Cold, studying, reading…

Hi there! This week was a slow one. I am fighting a cold but now feeling much better. Definitely, I did not plan to be as passive as I was this week. I wrote down the things I wanted to do but I had no brain or body to do them. However, when I am sick, I still continue doing my exercise routine, because I am sure that helps me. I even think that it helps me to recover faster. I know it sounds a bit weird, but, if you rest through the day because you are sick, 1 hour of exercise in the 24 hour day where you are purposely resting, I am sure it does not affect. On the contrary you get things moving and activating your body is always a good thing to do.

Because I could not practice singing much, I decided to read again few books, specially the highlighted parts, to go through them quickly and read again the passages that where most interesting to me. Some Juvarra, Aureliano Pertile, Lauri Volpi, Carusso, Jan Peerce, Lamperti among others. I really did not know much about Jan Peerce, only few recordings, what I did not know is that he had such a long career and his voice was  pretty fit even in his late 70’s, when he was still very active. Thanks to the internet I found few interviews and, what an interesting man, beautiful voice, and somehow very nice speaking voice as well, very unique, like I could hear him for hours on the radio if he would have a radio show, you can tell the way he speaks, that he was a very good story teller. His life is really interesting and he, like many great singers, where discovered by some conductor, business management, colleague, in his case by the only “Toscanini”.

This year on my visits to Parma, I saw the house of Toscanini. He was famous for being temperamental. Privately however, Jan Peerce has very fond memories of him and only spoke good about him, and that his short temper was also very quick down. Meaning, after the shouting he quickly also forgot about it, Peerce said he never hold any grudge, so he says. Jan Peerce, was a very stoic man and one can see the way he speaks and talks about other people.  

Here you can watch one of the documentaries about him, I hope you enjoy.

https://youtu.be/NRUShciMoQc?si=M1p0FhS1X0u3YDOb

As you may know, I love reading and learning about singers, specially the person behind the artist, because that is such a big part of the reason of how they are/were. I truly love learning about their lives.

The performance of last week where I met Alagna, still resonates in my head, also the words he share with us and in general, it made me think a lot about the essence of singing as form of expression and the sublime of it.

I kept reading my Daily Stoic and Tolstoi. This week I switched to 3 days of exercise instead of 4. I hope you are well and please take care. See you here next week.