Hamburg, Merrit, studying…
Hi there! I hope you are well. This week was a nice one, I spent few days in the city of Hamburg.
The reason of my visit was to meet and take lessons with tenor and teacher Chris Merrit that over 30 years has been doing besides his singing also lots of teaching. I contacted him just like that, through social media. I contacted him since last December but I could only go this week, before my trip to Mexico I was busy and then all March and half of April I was away. Now that I am back, I really wanted to meet him and to learn from him, and to discover the person behind the singer.
We had 3 lessons and his advice was really helpful and it complements to how I think about singing and he has a good ear to hear all the things I do with my voice. He comes from a teacher whose teacher studied with Marchesi, so very much from the Italian tradition. I exchanged lots of conversations with him and still I have so many questions I want to ask him but for now I am good, I will most definitely go back to him in the near future, to check the things he corrected me and offer him the hopefully improved version. I will take the time to process it and apply it. During the lesson I could make the changes he asked but they were of course not so much on my body but now I have been working the last few days after the lessons on it and I feel more at ease.
To hear from him stories about his journey, where he sang, studied, the way he thinks about making sound, the music, style, stories about conductors, productions, his own decisions about repertoire, how he saw his own voice, all of this, it is so nice to learn. Every time I meet people like him whose work I have admired , and heard is a very nice experience. I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet the singers I grew up listening to. He was known for his belcanto singing but before I was on a soloist contract in 2 different houses in Germany and Austria, so he also did lots of different repertoire, Mozarts, Verdis, Puccinis, etc. As the belcanto had a revival and Rossini, he was there to sing the opera serias and became a star on singing these extreme roles that cover the 2 octaves and beyond. His elegance and flexibility where really to admire and the voice was also very impressive. So, thank you maestro Merrit for giving me some of your time and advice, I will really try to incorporate to my singing what you thought me.
Being in Hamburg for few days was really nice, I like the city and it gives me somehow London vibes although I am in Germany. There are lots of coffee places and also nice places to walk. I enjoyed some Japanese food, as there is a place very simple but really good near the main train station. I also visited a coffee that I visited the last time I was there. I wanted to go to the opera to see Madame Butterfly but I could not, as I decided to come on that evening back home. I am sure I will be back soon and I will try again to watch a performance, there are also some colleagues I would like to meet there, but this time I really focus on just meeting Merrit and take the lessons with a good voice.
I keep doing my daily reading, morning pages and 4 times a week routine exercise. I hope you are well and please take care. See you next week.
