Unfortunately, I had a bad audition this Sunday.
I was auditioning for Tamino with "Dies Bildnis" but after a good start, many of the old habits returned. I started out great... then at one very specific point I felt it. I felt my larynx rising and closing, and I didn't really have a way to recover at that point. The ending was... a great deal beneath my standards. And that frustrates and infuriates me.
I hate the feeling of being betrayed by your body like that. The hardest part of being a singer for me is coming to terms with the fact that no matter how polished your mind is, your body takes twice as long as your mind does to grasp a new thing. Sometimes even longer, depending on the frequency of the previous muscular habit.
Because "Dies Bildnis" an aria I've sung before with others teachers and with so much baggage, the muscular memory associated with it is particularly tricky. Specially anything associated with the vowel "I" (to you English speakers it'd be an "Ee" sound) is troublesome for me, as the larynx wants to rise at that point, the palate wants to collapse and the note wants to laminate itself onto my nose (it's not pretty).
The 'i' is a vowel I attack constantly during warm-ups and study sessions. It's at a point where I win some of the time and the old habits win most of the time, and it'll slowly be the other way eventually. And then I win. But that's a ways off right now- how far away? I don't know.
One of the masters of the open "I" sound is Alfredo Kraus, and interestingly enough he used to say that that particular vowel was the key to his vocal technique. Of course, it is: if you can produce an "I" with ease at any point in your register, you've already mastered what an open throat feels like and you could do anything.
Martile says I have an easy and ringing high C waiting to escape, if I only let it. The problem is all this tension I've accumulated at the base of my tongue. We're working on that, of course, and already I sound like a different tenor. But muscle memory, damned muscle memory....
This has come as a double whammy, since last Saturday I had to sing the count's aria and the finale of act I from the Barber of Seville, again something I had done before, for a gala, and Bam, hello raised larynx. The gala was something I couldn't avoid, as I had singed up for it before changing teachers. If I could have chosen what I would sing nowadays, I would not have chosen Rossini at all (since it is now outside of my fach, or vocal category) - but alas, it was one of those situations where you couldn't really win: If you pull out, you get a bad mark for professionalism, and if you perform in a sub-standard fashion you get marked as well. The only legitimate time to withdraw from a production is in cases where you suffer from a truly bad ailment or a broken leg (although since Joyce DiDonato's accident, that's up to debate.)
A friend of mine, a colleague I have known for several years, put it best:
"Oh doesn't that suck when it's a piece you know you could sing well if you hadn't already sung it in the not so good way! Baggage....bah!"
One of my readers here (I have readers! How exciting is that?) mentioned that he couldn't really appreciate Kraus' ease of production, probably because he made it look too easy. Perhaps. But I would like to submit for your listening pleasure two arias that exhibit Kraus' technical mastery and sprezzatura at its best:
1) Kraus singing Donizetti's "La Fille Du Regiment" (in Italian), and singing that particuarly hellish aria, "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" which has been affectionately called the "Mount Everest" for tenors. It features nine high Cs and it comes early in the opera. One high C is often nerve-wracking, but nine in a row in rapid-fire succession? Madness, you say!
Well, if it is madness then Alfredo Kraus is simply Demented in his perfect rendition:
2) Now a bit of the lyrical Kraus. This aria from Gounod's "Faust" isn't considered "showy", certainly not in the same aspect as "Ah! mes amis" is. Although the aria does have one triumphant high C at its climax, 90% of the aria is a lyrical contemplation. This requires depth of interpretation to give appropriate profundity, while still being able to top off the high C at the word "presence." Alfredo Kraus, of course, not only does an amazing job of it, but every single time I have seen him in a live production of this, he is always treated to a near-apocalyptic ovation at the very end of the aria. At one point someone clocked a particular ovation at nine minutes.
Here's hoping that these videos help you appreciate the maestro.
I can't believe she performed with a broken leg! I had a spiral fracture of my tib/fib a few years back. I can tell you, I hit some high notes, but nothing anyone would've wanted to hear! lol! Perhaps her break wasn't as severe as mine, but still, that's amazing!
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