Operatic Class

Tonight’s class was the one I was dreading.  I had chosen “Che Gelida Manina” from La Boheme and, to be honest, it was right out of my comfort zone.  If the B flat in the middle wasn’t difficult enough, there was a top C on the last page.

Rehearsing earlier this evening, I wimped out on the B flat and sang it pure head voice and pianissimo.  During the practice I had hit the top C but even when I started the song, I wasn’t sure if I was going to sing the high part at the end or whether I would sing the alternative line that was written on the music that topped out at A flat (my comfortable one).

I really, really didn’t want to sing tonight because I was uncomfortable with the pieces, but as it’s my last solo performance I thought I’d better.

The beginning wasn’t bad but the top notes suffered from my nerves (this was the only one I’ve been nervous about this week) and they certainly weren’t the best.  The head-voice B flat was weedy to say the least and I bet it showed in my voice.  As I approached the last page, I still hadn’t decided which version to sing but in the end thought “Blast!  Let’s do it anyway!”.  I hit it, but it wasn’t as secure as many I had got in various practices over the past weeks.  Mind you it was the 5th day of singing and already 9.20pm after a full day’s teaching using my voice.

Whatever I did, the adjudicator appreciated my voice and gave me second place with 87 marks.  I had family in the audience tonight and they confirmed that I had looked nervous for the first time they’d ever seen.  They also confirmed that the B flat and C hadn’t matched the quality of the rest of the song so I think that I was lucky to get second place!

I’m going to have a couple of week’s rest and then I’m going to come back to the Singing Success programme.