Oratorio Class

This was “ingemisco” with the two top B flats!

The concert hall where the competition took place has great acoustics and so on the unaccompanied first line of the song, my voice rang out really well.

As I climbed to the first B flat, something wasn’t right.  When I got there, there was no way I would have made it with good mix so I chickened out and used an edgy head voice instead.  It was a bit of a cheat but didn’t sound awful.

When I got to the last line, and again climbed to the top B flat, everything seemed fine and out popped the B flat!  Ok, so it wasn’t perfect, but it also wasn’t awful.

Unfortunately, I placed joint last with two other singers.  To be fair, the other two singers are very good so I don’t feel bad.  We all got 84 points.  One of the girls got 85 but even she admitted that she made mistakes and you could see her shake all the way through.  The last of the singers (who won with 87 points) sang a song that I felt was too difficult for her.  It was quite florid and so sounded impressive but there were places where I couldn’t even hear her voice.  She was flat in several places and her diction (for Latin) was very plummy English!  I don’t want it to sound like sour grapes but I thought I did much better than them all.  To be fair this lady also won last year and it was well deserved!  She is a good singer, I just think she overreached herself this year.

Oh well, I’m pleased with my performance.  I did my best and I think I did a good performance as far as the audience was concerned which is important.  As for the adjudicator – well, I’ve learned not to trust her judgement.  I guess the rest of the classes will go the same.  At least I’ve got one win under my belt.