As of my last audition this week, I'm officially resetting to default arias for me. I'm slaughtering myself getting Tu Sul Labbro ready, after Bartolo's aria turned out to be a no-go (see my lesson about singing Mozart right after Verdi). Frustratingly, my very efforts to prime this aria on the quick are tiring me out so much that I can't sing it in auditions! By the the time I arrive at a given audition, I've been coaching and lesson-ing for 5 days that week, and have done all my homework on the aria in a practice room... so my voice doesn't have enough left to sing it well.
So I decided to fall back on last year's package. Jeeez - another year of an audition package with nothing higher than a D and nothing faster than a drone. It wouldn't bother me, if I couldn't actually sing that stuff. But for the last two years, I've been working professionally and as an apprentice, singing fast, high music. Sadly, it's all ensemble or in English. Either way, it's all useless in an audition.
On the bright side, I'm making technical leaps and bounds with Ken. I've been singing high Ds and Ebs that sound (and feel) soooo much easier than ever before - and I'm doing them piano. Actually, I don't like using the word "piano" in this context, because with a voice like mine it never really gets soft in terms of decibels. Let's go with "dolce" instead. So I've been singing dolce Ebs and Ds, and (relatively) easy, well grounded E naturals and Fs in lessons and in practice rooms.
Unfortunately, I can't show any of it off in my audition rep, because I'm fighting old habit. Still, I'm reliably turning out what I would have called a fantastic performance of my old package 4 weeks ago... it's not 100% of what I'm capable of producing now, but it's hard to be too dissatisfied. I'm really looking forward to working on my scenes/rep for Sarasota. I'm expecting to be able to do some very pretty things with that music, indeed!
In the meantime, it's back to the old faithful arias, so I can devote more time to making this new technical stuff concrete. I've got two months to learn a bunch of new music - should be fun!
