Transfigured Week

Well, what a week!

A new experience works the mind in much the same way a yoga pose works the body, pulling you at once inward and out. We spent the first week here getting accustomed to our new surroundings, observing each other, and complaining loudly about the many apparent nuisances of daily life in northern Florida. I’ve been on sensory overload, until this week, when I’d taken everything in and could now return my thoughts to myself and my many questions about my singing.

Also, I had some nice experiences last week, singing wise, and I knew they would be difficult to repeat. To sing for different teachers after having only been with one for a stretch of time is refreshing, like having a few great dates after a lackluster relationship. Sometimes all it takes is the right turn of phrase to free up your sound, letting you make a stronger, more beautiful sound with less effort. Two teachers did this for me last week, and I left me feeling confident that I had the tools I needed to sing well, even if I needed more guidance on how to use those tools. “It’s your oyster,” one of them said to me, complimenting my former teacher’s work.

So that was last week. We started staging the operas this week, which has proved a stressful experience. I’m fairly new to the stage, having grown up musically in youth orchestras. I’m honestly more interested in the intimate communication between performer and audience found in chamber music or the most simply staged aria, rather than elaborate prancings about in the name of “theatre.” Also, adding physical and character elements to difficult music really challenges me; it’s so easy to forget all technique, choke on nerves, and lose track of where you are. The rehearsals have been going fairly well, but I feel I can never be solid enough with my knowledge of the score, or have enough time on stage to be comfortable putting together the many elements that make up a performance – music being only one of them, rather sadly.

There is also the fact that I am in two operas which tend to rehearse at the exact same time, a difficulty that affects only two people in both shows. I spend my time frantically running between rooms, trying to get my time onstage or asking colleagues to explain the blocking to me that I just missed. No matter where I am, I feel as if I should be somewhere else, that I’m missing out, that someone is getting something that I should be getting.

And speaking of which…..

This program entitles us to three lessons a week with a voice teacher of our choice. (We won’t discuss the fact that they are only 30 minute slots, down from 45, and that we were initially promised a lesson a day.) However, we must sign up for lessons each evening when schedules are posted, an occasion that resembles a feeding frenzy. Some teachers are infinitely more popular than others, and missing a signup usually means not having a lesson at all the next day. Moreover, some teachers block out most of their schedule for their private students from elsewhere, and will offer only four precious slots to the hoi polloi.

This creates a problem when some private students are especially keen for lessons, and resort to tactics like signing up for two a day, signing up with false names, crossing off other people’s names from the list, and bodily attacking the poor guy who tacks the schedules to the wall. Such has been the scene since the arrival of one teacher’s minion, whose poor sportsmanship and defensiveness has been stressing everyone out.

After that lovefest with last week’s teachers I decided to sing for another teacher here, whom I will call Tarzan. She earns this name thanks to her, um, singular personality and teaching style, involving loud snorting through the nose (encouraging head resonance), pounding of the chest (chest resonance), funny faces (humiliation of the student), and hyperactivity. Tarzan belongs to the “monkey see monkey do” school of teaching, in which she sings at me, tells me all the things I’m doing wrong, and extols all the things she’s doing right. This is interspersed with frequent ugly of exaggerations of how I sounded and looked to her, and many inquiries of “Do you get it? Does this make sense?” Towards the end of our excruciating half hour together, I did make some progress, and latch onto the sensations the nicer teachers had guided me towards. She played favorites among students, encouraging some to come study with her privately while skimping on time with others, namely me. I was miserable, but I decided to take another lesson with her, in hopes that things would be different, or I could make things better. In other words, with the same attitude as a battered wife.

The presence of Tarzan’s minion didn’t help either. I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t direly intimidated by the other singers during my first week here, but after this floundering lesson and the stressful rehearsals, I began to doubt myself. The minion has a superior air and competitiveness that instantly made me feel as if I couldn’t compete. She dominates in the trio I share with her, and is not a flexible musician.

But the week went by, I’m sort of learning how to manage the rehearsals, and Tarzan started to like me. I know this because in our last lesson together, she confessed as much, along with the fact that she didn’t like my voice at first. I was glad to get to know her here, instead of paying for lessons in Boston. She got me to do some good things, but a little bit of draconian goes a long way.

In fact, I think her students all have problems, the minion included. After a week of her attitude, I was looking forward to the songs she was singing on one of our group recitals. If you’re going to scare me and make me feel bad, then you better knock my socks off. Well, she was a bundle of nerves (it is quite difficult to sing for 70 of your peers!), sweating and shaking, and then screeching and howling. I put my socks back on. I’m sure Tarzan was distressed, or else delusional. I was happy that my performance met with high praise from my colleagues, even though it was a very long program. I sang some Britten folk song arrangements that I had done in May with my lovely harpist, and I was able to rely on my newly revitalized technique to focus on the emotion and storytelling of the songs. A few people said I even made them tear up – I just love making people cry! I even got hugs and congratulations from both Tarzan and her minion. Overall, it’s been a week of transition from freaking out to gaining control.

When I sang last night, I dedicated the songs to Jerry Hadley, who had so inspired me earlier this year. But I don’t think people had heard the sad news, and I didn’t want to describe it at a concert. I was dismayed that the person who redirected me to such positive feelings about singing could allow himself to be so consumed by a strong depression. I suppose singers can end up living operatically, feeling emotions as deeply as the characters we portray. Are we drawn to singing because music most accurately reflects our feelings, or are our emotions heightened and exaggerated because we sing?

Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?
Sur mon front je sens tes caresses.
Et pourtant bien proche est le temps
Des orages et des tristesses.
Demain, dans le vallon,
Se souvenant de ma gloire premiere,
Et ses yeux vainement chercheront ma splendeur:
Ils ne trouveront plus que deuil et que misere! Helas!
Pourquoi me reveiller, o souffle du printemps?

Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring? On my brow I sense your most gentle caress, yet how soon creeps on the time, filled with tempests and with distress! Tomorrow through the vale, the traveler will pass, recalling all of the glory of the past. And in vain he will search for the bloom of my youth, and nothing will he find but deep pain and endless sorrow. Alas! Why do you wake me now, o sweetest breath of spring!

From Werther