Aachen, Berlin, Home…
Hi there! I hope you are well. This week was, after the whole crazy weekend with Nemorino, time to calm down a bit.
I started this week with a very early train to Berlin, Aki and I had our appointment to cut our hair, and it was planned before the jumping in in Aachen, so we took a train at 3:35 am from there to Berlin, via Cologne, in order to make it to the hairdresser on time around midday. It was snowy and cold in Berlin, but we really enjoy our time there, we like very much the city, as we both come from very big cities (Mexico City and Osaka) we really enjoy feeling the live of a place with many people and the culture and things that happen in huge cities.
After spending 2 days in Berlin and eating some delicious Japanese food, we made our way back home, were we spent time analysing Nemorino and, now with a cool brain how I can work further on improving it. We talked a lot about or mostly about resonance, how to keep it throughout the performance. I remember a book I read of Lauri Volpi, where he comments about different singers and he makes a remark on the fact that all singers in general have “mute” sounds, sounds that are not completely full of resonance and that sound “off” in comparison to the rest of the voice, more specifically it happens to singer in certain vowels. The inner feeling of a complete resonant sound compare to one that is almost there, is very small, yet the difference on how one hears it out, is really big, that of being semi resonant and completely resonant.
I spent the rest of the week practising and focusing on arias and, singing again Lensky and some parts of Nemorino. I believe this Nemorino last week was a gift, I was pushed to my limits and I enjoyed the satisfaction I got after finishing the show. As I commented in my previous blog (you are welcome to read it), singing Nemorino feels like home, like I just put on the costume and suddenly I am him. I really hope that in the next few years it comes again and many times.
I keep reading my daily stoic, writing my morning pages and my exercise routine. I have to comment, I am so glad I keep physically active with the exercise, because during Nemorino in the “tra la la” duet with Adina he has to make “leg raises” and some other exercises and sing at the same time. If I did not do exercise regularly, I would have done it but suffered unnecessarily and definitely I would have run out of air. So, there you go, you never know when you have to be really active on stage and if you are fit, it is much easier as opposed to not being physically active and struggle or even ask to the stage director to change things because you are out of breath. Of course, there are limits but in my experience so far working on all the operas I have done, I never had something really crazy that demanded too much. I believe every singer must know their limits to what they can do on stage and, when to say no, but in my experience it is often the other way around, meaning, the singer is not asked much, yet complains that this or that movement is not possible. Most of the times it is a faulty singing technique which does not allow the singer to be more free with their body because they sing with so much tension, that they can not add any more physical movement because that just puts more strain to their voice and cannot sing the way they normally sing. So, train your body to be flexible and adaptable as well as your voice, that is my opinion.
Take care and see you next week.
