Audition, singing, reading…
Hi there! This week was a relatively calm. I am glad I had the time to think about several aspects of my life. It has been a week of repositioning priorities and having the time to read and write some stuff that has been in my head, finally having the time to go through.
I had also a small audition. I sang well but on the second aria, I noticed I started pushing a bit and there was specifically one very hard tone in comparison with the rest of the aria. As a singer, you know already most of the times, a phrase or two before, that this will happen. After many years of singing you know better, and you know when you are going to struggle or not, and you realize it sooner than when you are young. The same way when things are going well you know it will end well most of the times. In this occasion, it was a combination of not having the time to warm up the voice enough and just I was not able to focus completely. I am glad though I went to audition because I could record and then analyse and see what things I must correct and what things did work. We focus so much on what was not right, but we must give the importance to the things that also went well, in order to balance the whole thing.
This week I have been also writing and contacting people, looking up also for auditions and perhaps competitions without age limit. I am considering doing some after more than a decade of not having the time to take part in any. I had always work and could never do them. Now that I started to freelance I heard from colleagues of some competitions without age limit and I am considering looking into them. Although I do not like to compete, I must admit that competitions could be a very good opportunity to specially create connections with people in the theatre scene. So, if I decide to do any, my intention is to be heard and get new connections for future opportunities and also to challenge myself and to have a new experience. I found few in Italy and this year I have been there already three times. I think is my Italian year.
Last night I went to see la Traviata with Aki singing the title role. I can only say, she did great. She is so clever and she kept always so much resonance on her voice, so that the whole role seemed, I do not want to be too simple, but it sounded easy. There was never a hard tone or some cheap phrasing or weird color. She kept it so well balanced, the way she was able to make the whole performance with that clarity and coolness was so remarkable. She is definitely a wonderful singer and an artist, I have so much respect for what she has accomplished during this performance. The rest of the cast, was not unfortunately at the same level, it was really clear. Specially conductor one can sense that he does not understand any Italian, he has no sense of recitativi and the singers unfortunately rushed the whole thing. But even with such tempi, one as a singer can phrase in a certain way that the language is understood but in this case it was not clear at all, and the staging was also not interesting at all, it was a shame, because it also did not help the singers to have something to rely on at least from the interpretation side.
I kept reading my Daily Stoic, Tolstoi and a bit of Daniel Kahneman’s “Think, fast and slow. Also doing my exercise routine. Take care and see you next week.
