Colors

The yellow fire hydrants must be incredibly jealous. In the stark landscape of winter, they will seem like a welcome splash of color amidst the whites, greys, and browns. But right now, they look like artificial lemon candy amidst the infinite shades scattered by the trees. If Nature's first green is gold, this must be the most perfect palindrome.

Color has dominated my day in many respects. In my studio class, I performed "La Romance d'Ariel", an early Debussy piece voiced by the sprite, Ariel, from Shakespeare's Tempest. The text and setting are Ariel calling across the mountains to Miranda. Ariel mixes in visions of nature, the way the foxglove will ring along Miranda's path and how she will turn even more blonde under the birch foliage. Eventually, caught up in this rapture for the earth, Ariel dreamily describes how Miranda will see the lake in the crux of the valley, turning blue and reflecting the moods of the summer sky. At this point, Ariel realizes that just as the lake reflects the gaiety and sadness of the sky, so too does a heart too much in love reflect the relationship. Ariel is in love with Miranda. But Ariel realizes suddenly that Miranda is lost, gone forever. And the final repeat of the first words take on a new plaintive beseeching: "Across the sweet mountains, won't you come to the call of your Ariel?" The final sounds are nothing but "Ah" that leaps up and down the staff, a final desperate cry across the mountains.

I connect with this piece in so many ways. Debussy is one of those composers who pull something deep in my soul. The colors of his music are like those of the Impressionist painters. So much of the landscape becomes vivid before me because of the melodic swirls in his accompaniment. I can see Ariel, and I can feel the loss at the end. And that enables me to step out of myself and my technical concerns for a bit. My voice takes on its own new colors as it finds its home in the stratosphere. (The piece swings quite high in places, hovering around the G-D that are at the top of or off the treble staff.)

After I finished, my voice teacher exclaimed, "I feel like I'm hearing you for the first time! I haven't previously heard you in that upper quadrant of your voice. It's like I thought you were purple, and it turns out you're fuschia!"

Pretty nifty :)

~Hope

Lovely day

It was a truly lovely day here, weather-wise and otherwise. My voice lesson was very focused and delightful. I'm learning how to break some habits that have been getting in my way as I sing. For instance, I tend to rock back on my heels when I take a breath, a way of trying to make sure I stay loose. However, the actual effect is to create tension in my spine and back and throw off alignment - not a good thing when your body is your instrument. My professor's suggestions were incredibly helpful, and I'm learning how to think about the arches of my feet instead.

Voice teachers are truly Renaissance people. They need to know anatomy and physiology, history, languages and diction, and, of course, vocal technique and pedagogy. I feel very, very blessed to be around so many good teachers here. It is a place rich with resources.

Tomorrow is a coaching with one of the opera faculty in the morning, a meeting regarding my departmental assistantship, a theory class, and an opera workshop. Tomorrow night, I'm auditioning for the soprano soloist position in the Mozart Requiem. Wish me luck!

~Hope

Performing

Singing in front of an audience can sometimes feel like a tightrope walk to me. I've heard that, in tightrope walking, you aren't supposed to think about the ground below, or you'll fall. You see it beyond your feet if you look down, but you need to divert your focus.

The same thing occurs when performing. You know your audience is there, but you can't really think about them, or you'll break your focus of the piece, losing character, breath engagement, and shattering the spell you have cast to create this space of illusion, this fantasy play world you're living in while you sing. You have to keep moving because the flow of the music carries you along, so you keep placing one foot in front of another, one note after another, breathing and moving with the music. But you can't think too much about what's ahead, or again you'll lose your focus.

It's different than public speaking for me. When I stand up to speak in front of a group, I know that I don't have to keep placing one foot rhythmically after another. I can stutter and stumble, and I won't fall. It's like having the ultimate net. I can backtrack, restate, refer to notes, and above all, not worry too much about "creating a character". As long as my technique is fine - the power in my sound, the intention of speech - I will convey what I need. True, to make it extraordinary, I probably need a "character" - a motivation, a clear set of objectives to accomplish. But it is still easier.

When you sing, you have to be simultaneously a master of details and someone who rises above them to let them all go, to allow yourself to glide on top of the waves. If you think too much, you don't tap into the intangible. But to perform well, you need to know the notes, the rhythms, the diction, how to shape your mouth for each vowel (it's different in singing than speech), the translation of the words, the subtext (what your character is thinking with each phrase), the physicality of this character, the breath support you need, the color of the notes, dynamics on each note, emotions for each phrase, the energy you need, and on and on... They have to be in your bones so much that you're not really thinking about them. These elements need to become part of you so that they arise organically and spontaneously out of what you're doing.

Yesterday, I sang "So anch'io la virtu magica" for my opera workshop class. It's a piece that Gaetano Donizetti wrote for his opera Don Pasquale. The character is Norina, a sparkly young woman. At the opening of the piece, she's reading a romance novel, and she begins to describe it. She talks about how the knight, Riccardo, is pierced with just a glance from a woman, and he falls to his knees and declares his love and total loyalty to her. Because of her, he vows never to think about another woman. At this point, Norina laughs at the silliness of the book. She launches into the main aria, which is all about how she too knows how to charm men. A little smile, a lying tear, a sudden languor - all the tricks of wily lovers - are hers to command. But above all, despite her rather odd head/mind, she has an excellent heart, and she loves to play.

The words of the aria are repeated throughout. "Mi piace scherzar" - literally "It pleases me to play" - is sung about 13 times. The trick is to keep it fresh and make it different each time.

When I sang this piece in my studio class last week, my voice teacher pointed out that my gestures were rather canned. I had meticulously planned my movements, and I've sung the piece quite a few times between all the practicing and the audition circuit. And it showed. This is not a good thing. It's almost like saying, "Now I'm going to be sad. [Frown]"

So my challenge over the past week was to try to reinvigorate the aria, to bring fresh energy back into it. I dropped the gestures and started working from just speaking the text. It's a lot easier for me to find expressive acting and appropriate, fresh energy when I'm talking instead of singing. Part of this is because the sentiments come more naturally, and I can work with tempo a bit better. Part is because I'm not thinking about technique and my BreathSupportDynamicsVowelShapeTone etc.

Yesterday, the opening bit was still a little stiff as I was working out nerves. But then I came to the part where Norina laughs, and the audience laughed with me. At this point, I just leaned back against the piano (another great suggestion from my voice teacher) and started to go with it. I didn't move my hands unless I felt like it, so it was much more spontaneous. No planned or canned gestures. And it seemed to work. :) I found my place on the tightrope, got that balancing act, and figured out how to really be in the moment in a performance.

It was so much fun!

There's still more work to be done on the aria. I still had some troubles finding spontaneity in all the different "Mi piace scherzar"s, so the professor had four students stand up in front with me. I had to play Follow the Leader with them while I sang. My challenge was to get them all in a line and then get them to follow me through whatever obstacles or movements I devised.

The accompaniment started, and we were off. Pirouetting, lunging on the floor, spinning a chair on wheels among us like a ball in four square, marching around the room, and above all, Playing, Playing, Playing. After all, that's "scherzar" for you. And that was the secret. The other students thought the sound had more joy, more fresh energy. Now I just need to find it in normal, stationary performance.

The other neat point the professor made was about Norina. She is evidently a very visceral character, the ultimate joie de vivre. Everything is juicy and savored and not at all intellectual. And this delight, this quirkiness has to come through in the aria. Something to work on for sure.

Tomorrow is a voice lesson, a couple classes, and lots of practicing. Friday is an audition for the Mozart Requiem soloist parts. A busy week for sure...

~Hope

Living in a Vacuum

I am officially living in a vacuum.

Walking around campus this week, I've heard nary a peep about the financial crisis. Not one word in my classes or corridors. What's the small talk before class? "Boy, that was some wind storm we had Sunday night!"

I was able to start a small conversation about it briefly with my 19th century opera class during our break, but our discourse quickly returned to the far more comfortable world of music. Pretty funny.

I am living in the twilight zone.

~Hope

Finding the Rhythm

Tuesdays are my busy days. They run from about 8 in the morning till 10 at night with few stops in between. The general flow is:

• 8ish till 9:30: Get ready and go do the first 45 minute practice session of the day. Ideally, I'll squeeze yoga in here someday as well, but to do that requires getting to sleep much earlier Monday nights. Sleep still takes precedence over yoga for vocal health for me...

• 9:30-11:30: 19th century opera singers seminar. A grand discussion with doctoral candidates about the role of the singer, the diva, the composer, and the ornaments (little extra notes) in 19th century opera. Very interesting and fun.

• 11:30-12:30: Music Bibliography. Basically a tour of how to use the library effectively as well as the Insider's Guide to the Music Volumes Vocabulary. Today, for instance, we discussed a prime reason why publishers continue to release new editions: to milk more moola out of libraries and the common folk who want the "newest and greatest" Bach cantatas. The professor called this "the cynics' reason". Is it bad that this is the logic that sprang to my mind first? (For all you business folks who say, "that's the only reason", other possibilities include the find of new manuscripts or composer letters that may "update" the scholarly interpretations in the score.)

• 12:30-2:30: Scarf lunch, make some copies for class, cram in a few errands for my departmental assistantship, and do the second 45 minute practice session for the day.

• 2:30-3:30: Studio class. This is where all the students in my voice teacher's studio perform for each other and get a public voice lesson. She critiques and fixes things with us in front of the others. Purpose? 1) To give us more experience performing in front of an audience. (This dynamic also highlights flaws that may not be there when we're feeling calmer.) 2) To provide information and insights for the benefit of all. Half the students perform each week. Today was my day. I sang a fun high piece called "So anch'io la virtu magica". Lots of flashy coloratura (all the little notes) and comical character bits.

• 3:30-5:30: Opera Workshop. We meet and work on characters, discuss energy flow, learn acting technique, perform for each other, and more. The class is held in a black box theatre.

• 5:30-7ish: Run home and make a solid dinner to regain some energy before the final push of the night.

• 7ish-7:30: Head over to choir rehearsal.

• 7:30-9:45: Choir rehearsal in a nearby church with a couple hundred other people, including both students and community folks. We sit on hard metal chairs (the folding kind) in a large fellowship hall and try to hear the conductor as he instructs us to "sing the melody on ta."

• 10 pm: Home at last. Drink oodles of tea to soothe voice.

Despite the packed schedule, Tuesdays are still pretty fun. I have tons of performing classes, and I get to learn interesting tidbits about opera history or useful facts that help me be more efficient in finding music at the library. The most challenging part of the day for me is that choir rehearsal. Not only does it come at the energy low point for me; it also presents a unique challenge and potential risk to my voice.

Singers are only supposed to vocalize (physically sing) for 2 hours max a day. Any more and you risk straining your instrument. Now, this is all fine and dandy except on days like today. Generally, I manage this limit by doing two 45 minute practice sessions and then figuring the time I spend performing in class makes up the rest. But on Tuesdays, I have my practice sessions, about 15 minutes of hard singing in studio class, the potential for more in opera workshop, and - the killer - 2 hours of choir rehearsal. Choir is pretty much continuous singing, and the soprano parts are all in the passagio - D, E, F right above middle C. Singing constantly in that arena can rapidly fatigue a soprano voice. Plus, I'm already fighting low energy at that time, which means my breath support isn't what it should be. (Lack of proper breath support means you work too hard in your throat, again fatiguing the muscles and leading to potential strain.)

So how to fix? One solution is to do less practicing on Tuesdays. This is probably the tack I'll take, but it is a toughy. Those 90 minutes are dear to me because that's the time I get to spend training the muscles in my throat to respond to new technical points. You can learn music by just hitting the notes on the piano and speaking the text, but to really refine technique and get something "into your voice" so that you're singing it well and correctly, I think you actually need to sing it and see how it feels. Maybe that's just me not being advanced enough yet to really not need to sing it, but for now, that's my need. Skipping a day of that and - worse - doing singing that sometimes runs counter to the technique you need, is a tricky bit to grapple with.

All that to say that I'm sucking down tea as though I've been in a desert, and I'm marking my notes to ask my voice teacher for potential solutions that will ease the vocal fatigue on Tuesdays. Wish me luck in finding a fix!

~Hope

Tools of the Trade

Today, I spent a lot of time with the Italian dictionary and Italian "501 verbs" books you can see on the bottom of the stack. When you learn a new art song or aria, it's critical to translate word-for-word to understand exactly what is meant on a particular note. A general translation or even a word-for-word one by somebody else doesn't cut it - you have to know what the word means because that affects how you color a particular note. Saying "I love him" is different than "He is loved by me." In the first example, you'd focus on the second word. In the second example, you focus on the third (assuming you're emphasizing "love.") Love itself has various colors, and languages use different words to express them that may not appear in a generic translation: "I desire him," "I adore him," "I like him," "I am committed to him," -- all different forms of that general "love".

Looking up words in a dictionary sounds pretty straightforward, but what makes this tricky is that some of the operas and art songs were written a few centuries back. That means modern dictionaries don't always have some of the words as they were used then. Figuring out idioms is also fun. Luckily, there are amazing teachers and coaches here who are very helpful on all fronts. This is why, too, it's often considered vital for opera singers to become fluent in French, Italian, and German. I think Spanish will rise to prominence as well as people increasingly look to Spanish art song and operas for new material.

Another reason to pick up the dictionaries is pronunciation. You are expected to sound like a native when singing in a language - no accent. Actually, you're expected to sound better than a native. (Evidently Pavarotti did some funky things with his Italian.) Think of having absolutely pure English as opposed to English with a Longuyland accent or Southern twang. Same deal in Italian, French, and German.

I'm thankful for my little stack of books and pleased as a junebug that I'm in one spot for a little while so that I'm not trying to stuff them all into a suitcase.

Life is good.

~Hope

Tug Of War

Tonight, I had a really interesting seminar class. It's taught by the artistic administrator of a somewhat-local symphony orchestra, and we look at the business of the orchestra with a major focus on programming. For me, this means a lot of unknown territory. I find myself blessing the people who assigned the listening exam because the vast majority of my puny orchestral knowledge comes from those pieces. Many thanks, too, to whomever decided I should study for the music history exam since it is remarkably helpful to know that Paul Hindemath came from Berlin but lived at Yale for a while and is therefore considered an "American" composer in some circles.

In any case, tonight we had a guest speaker: the artistic adminstrator from the truly-local philharmonic orchestra. He spoke about the criteria he uses to balance a season as well as an individual program. There are so many factors to consider:

• What's the quality of my orchestra? Can they play the piece I'm thinking about and play it well?
• How many extras will be needed for this piece? Can we afford it? And if we have the extras, I'd better use them in the other piece(s) on the program because otherwise, they're sitting idle and I'm paying them anyway.
• What does the audience want to hear?
• When are our "blockbuster" marketing dates? Valentine's Day is a biggie - better program something familiar there. When is our subscription brochure going out?
• What does the conductor want to do?
• What guest artists can we engage? What do they want?
• How long is each piece? Will the orchestra have the stamina to play this program, or will I be torturing them?
• What did we do last season? Many orchestras have a 5 year rule - don't repeat anything within 5 years.
• What particular holidays are coming up? Any composer anniversaries? And we'll likely want a blockbuster to start and end the season...
• What are our "competitors" doing? Can we co-market?

And on and on. Very interesting. What I particularly enjoyed tonight, though, was the discussion about one of the continual dilemmas that face orchestral administrators: contemporary music. Now, when I say this, do your ears start to close as you picture dissonance meets "I won't understand it" meets "all that nonsense"? Or are you one of the few who spring out of their seats and cry, "YES! Something interesting and different!"?

Music critics and other Big Knowledgeable Experts in the field tend to criticize orchestras and their administrators for performing mostly from the canon of recognizable works. Their view is that the role of the orchestra is to stretch its audience, to teach them something new. Plus, if no one performs new works, composers won't be able to make a living, and music will become stagnant. Also, it can be exciting for orchestras to commission or premier a work. It gives the artists something different, an extra "creative" layer as they can originate the sound for the piece without any preconceived, deeply embedded aural patterns influencing their playing.

However - and this is the big however - new works often don't sell. Particularly in the smaller cities, an unknown name on the program can be anathema to ticket sales. No matter how much pre-concert explanation you do, no matter how much you promote it in the paper or via ads, audiences tend not to show up.

You may be thinking at this point, "So hire a guest artist who's well-known to bring in the crowds." That was my gut anyway. Sadly, according to the lecturers tonight, "Programs sell programs; artists don't." They believe there are only four artists in the classical music world who have "draw power": Renee Fleming, Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, and Emmanuel Ax. The rest, despite commanding fees of $15-30K for two performances, have a poor correlation with ticket sales at the box office.

What about pairing new and old? Come and see the new work in the first half, and we'll offer you something familiar in the second half. This occasionally works but can only be pulled so many times before the audience feels like they're being told to eat their veggies before dessert can be served.

An interesting middle ground arose. Turns out there are a ton of pieces by familiar composers - Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, Mahler, etc. - that are never performed. Sometimes this is because the piece is too expensive for a small orchestra (based on the number of players) or because it's just not very good in the first place. But sometimes it's because orchestras do tend to rely on "the old standards". So maybe the key is to offer "new music" written by folks we already know. This expands horizons without the "wait, I don't know this person. I bet I'll hate the music," factor.

It still doesn't solve the larger question, though: what is the role of a classical music organization? Is it there to give the audience what it wants, in the grand tradition of Corporate America? Or should it be educational, a rising tide that lifts the level of culture of everyone around it?

What do you think?

~Hope

Funny bits

A couple funny quotes in the midst of a pretty packed day:

1) "A and B can't be here tonight because they're off making meat pies."
~The explanation for why a couple faculty members were absent from the voice department meeting tonight. These two people are performing in Sweeney Todd. Where else but a voice department would you get that kind of excuse and have it be totally understood?

2) "This is from California, the home of Woo Woo."
~The opera workshop professor describing a particular institute that was relevant to the energy flow we worked with in class. "Woo Woo" is his adjective/noun for things that may seem a bit fluffy to some folks. (When singers start talking about energy flow, chakras, and other metaphysical concepts, the Woo Woo divide/skepticism invariably arises.)

3) "Bucketo'fish"
~The phrase used by our once-percussionist-turned-choir-conductor to get the rather large group of singers from the community to nail a complicated entrance. (Each syllable corresponds to a rest with "fish" being the entrance. Bonus points if you can figure out what the rest durations are!)

~Hope

Saucy

This was one of tonight's projects - part of my continual attempt to eat healthily. I was pretty pleased until I took a second look at all that cheese. If this is my dinner for the week....well, all I can say is that I don't think the spinach in there will cancel out the cheesy effects.

It probably doesn't help matters that this was my afternoon study companion:

But enough of the food. On to music!

Today was my first voice lesson, and it was so much fun. Such a relief and a joy to be able to fix some things. With all of my traveling, I haven't been able to take a voice lesson in a couple months, so this was a much needed visit. My teacher is excellent and gave me some great ideas to work on.

We talked about breath support (as you nearly always do in lessons), and she offered some helpful tips and tricks for releasing the rib cage. There is so much potential for things to go wrong on breath intake/support. And there are a million different ways to breathe, many of them creating tension. You can breathe too high (using your shoulders or taking the air too much into the top of your chest.) You can breathe while tensing your diaphragm right below your rib cage in the center. You can breathe low, all the way into your hips. You can expand your intercostal muscles (the ones between your ribs) - but how? Do you force them apart?(Freebie answer: no) Do you gently let them lift? How? Try it. You'll see the reason why it's so helpful and needed to have an expert working with you.

I also got some great advice on fleshing out the middle part of my voice, adding some more body, using all of it instead of the mostly head voice mixture I've been leaning on for a while. Working here will make my top easier as well, which is happy. "Easier" for me means releasing tension and relaxing into the sound. It's the only way to fly.

Finally, I picked up some new music. There are 5 pieces now sitting on my "to learn" list - 2 French art songs and 3 German. Definitely keeping me busy!!

~Hope

Lovely Lessons

A rainy, cool, beautiful early fall weekend here with just a hint of foreshadowing of the weather to come. I can feel myself happily slipping into dreams of hot cocoa and soft sweaters and scarves. Today, I broke out one scarf for the first time this season. (Dampness and chills don't sit well with singing, even if it's just psychologically...)

My biggest happy thought for the day, though? The fact that I have my first voice lesson tomorrow. My teacher is supposed to be wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to diving in and getting some remedies for a voice that still feels a bit fatigued. Voice lessons are like a combination doctor's visit, concert (as you listen to the teacher demonstrate), calisthenics/yoga class, history lesson (depending on what you discuss about your repertoire), language class, and overall feel-good-release session.

Singing just feels good, plain and simple. I think that's why most of us, even those who wouldn't call themselves singers, will belt out a tune here and there. The shower, the car, you name it - sometimes it just takes getting out of our own self-consciousness to allow ourselves to have fun with it and experience the joy. In a way, voice lessons are like the macro form of that - helping you get out of your own way so your natural voice can shine through.

I can't wait!

~Hope

Moments in the Woods

While I have weaned myself from caffeine, I still feel a little happy jolt every time I see a neat little coffee shop. There's one on my walk to school that has a lovely charm, from its purple spotted dog statue that greets passersby, to its ornate gold chairs with brocade cushions, to its upper wall self-aware mural depicting the neighborhood around the shop, to the eclectic mix of music that swirls around the center island where the baristas work their craft. I stopped in tonight for a cup of hot chocolate as I perused my reading for the 19th Century Opera Singers course. The realization that this material was something I would have picked up for fun in my prior life crystallized one of my best moments of the day.

My other favorite snapshots from today:

• Getting to hear a 2 hour concert in my opera workshop class as every student sang 2 pieces - 1 aria and 1 of any style that we loved to sing. All the voices were beautiful and brilliant, and there were soaring notes and glorious expression throughout. I was fully entertained.

• Realizing that I may actually be able to bring my past experiences in business to bear here to help some folks out with a few things

• Sitting in my bedroom with the three windows open, seeing the lights of the city glitter as the perfect temperature fresh air flows through. A beautiful place for a desk.

• Watching a guy perform "Popular", singing to his sweats-clad female accompanist. (For the uninitiated, "Popular" is from the musical Wicked and is normally sung by the popular, saccharine, pretty-in-pink, blonde girl to her frumpy fellow student.) It was like "What Not to Wear" in musical form. Hilarious.

• Getting a very supportive offer of help after confessing to my music theory professor that I'd never had the class in undergrad. Instead of calling me under-qualified or marveling that I was accepted to the program with my econ major, he was incredibly kind, attempting to link economics and music theory as "very similar to each other - they both deal with an entire system." And then he made sure I felt comfortable emailing with any questions or if I felt like the class was going too fast. I love this place.

So life is lovely overall. Things are rushed and busy in many ways, more than I'd anticipated. For instance, the 1.5 credit music theory class is turning out to be about 9 hours of work per week outside the MWF classes. (This is based on my 4.5 hours of work for last night's assignment, which was supposed to take 90 minutes. I can only hope that I'll get faster at this ear dictation over time.) But I'm still getting to sing and practice more than I'd imagined, and people are wonderfully supportive here (not to mention unbelievably talented - what an amazing place to learn!!) And I'm still in a "pinch-myself-am-I-really-here?" state. So much fun!

Ah, happy day.

Bon week-end!

~Hope

PS The title is a reference to an Into the Woods song in honor of a piece sung by a classmate today from that show.

Reaching Out

A couple of classes today and many odds and ends. My first endeavor (after gentle vocalization to get my voice moving) was to find out what the Outreach class I'm taking was all about. We'll be doing two performances and giving a masterclass this semester, and we can choose whether to take our talents into schools or places for adults. I'm most concerned about the logistical end of things since I don't have a car and since I don't play piano. But there are a couple pianists in the class...perhaps we could combine our visits. In any case, the course material looks both interesting and useful, a discussion of what works and what doesn't in the outreach world. Since I'd love to create an outreach opera company eventually, this seems like a perfect fit for me.

My other class was the first installment of remedial music theory. The TA seems like a comical and laid back guy, so it should be engaging at least. Most of the other students (about 25 or so in the class) had theory throughout their undergrad years, so he tries to keep it moving while still providing the relevant information. If it gets over my head too quickly, I may need to clarify for him that his frequent comments of "I know you've all seen this before" are not entirely accurate.

The rest of the day was comprised of practicing for a pseudo-audition I have tomorrow and running errand after errand after errand. Getting course registration forms signed, talking to my management company about the alarm system that keeps beeping erratically and about the lack of a plumber's visit, dropping off sheet music for my Opera Workshop performance on Friday, buying textbooks, picking up the choral music I'll be singing this semester, redrafting a performance resume (listing stage experience), etc. etc. etc.

Life is lively (not exactly "busy" in consulting terms) and good.

~Hope

School Days

Today was the first day of classes, and things are off to a lovely start! After rousing myself around 8:30 (I love academia!), I headed off to Singers in 19th Century Opera, a two hour seminar with 4 other students. Basically, the professor's point was that most music history texts (at least the intro ones) miss the larger story. They all tend to paint 19th century opera singers as prima donnas who ruled early in the 1800s, carting their trunk arias from place to place, insisting that composers insert them willy-nilly into whatever opera the singers pleased, no matter the story, and generally ruling capriciously, resorting to anything to "show off" to their best advantage. The tide turned later in the century as composers took back their scores and started to put their feet down, singers be darned.

Yet, there is a whole other side to 19th century singers, a story about technique and the changing views of singers' "types". Trousered mezzos (women with darker voices playing male roles) cropped up and began to perform in lieu of the castrati. Literature reflects the tensions as well, highlighting the dichotomy between two female types: the mechanistic doll who ornaments everything without any soul, and the consumptive woman who sings lyrically due to some illness, who is frail but "perfect", an angel-conduit for the divine music.

Today, we read some ETA Hoffmann excerpts and listened to bits of Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, which is based on these stories. Olympia is a mechanical doll who sings a jerky aria that's one of the famous ones in the soprano rep - lots of high flying, acrobatic coloratura (all the fast little notes). Antonia is the frail woman who sings beautifully due to some illness (consumption perhaps) but who must not sing because it will literally (and does) kill her.

After this, it was off to a 1 hour Music Bibliography class, which is meant to teach me about the ins and outs of music research, the library, and writing music resource citations.

Two hours of "free time" followed, but these were filled with a few errands, an hour of practicing/warming up since I was performing this afternoon, and meeting with my new (and excellent!) voice teacher. Hurried home to grab lunch and craft an email, and then sprinted back to campus.

The studio class is where all the students in my voice teacher's studio meet and sing for each other. It's a mini-masterclass format, meaning we stand up, sing, and then receive constructive criticism from the teacher and perhaps the other students on our performance. A terrific chance to perform more often, it provides a safe environment for learning and working out some of those pesky bugs that only seem to arise when nerves kick in.

Today, we all simply sang for each other as a way to "work out the nerves", as the professor put it. There's a baby grand piano in the room along with several top-notch accompanists, so it's quite fun. What made it really neat, though, was how amazing all the voices were. There were juniors through DMA students singing, but had I not been told their years, I would never have known what age/stage each was at. Every Single One has an unbelievable voice, and it was a true pleasure to get to be awash in all that glorious music for an hour. There were Schumann, Schubert, and Strauss art songs, Dvorak opera, Rogers and Hammerstein (2 pieces from Carousel), and several others I'm forgetting. It was like seeing a wonderful concert!

My performance? Iffy at best. Not my best but not my worst. Hopefully I'll get a chance to get my grounding soon. I sang "Kommt ein schlanker Bursch" from Weber's Der Freischutz. It's a fun little piece in which a young woman, Annchen, jokes with her cousin about how a pretty young lad will come a-walking, meet a young maid, and the two will marry. Cheerful and light, it's one of my standard "I can sing this under most conditions" arias. Always good to have in the pocket.

After the studio class, I ran to two hours of opera workshop. This will eventually involve working out staging and acting technique, but today it was an intro with forms to fill out. One of these forms was a four page questionnaire/self-assessment with questions like:

• Are you more comfortable as a singer or an actor? Why do you think this is? Would you like to change this?
• How comfortable are you with your physical life onstage?
• How comfortable are you with your emotional life onstage?
• If you could sing any role from musical theatre or opera, what would it be and why?
• If all goes as planned, what will your future career look like?
• Why are you taking this class?
• What are your goals for the semester?
• What do you think your strengths and weaknesses are onstage?
• How well do you take criticism? How much positive reinforcement do you need to feel good about yourself?
• Are you comfortable taking risks in class, even if it means you might fail?
• How comfortable are you with doing things that you may not enjoy or that are the same for a long period of time when the outcome isn't immediately clear? (I phrased this poorly, but the gist of the question was "Are you disciplined enough to stick with exercises that will pay off in the long run but don't show immediate gains?")

This plus a list of my performance experience and my class schedule completed the rest of the paperwork. Interesting.

At this point, it was off to practice a bit more. Then, I headed to the library to pull some articles for the 19th Century Opera class. Amazing to be among the musty smell of books again, copying pages instead of slides.

Tonight, my only remaining work was to pull together my music for Friday's accompanist. I need to perform two selections in opera workshop on Friday. One should be an aria I'm comfortable singing and want to work on all semester. The other? Any piece in any style that I Love to sing. "Something that connects you to that Joy Factor," the professor explained. I'm planning on "La Romance d'Ariel" for that one. An early Debussy piece, it speaks from Ariel's point of view in Shakespeare's Tempest. In this piece, Ariel is in love with Miranda and calls to her, spinning lovely descriptions of nature as a reflection of emotion and Miranda's beauty. Ariel eventually realizes that Miranda isn't coming and ends with a repeat of the opening stanza: "Across the sweet mountains, won't you come to the cry of your Ariel?" But this time, it is a plaintive cry, ending with a sweeping vocal line that sobs. Truly incredible.

I think I'm rather smitten with Debussy.

~Hope