Having technique

A lot of singers talk about ‘having technique’, which I usually assume means ‘having the capability to manipulate our bodies in such a way that we produce a marketable operatic sound’. Ignoring that minor complication that such manipulation is supposed to be relaxed and natural, we can still conclude that technique isn’t really something we attain or achieve but something we practice.

And practice, and practice, and practice.

One of my coaches has been working with me on middle voice. A lot of sopranos have trouble with that part of the voice, and I am no exception. I know that dealing with less-optimal vocal qualities is the only way that any singer improves, but making those improvements usually includes someone harping on your flaws over and over. For me at least, no matter how hard I have worked to get everything else to line up, whatever it is we are trying to tweak or fix makes me feel like my flaw is the only important thing.

Some of you may remember my multiple proclamations last summer that most singers think about quitting at least five times a day. That’s why. It takes a life-time to “have” technique, which one then needs to refine & practice. I know lots of gifted singers who for whatever reason decided not to pursue a career. I have to wonder if the stress of constant self-improvement is a reason some people decide to call it quits (rather than just dreaming about it like the rest of us).

That’s not to say that all people aren’t called to self-improvement in one way or another. Still, knowing that I am pressured to ‘improve’ something as fundamental to my identity as how I sing creates a constant tension between the part of me that wants to be lazy and the part that wants to be excellent.

Advice

The last 24 hours may make you think I am obsessed with The Atlantic, but I can't resist sharing this letter to the back page advice columnist.

I am the pastor of a small, historic Episcopal church in the Southeast. A bride-to-be wants to tie little pink bows to the pews for her wedding. Our wedding director says the church is too pretty to be ruined by little pink bows. The bride is deeply distressed. Meanwhile, the youth group wants to burn the church down and replace it with something more energy-efficient. I concede that the church, a Victorian pile with high ceilings and lots of stained glass, is costly to heat and maintain. Energy-efficient churches are often ugly, but pink bows would then cease to be an issue. Should I let the youth group burn down the church?

What's the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist...

Two poems

Heaven
by William Heyen
Henry Thoreau’s last words: “Moose … Indian.”
Joe DiMaggio’s: “I’ll finally get to see Marilyn.”

Henry died never having gone to bed with a woman.
Joe enjoyed dozens, but in the end loved only one,

& believed that after he’d signed his last ball or bat,
he’d find her waiting in Yankee Stadium in starlight.

Henry died younger, & wasn’t sure about the out-there,
except it sounded transcendentally beautiful, whether

or not it was cognizant of him or was just a cowbell
thunking in the mind of the great Oversoul,

but if it at least proved amenable
to hounds, bay horses, turtledoves, what the hell.

Maybe Henry is in Joe’s penthouse, Joe in Henry’s cabin,
maybe Joe is writing books, Henry hugging Marilyn,

maybe Henry is hitting homers, & Joe is fishing Walden,
maybe Joe & Hank are pals, & Marilyn ecstatic with Emerson.

Reading "Heaven" in The Atlantic reminded me I'd never shared this, which I read in the same magazine while in West Virginia, and which moved me so much I mouthed the words over and over in the collegiate auditorium in which we were taking our rehearsal break.

Celebration
by Grace Schulman

Seeing, in April, hostas unfurl like arias,
and tulips, white cups inscribed with licks of flame,
gaze feverish, grown almost to my waist,
and the oak raise new leaves for benediction,
I mourn for what does not come back: the movie theater—
reels spinning out vampire bats, last trains,
the arc of Chaplin’s cane, the hidden doorways—
struck down for a fast-food store; your rangy stride;
my shawl of hair; my mother’s grand piano.
My mother.

How to make it new,
how to find the gain in it? Ask the sea
at sunrise how a million sparks can fly
over dead bones.

Both of these reminded me I should never write any more poems, ever again.

The joy of ad sales

Because of my newly acquired free time, I am hawking a ton of ads for BOC's summer production of Carmen. Ad sales have always been one of the toughest things we've had to do, for the simple reason that no one likes to do it. Walking into an establishment, making a fast new friend, and convincing them that what we have to offer is just what they have always been looking for but never knew to seek out - this requires more than free time. It requires mental fortitude.

This season we are able to offer many of our sponsors a lot more than ever before. Cadenza: the Boston Opera Collaborative newsletter reaches over 900 subscribers, and we are expecting about 700 tickets sold for Carmen. Many of our packages this season include pre-performance exposure, so that we can offer our patrons information on restaurants, hotels and attractions near our performance venues.

With these new offers in place, sales have been a little easier this go-round, but it should go on the record that it is still not a lot of fun. I wonder if some people imagine that I like doing the things that no one else wants to do (such as when I have had to talk to people about deodorant at rehearsals). I'm willing to take one for the team, but I can think of things I'd rather be doing.

That said, want to purchase an ad in the program?

Happy anniversary to me

It was just over a year ago that Felicemifa had it's inaugural post. What began as an easy way to keep mom and dad up to date on my Italian adventure has turned into what every blog should be: a narcissistic chronicle of minutiae and pompous profundity. And for whatever reason, you keep reading.

For those of you who have never really understood the title (and who pronounce it "fuhleesemeefa", it's a line from Musetta's aria in La Boheme. I learned that role last summer, and I only really decided to start a blog about being in a summer program when I came up with a clever name.

I hope to post much more this summer - although there is no European gallavanting ti report on, Boston promises just as many adventures! Happy summer!

Congrats to Nick and Katie!

Two of my dearest friends (and former roommates) just had their first child. Nick and Katie are two of the greatest people I know and I am so excited that they have added a son to their wonderful household. I don't have any pictures to post (plus I have some moral reservations about posting pictures of babies) but I'm so overjoyed I'll just post an old picture from their wedding.

River of Glory - for all the LAG kids in the house

Today I heard River of Glory sung by a choir that is not my group from BC, and let's just say it did not exactly inspire the same reveries as the last time I heard it.

a few classics revisited

Have you ever gone back to a book, or a restaurant, or a play that you really loved, only to find it disappoints you upon revisiting it? Ever since re-reading The Catcher in the Rye when I was 23 or so, I have been terrified of hitting up the old standards. The life-altering story of growth and introspection seemed self-indulgent and boring once I was in my twenties. Rare are the classics that stay powerful. Counting Crows’ "A Long December" continues to exacerbate my maudlin tendencies despite being associated most with the winter I turned 17 - perhaps it’s just that I haven’t outgrown emo angst yet. God willing I never will! I can still rock out to Everclear’s Songs from an American Movie, which was the soundtrack to my junior year of college. But some music and books don’t transition with us as we get older, and the specter of Holden Caulfield hovers near when I dare to pull revered works from a dusty shelf.

For whatever reason, a few days ago I was feeling brave and I pulled out not only The Brothers Karamazov but Phish’s Rift. Let’s deal with the less profound of the two first. At this point it my life I believe that the deeper work is the tome of Russian literatur, but there are days when Trey et. al. make a pretty good case for their own sagacity . Since Phish has started touring again I have been thinking more and more about my days of ripped jeans and wallet chains. If I recall correctly, I wore an extra-large Phish t-shirt and corduroys to my BC orientation (no wonder I never quite fit in with the J. Crew crowd. I had never even heard of J. Crew. But that’s another post). During a PR Committee meeting at B.Good two weeks ago I heard a track off of Junta and stopped dead in my tracks as I had flashbacks to high school (one of the flashback frames involves Phish’s Lawn Boy on cassette).

On the drive to CT this weekend I popped in the beautiful blue CD. As the opening riffs sounded I wondered, would I still find the poetry of “Fast Enough for You” as brilliant as I once did? The answer is not quite, but it’s still darn good and those guys know how to slap together a couplet better than just about any band out there. What really struck me was the virtuosity of their playing and their musicianship. The opening minute of “My Friend, My Friend” is stunning, and they have a way of pushing the beat around that makes me a little bit nervous but ultimately inspires trust that they will keep control. That’s right, Phish inspires trust in me. Make of that what you will.

So I discover that some of my beloved tunes from high school have stood the test of time. The real question is whether or not Dostoevsky has. I went on my Dostoevsky kick when I was 19 or 20, going so far as to read a library copy of House of the Dead on the beach in St. Thomas at Deb and Eric’s wedding. (Also the purview of another post - my odd choices in beach lit. Common Ground was my companion on the beach the summer of 2007. Weird.)

Like a lot of college kids, my life was changed by The Brothers Karamazov. Part of the power of that book is that it is so vast. I truly believe that anyone can find in that book a character, an episode, or an emotion that will resonate with them. The first time I read it I fell deeply, madly in love with Alyosha Karamazov (the first but not last time I fell for a fictional character), and the second time through I identified more with Fyodor Pavlovich. That most recent read-through was more than five years ago, so I decided (thanks to some inspiration from Christina) that I would give it a shot again. I’m about 80 pages in and I am as enthralled by the writing as ever. Now that I teach church history I understand far more of the ecclesiastical references without having to constantly flip back and forth to the end notes. I still have some trepidation though - when I close the book will I still pronounce it “amazing!!”, the highest praise of the college undergrad? Maybe I will, but I bet the tone of voice will be different.

I’m not old, but I’m older, and each year that goes by I know more than I did before. I can never go back to experiencing something for the first time. I was trying to mush all of these thoughts into a blog post yesterday just after I arrived at my parents’ house for a few days of R&R. One nice thing about cerebrally picking apart nostalgia is that it doesn’t really give you time to feel it, but as I jogged past a kids' vegetable stand - one that wasn’t ironic, or out of place, or sponsored by WIC - the feeling hit me straight in the gut.

I love “Ain’t it a Pretty Night” from Susannah. Like many poignant arias, this is a tough one for me to get through, mostly because I as an actress I have to un-know a lot of things. When Susannah wonders if her big-city dreams will cause her to miss the rustic attributes of home, she simply announces “I could always come back if I got homesick for the valley!” I’m not one for “you can’t go home again” melodrama, because I do go home, again and again, and have a perfectly fine time and then go back to the city. But each time I go home or go anywhere, I know a little more and I’ve seen a little more. I remember when all I needed for adventure was a walk in the woods. Something about the uncharted, untamed quality of large expanses of trees filled me with excitement because I never was quite sure where I was heading. Same thing with long walks and later long drives down rural roads I had never been down, undertaken just to see where they would go. Now I am better acquainted with the lay of the land and it takes more to inspire that sense of adventure. Even when life offers me uncertainty and adventure, half the time I am too lazy to take up the offer. Some pieces of the past seem doomed to stay there - like The Catcher in the Rye - but the best ones travel forward with me as I change and the world changes. And luckily for me on occasion I can still venture out into the woods and find something or some place that I don’t already know.