Thursday, April 30, 2015

Silence is a Virtue

I begin this blog with a subject that is very torturous for me as well as for many of my opera singing colleagues I am sure.  It seems only just that after hundreds of thousands of dollars in voice lessons, thousands of hours of training, swimming, yoga, clarinet playing, and everything else that is meant to provide the body with the strength and wisdom that it needs to keep the voice healthy, the need for "vocal rest" would be obsolete.  Unfortunately, this is not always the case.  As chatty and social as I am, the hardest lesson to learn is that sometimes I must be absolutely silent.

Every voice has a unique strength.  Some are more hardy than others.  Some singers can bellow away night and day and still be fine to sing and sing some more!  I am finding that with my voice, it is more tender.  This is no fault of my singing technique, as I can have two hour lessons piping out high Db after high Db and be clear as a bell for the remainder of the week.  What it boils down to is learning how to pace myself.

After a long concert singing 6 arias and 3 duets, it seems only fitting that a singer would desire some quite vocal rest.  However, if you mix in a little indulgence (including wine and excess talking) and then pair it with a 7:00am vocalize session the next day, a church solo, and a rehearsal for Strauss's Vier Letzte Lieder that afternoon, you are asking for trouble.  Oh yes, and a trip to the Sounders soccer game and a 3 hour ferry ride home (someone did NOT jump off the ferry.... but we all needed to wait for 3 hours just to be sure).  This 1am arrival time probably didn't help the matter much.

So bottom line is this.  The voice can withstand a lot of singing with excellent technique and breath.  What it CANNOT stand is all the other crud we put it through afterwards.  There is a reason operas are not performed on consecutive evenings like musicals are.  The opera voice needs a little pampering and R&R after a big performance.  So be kind and treat yourself with care.

My 3 days of silence were amazingly challenging.  I wanted to give my voice a chance to recover nicely as I have an important competition / audition weekend coming up and I want to be as fresh as possible.  The funniest thing is how people reacted when they realized that I was not speaking.  It is as if they thought I had a disease.  They gave me strange looks and walked the other direction.  And the best is when, as soon as I "motioned" that I was not talking, some people start to go quiet and mime to me as well.  haha... I can HEAR!  I am just choosing not to speak at the present moment.

Surprisingly, it gives the mind a chance to quiet down.  Being an observer is an interesting position to take.  As a "talker" I usually have a gajillion things racing through my head that just MUST be heard by someone.... But when you make a vow of silence, all of a sudden I realize how unimportant my observations are.  Or, rather, how unimportant it is to share them with others.

Sometimes the voice is tired from faulty singing.  This is definitely something that needs to be addressed.  But at times, when it is fatigued after singing a lot of extreme music, it may just need a good dose of silence.  Then again, some of the best opera singers in the history of opera singing have been quiet people.  Why waste your voice on anything other than amazing, heart wrenching singing? This is quite an idea indeed.  I do not think that I will ever be a silent person.  But perhaps I do not have to talk quite SO much.  It will give me more time to listen and breath!

I guess that is why this was the most appropriate topic for my first blog post in Diaries of an Aspiring Prima Donna.  There is so much I want to say!  Perhaps if I write it down, then my mind will be satisfied and my voice saved.

~VR


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