair dye job and wear stage makeup all the time. I never look ordinary, I can tell you that. And because I have so few "special occasions" in my life, I do myself up as if every single day were one. I have been approached at least once with an offer to be an "adult" film star. Apparently women my age who look like me are a huge niche market (and yes, the more I feel ignored, the more I will "up the ante" regarding the kinds of things I write about here).
Or is it that I work in an industry that is almost entirely virtual, where no one knows what I look like? And when I did work somewhere where I was physically present, despite having a high level job, I was treated like a "function" not a person, let alone an attractive woman with a great fashion sense. I know sexual harassment in its most virulent forms is Hell, but a little wholesome teasing to make an attractive woman feel appreciated would be nice once in while. But (sigh) the pendulum has really really swung so far in the other direction you can't even see that there is a pendulum.
Lately I just have had too many experiences of being "aggressively ignored" and yes, just like "deafening silence" it is very obvious when someone is being aggressively ignored.
In fact the lady who wrote the above referenced post also wrote and published an article (I can't remember about what) in which it was advised that professional singers should politely ignore hangers on who are not really good singers, and not "engage" with them in conversations about singing. If you want to be polite, she advised, you can engage with them on another topic of mutual interest. What is the problem here? Is "amateurishness" contagious, the way some people think homosexuality (or overweight) might be?
But oh, doesn't she know that this is oh so obvious to the "ignoree"? It's like waiting for the taxi that stops for other people, but not for you. This can't be an accident.
So what does it take to be noticed? Choosing the right venue? The right social circle, virtual or otherwise? Moving to a part of the country where what you do, even in a less than stellar manner, is in short supply and you can be special? (This latter is not likely. I have a sweetheart deal where I live and anyhow I never learned to drive.)
Why does one person attract notice when others do not? I am not talking here about trying to compete with singers at the Met, or even with singers at all, but about the synergy that occurred with Julie and Julia, which I have written about many times.
Why did someone decide that Julie's blog about Julia Child's recipes deserved a magazine article? All kinds of people write all kind of blogs about all kinds of things. I will never sing at the Met, but, for example, why shouldn't someone from Opera News or Classical Singer decide that my writing about the experience of trying to do something with classical singing in my late 50s and 60s is worth a little public exposure?
What do I need to do??
There are days when (I can hear someone saying "be careful what you pray for you may get it") what I long for is to be chased up and down Columbus Avenue by a herd of paparazzi. I want a public life so badly.
Is it my age? I am 62 but I don't look 62. (One of my sources of discontent is how few pictures I have of myself; if I had one that was that different or better than the one I use for a profile picture I would post it.) I am certainly not skinny (I have a BMI of 25, which is teetering on the borderline of being overweight) but I am extremely fit and mostly carry my weight in the right places. I have a gorgeous hair dye job and wear stage makeup all the time. I never look ordinary, I can tell you that. And because I have so few "special occasions" in my life, I do myself up as if every single day were one. I have been approached at least once with an offer to be an "adult" film star. Apparently women my age who look like me are a huge niche market (and yes, the more I feel ignored, the more I will "up the ante" regarding the kinds of things I write about here).
Or is it that I work in an industry that is almost entirely virtual, where no one knows what I look like? And when I did work somewhere where I was physically present, despite having a high level job, I was treated like a "function" not a person, let alone an attractive woman with a great fashion sense. I know sexual harassment in its most virulent forms is Hell, but a little wholesome teasing to make an attractive woman feel appreciated would be nice once in while. But (sigh) the pendulum has really really swung so far in the other direction you can't even see that there is a pendulum.
Lately I just have had too many experiences of being "aggressively ignored" and yes, just like "deafening silence" it is very obvious when someone is being aggressively ignored.
In fact the lady who wrote the above referenced post also wrote and published an article (I can't remember about what) in which it was advised that professional singers should politely ignore hangers on who are not really good singers, and not "engage" with them in conversations about singing. If you want to be polite, she advised, you can engage with them on another topic of mutual interest. What is the problem here? Is "amateurishness" contagious, the way some people think homosexuality (or overweight) might be?
But oh, doesn't she know that this is oh so obvious to the "ignoree"? It's like waiting for the taxi that stops for other people, but not for you. This can't be an accident.
So what does it take to be noticed? Choosing the right venue? The right social circle, virtual or otherwise? Moving to a part of the country where what you do, even in a less than stellar manner, is in short supply and you can be special? (This latter is not likely. I have a sweetheart deal where I live and anyhow I never learned to drive.)
Why does one person attract notice when others do not? I am not talking here about trying to compete with singers at the Met, or even with singers at all, but about the synergy that occurred with Julie and Julia, which I have written about many times.
Why did someone decide that Julie's blog about Julia Child's recipes deserved a magazine article? All kinds of people write all kind of blogs about all kinds of things. I will never sing at the Met, but, for example, why shouldn't someone from Opera News or Classical Singer decide that my writing about the experience of trying to do something with classical singing in my late 50s and 60s is worth a little public exposure?
What do I need to do??
There are days when (I can hear someone saying "be careful what you pray for you may get it") what I long for is to be chased up and down Columbus Avenue by a herd of paparazzi. I want a public life so badly.
Thursday, April 26, 2012
The Bitter and the Sweet (Reprise)
The Bitter: For the first time in a long time, I decided to investigate an audition listed in the back of Classical Singer. When I went to their web site and read their mission statement, there was the "Y" word loud and clear (and no, I don't mean "yelp", I mean "young"). In my last several posts I mentioned their being a "glut" of opera groups, which is true, and at least half of them use the "Y" word in their mission statement. The next thing that happened, which would be funny if it weren't so sad, was I googled "opportunities for older singers" and the first hit was an article was about how to get "youth choruses" to accept older teenagers and the second hit was an old post I had made on the Forum. Which about tells you how many of these opportunities there are.
The Sweet:Well, this article allayed my fears about being homeless, at least for a while, so I can focus on other things. (The downside is I won't be moving to that hypothetical small town where I can be a real diva, either, but will be staying in my cubbyhole in the armpit of Lincoln Center.) And I sang through "Lux Aeterna" from the Requiem and it sounds really good! And I have fallen in love with a new role: Gertrude in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It is lush and lovely, and is mostly in a middle register. Jennifer Larmore had referred to the role as "high", which to me seems odd as it does not go above an A, I don't think. My recording features Denyce Graves, who, when I think of it, is probably the closest to me, as a total package (despite the ethnic difference), rather than Dolora Zajick. Zajick has a big dramatic voice but is also blessed with easy top notes, which I am not, and plummy low notes, which I am not either, and sex appeal is not her strong suit. Graves seems to have made a career out of singing three roles: Carmen, Dalila, and Charlotte, all of which require a sensuous beauty, both vocal and otherwise, and do not go up into the vocal stratosphere. When I look at my CD, the arias on it are a close match to those on her aria CD, in fact I think she has recorded them all. In any event, she is the perfect Gertrude, and I think I am going to try to do something with this opera, after the Requiem, which now gives me a long view.
The Sweet:Well, this article allayed my fears about being homeless, at least for a while, so I can focus on other things. (The downside is I won't be moving to that hypothetical small town where I can be a real diva, either, but will be staying in my cubbyhole in the armpit of Lincoln Center.) And I sang through "Lux Aeterna" from the Requiem and it sounds really good! And I have fallen in love with a new role: Gertrude in Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. It is lush and lovely, and is mostly in a middle register. Jennifer Larmore had referred to the role as "high", which to me seems odd as it does not go above an A, I don't think. My recording features Denyce Graves, who, when I think of it, is probably the closest to me, as a total package (despite the ethnic difference), rather than Dolora Zajick. Zajick has a big dramatic voice but is also blessed with easy top notes, which I am not, and plummy low notes, which I am not either, and sex appeal is not her strong suit. Graves seems to have made a career out of singing three roles: Carmen, Dalila, and Charlotte, all of which require a sensuous beauty, both vocal and otherwise, and do not go up into the vocal stratosphere. When I look at my CD, the arias on it are a close match to those on her aria CD, in fact I think she has recorded them all. In any event, she is the perfect Gertrude, and I think I am going to try to do something with this opera, after the Requiem, which now gives me a long view.
Friday, April 20, 2012
So Why Am I Doing This Anyway?
Today was shrink day, so I resumed my discussion of how to find an identity vis-a-vis the world of singing.
My therapist asked me how it felt (the typical therapist question) to feel so frustrated and I said the interesting thing was it didn't make me want to stop singing. I said that the chain of events that was set in motion on Valentines Day happened for a reason and that I believed that my Higher Power (I feel funny saying "God" here, because in this instance I think the Higher Power in question was quite Pagan and Pan-like!)wanted me to hold onto this thread and not let it go until it had played itself out. And whatever frustrations I feel, singing is not over for me.
There are really a variety of separate issues that all become intertwined. The first is that I still need to improve my vocal technique. This continues to improve, but my teacher often says that sometimes it is difficult to tease out what is a problem that can be fixed with technique, and what is a problem that is caused by physiological limits, which are greater in someone older who began singing later. (When I complain about my upper register, he says "you can only stretch a rubber band so far". He says he believes I can have a performance-worthy reliable B flat - which I sometimes do and sometimes don't - but probably nothing above that.)
Then there is the issue of my age, not to mention people's perception of my age. I was quite surprised when my teacher told me that many people listening to me may think that the vocal flaws that I still have are the result of age, and that I am not in any sense, as that auditor politely told me, a "future investment".
Not to be forgotten is the whole issue of a "culture" of singers and musicians, that I am not a part of. I have no friends who are musicians, other than the people I know at the church, and they are colleagues, not friends. Most of the people I socialize with are readers, writers, editors, museum-goers, and yes, concert goers, but not musicians. I did not go to a conservatory. Neither did most of the people who sang with me at those amateur groups in the 1970s (my teacher, I believe, has a high school diploma and began singing when he graduated). The people I would run into at these get togethers all knew, if not each other, then the same people, and had had many similar experiences. They just had no sense of me. I mean this is something I have experienced in other walks of life as well; sometimes I have been a part of the club and sometimes I have not.
And there is absolutely no way I can ever catch up with this culture. I can sing better, but probably not well enough for anyone to be interested in me, other than my teacher, who told me he is pleasantly surprised that someone my age made this much progress, and my choir director, who, in addition to being grateful for the handful of people (myself included) with serious vocal training who are available to sing for free, is also deeply religious (in the best sense) and believes in encouraging everyone to make the most of themselves.
So the question is basically as foolishly existential as "who am I"? I heard loud and clear that to derive an identity from something you are not really doing is "delusional". (I asked the therapist about that today and she said it was a matter of degree and that she did not consider me delusional.) But I am not ready to be just a nice woman in her 60s who sings as a hobby.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Unfortunate Synonyms
Yesterday I was all excited hearing about this group which I mistakenly thought would be another venue for singing opera scenes for elderly shut-ins, which I have done before.
They apparently want "young musical theater professionals" (boldface mine).
As this features a genre of singing that is not my forte (I can throw a musical theater number in at the end of a set of arias at one of these events, but I still sound like I am singing opera) I am not going to pursue this but I am deeply offended by the use of the word "young".
Yes, in this age of tv and movies I can understand a director wanting someone who looks young playing a young character. This is just a fact of life, similar to a director not wanting an overweight woman playing Violetta or Mimi.
What I take offense at is that people seem to equate "new, eager, fresh, undiscovered, not quite 'there' yet, but growing and improving every day" with young.
The world is full of people who are not young, who are discovering or re-discovering something for the first time, as was written about in this article who are as fresh, new, and excited as anyone half or one third their age.
What's so strange, is that the one area in which the media has it right is that 60 is the new 40 and so on down the line (I mean everyone agrees now that 30 is the new 21 and has for years). So why haven't people looking for talent, even in the dull, drab corporate workplace, caught onto this?
And of course this again brought home a longing that I have that is never fulfilled: seeing or reading somewhere that there's a group out there looking for someone like me. Someone older in years, starting fresh (well, ok, if I started now 8 years ago it's not quite fresh) who is full of enthusiasm, who can "model" the fact that older people can still be full of energy enthusiasm, and, not only talent, but the self-discipline to hone that talent despite fighting against great odds?
I mean, OK, I am not going to waste time being bitterly disappointed over this, it would just be nice if I didn't have to create every opportunity for myself.
They apparently want "young musical theater professionals" (boldface mine).
As this features a genre of singing that is not my forte (I can throw a musical theater number in at the end of a set of arias at one of these events, but I still sound like I am singing opera) I am not going to pursue this but I am deeply offended by the use of the word "young".
Yes, in this age of tv and movies I can understand a director wanting someone who looks young playing a young character. This is just a fact of life, similar to a director not wanting an overweight woman playing Violetta or Mimi.
What I take offense at is that people seem to equate "new, eager, fresh, undiscovered, not quite 'there' yet, but growing and improving every day" with young.
The world is full of people who are not young, who are discovering or re-discovering something for the first time, as was written about in this article who are as fresh, new, and excited as anyone half or one third their age.
What's so strange, is that the one area in which the media has it right is that 60 is the new 40 and so on down the line (I mean everyone agrees now that 30 is the new 21 and has for years). So why haven't people looking for talent, even in the dull, drab corporate workplace, caught onto this?
And of course this again brought home a longing that I have that is never fulfilled: seeing or reading somewhere that there's a group out there looking for someone like me. Someone older in years, starting fresh (well, ok, if I started now 8 years ago it's not quite fresh) who is full of enthusiasm, who can "model" the fact that older people can still be full of energy enthusiasm, and, not only talent, but the self-discipline to hone that talent despite fighting against great odds?
I mean, OK, I am not going to waste time being bitterly disappointed over this, it would just be nice if I didn't have to create every opportunity for myself.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)