The work that is the most important- that shows the most—takes months and years. I’m not able to think myself to a place of ease.
I envy the Hahns and Denks that can bring transformative thinking into their practice rooms with the apprentice culture of their respective instruments supporting the idea that this thinking is worth doin’- that it will show and support their status as a career-level musician.
Singers subject one another to a complex social dance around the idea of intellectualism. You have your Ian Bostridges and then you have your Luciano Pavarottis and everyone claims to know which one was the intellectual- the one with the Phd in the history of witchcraft.
A professor of mine used to say that any group relieves anxiety and competitive tension by taking the truth and dividing it like pie. The more anxiety- the smaller the pieces of pie. You take Brahms and I will take Contemporary Music.
It is impossible- having come up through conservatory to consider a life as an opera singer without picturing your classmates and crushes from fourth semester theory sniggering at your successful debut as the red woman in some tomato sauce opera that lots of old ladies love but whose composer never made it to the MHist 101 Syllabus. I feel this way particularly after large doses of Denk, yummy as they are.
It’s good to form a plan and then to study it until it is organic and inevitable and doesn’t show and until the studying itself dissolves into play and you are just a little craftsperson up there having some fun and perhaps exorcizing some demons or if it's Handel, slaying some monsters.
Happy Halloween.
