Mental Prep

Tomorrow is the Opera Project recital! So of course I woke up yesterday with a sore throat, and today I have swollen glands. Not too congested... mainly the throat. I hummed a bit in the shower this morning and then sang a few scales - the voice seems ok. I just practiced a bit, to get the breathing thing going on those trouble spots, and now my throat is a little sore and my head is a little spinny. However, I think I'm slowly figuring out, layer by layer, how to attack those sections of the song.

There's one section that comes really easily to me - 4:26 to 4:34 here. (And my fantasy, of course, is to sound as beautiful as she does.) But for some reason I was having trouble with 4:19-4:22. It was the whole mental thing ... I anticipated it and tensed up... same old story. So I separated my brain out to pay attention to my body in that later part, then I applied that to the earlier part, and it worked. Basically, it comes not only to using the low abs for the breath, but also to trust myself to do it. When I relax and just let it happen, it sounds so much better than when I think about it. I know the words, I know the notes, I know the rhythm. I don't need to think about it. I do at some points need to think about where to breathe, to remind myself to take a breath, but the rest, I have to just trust my body to do its thing. So the next thing I need to trust it to do is not go all hoarse on me tomorrow.

I got the program for the evening. I'm in act 2 which means I'll have time to warm up during intermission. Good. One less thing for me to wonder and worry about.

Deep breath... relax... go.