Some Things Never Change - Except for the Magic Number!

For example, I'm still singing those two measures of If Music incorrectly. Like my brain learned it wrong and I can't seem to unlearn it. I can unlearn it... I just have to concentrate. And practice. I have to get my body to remember how it feels to sing it correctly. And I'm talking about 1 note in each of the two measures that leads me into singing a few other notes off, but when I get that one note right, the others are correct too. What else never changes? For Tipsy Waltz - my pronunciation of the words "suis" and "peu." Years and years of French class have me pronouncing them one way, but French has that tricky bit of being different when you sing it. I'd like to know who came up with that bright idea.

Hopefully now that I've written about them, these little problems will miraculously and/or magically correct themselves. C'mon, brain, do it!

Once more lesson before the Big Eval. Two weeks to correct the two words and the two measures in two songs. Is two the new magic number? <-- Two words, two links.

French Psychotherapy

Since I missed Thursday's voice lesson due to my foray into the city, I had a make-up lesson this afternoon.

We pulled Apres un Reve out from where it had been resting these past few months. Once again, letting it simmer has allowed me to improve a heck of a lot, except when it comes to the pronunciation. Dang French pronunciation. I took all the way through 300 level French in college. None of that matters when it comes to singing. Why is singing French different from spoken French? What is UP with that? And no matter how hard I try, I just keep forgetting to make the kissy lips to get the vowels right. So my homework is to redo the IPA right into my songbook. We'll work on this during one more lesson before moving on.

The plan: One new English song, and then... German. My teacher specializes in German Lieder. I swear it's true. Totally unrelated to, well, you know. So who knows what she'll pick out to work on. I know nothing. I know opera - I know some Mozart. But I doubt we'll jump right in, as much as I'd love to sing me some Pamina.

Of course we spent a minute or two talking about La Sonnambula. She is officially in love with Juan Diego Florez. I have been telling her about him for two years but I guess she just had to see him in the flesh before succumbing.

Cat - Hat. In French, Chat - Chapeau.

Had a little cocktail party today. Started talking in Italian to a friend who speaks it. Well, I spoke enough to tell him that I only speak opera Italian. Somehow we moved on to French opera (in English) and he really and truly thought that Carmen was the only French opera out there. He's a smart guy, but he actually asked, "So is Carmen the only one? Are there any others in French?" I was really casual, like, "Oh yeah, there are tons, like..." and I named a few. He had never heard of them. I guess I keep forgetting that most people just don't know. All my friends at work are opera people, and many of my friends outside of work are opera people and/or singers, so sometimes I forget that the Rest of the World has that stereotypical view of opera. Well, now he knows. Carmen is not the only French opera.

Cat time.


Diego relaxes inside the Boppy.


Viola relaxes on top of the Boppy.

First of Three

I have three things to catch up on:

1. My most recent voice lesson
2. That outdoor concert
3. Sunday's rehearsal

So....in this post I will discuss....


1. My Most Recent Voice Lesson:

Had a make-up lesson Saturday morning in one of the practice rooms at Westminster. Like the space so much better than the 6th grade math classroom the lessons have been in so far! With it's "Black Holes are God's Way of Dividing By Zero" banner across the board... yes it's a Catholic school. Yes I'm Jewish. Yes it's vaguely disconcerting to me to be surrounded by crucifixes and other Catholic symbols but I've gotten used to it. So anyway... wow I digress a lot... so Saturday we were in the practice room. The sound was great! My teacher told me that I did really well at the studio class - I didn't realize that this was my first time seeing her since then. Then we did some vocal exercises - one of my favorites where I sing See-YAAAA Ahh ahhh ahhh all legato... I think it jumps up a fifth (?) from see to yaaa and then down in, what, 3rds? I don't know... but it's so much fun to do. She always tells me to "Let loose, sing like an opera singer" and so I do and it sounds great and then I laugh and have to stop because I can't believe it's me singing like that. Then there's usually a point where I don't let myself slide up to the YAAA note for whatever mental block reason and I have a pause between the two notes. It's like I don't feel like I can control the slide to stop at the right note, although I can just hit the note. I think it's the C. I try not to peek at the piano but sometimes I do. So I KNOW I can hit the note, I just have to trust that I can slide into it from below. Anyone out there have any tips for overcoming that mental thing?

So we moved on from there and started "Ouvre Ton Coeur," which meant first checking the IPA, meaning, I copied it onto my copy of the music, then we went over the words and how to pronounce them, back and forth, a word and then a phrase at a time, then the rhythm, chant chant chant to get the words with the right number of beats, then she played the tune on the piano without us speaking the words at all. I recorded it all and have been listening to each part. I'm forcing myself to be comfortable with each aspect before I seriously try to put it all together. I have problems with the pronunciation once I try singing it. And I took French all through college - you'd think it'd be easy for me.

So I have one more make-up class to do over the summer, probably at my teacher's house.

Did I Mention that I Love the Internet?

Turns out one of my online opera friends has access to many many opera recordings... I now have Nathan Gunn as Figaro in San Francisco Opera's Babiere, The Met's Die Zauberflote with Nathan as Papageno and I'm in the process of obtaining one of 3 different dates of the Met's Barbiere with Juan Diego Florez!!! I also have the info to get a video of Billy Budd with Nathan as some other, smaller part, but I don't think I like the opera enough to take the time to download it.

Gracias a mi amigo que tiene la llave a todas las grabaciones!

Debo escribir en espanol de vez un cuando. Por que no? Si la gente que leen mi blog no entienden, no me importa. Yo se que hay mucha gente en el mundo que si, entienden espanol.
Pero como puedo poner acentos y tildes? No se parece en el keyboard y no se como ponerlos. Pero esto no tiene nada que ver con opera, por eso...

Maintenent, en francais. No... je ne raconte rien... il y a boucoup d'ans... and I'm sure I'm spelling it all wrong...

Ma, italiano? Io parlo? No, non parlo italiano. Mais je desire estudiarla. Ha ha una mezcla.

Ok all this talk of opera is keeping me up waaaay past my bedtime. So what else is new?