The Singing Fool

A couple of weeks ago, our fearless leader in Chorale, Magen, gave me one last song to pass out to the group: known alternately as "Brindisi" or "Libiamo," it's a famous drinking song from Verdi's La Traviata.  You've heard it before:



I am not an opera singer.

In all of my years of singing, I've always thought I had a voice better suited for jazz, pop, Broadway, and Disney princesses. I have a decent amount of vibrato but it is not that really wobbly type of vibrato that opera is (in)famous for. And while I am ever the music nerd, I have a confession to make:

Opera just doesn't do much for me.

Sure, some of it is beautiful, and I appreciate it as a musician who understands that some of it is particularly gorgeous. But in terms of what really excites me, give me those jazz-infused composers of early 20th Century America--the Gershwins, the Coplands, the Bernsteins. Give me the great jazz leaders and the songbirds like Ella, Sarah, and Billie. I'm much more at home singing "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine" in a bar in San Francisco than I will ever feel singing Verdi on stage.

So as we've learned this "Brindisi," I have mostly just dialed it in. Learn the notes, learn the words. Give it some expression and follow Magen's conducting. Then, last night, she announced that she wants people to come out of the Chorale as we sing it (to close the show), and to mill out into the audience with plastic wine glasses and lots of theatricality.

Now that is right up my alley, but I didn't volunteer. I've been having a hard time memorizing the chorus parts of the song (mostly, *ahem* because I haven't been trying hard enough). As Magen searched the room for willing "drinkers," I sat in my chair and tried, in vain, to cram some more of the words into my brain. Then Magen, in her sweep over the Chorale, landed on me.

She pointed.

She smiled slyly.

"And you."

I think I actually whimpered. "Oh, no..."

"Oh, yes!"

So it's decided. And it will be great fun to walk around with a plastic wine glass, singing amongst the audience and playacting a bit...only, it leaves me two days to memorize a piece that I'm still, you know, learning.

So this afternoon I sat down at the piano, muttered a quick, "well, you're noisy, so you're just going to have to deal with my opera drama" to my upstairs neighbors, and set out ten dimes on the piano.

The dimes (I usually use pennies but I didn't have ten) are a practice method I learned years ago. I take a section of music that is giving me a hard time, and I sing it over and over again. When I get it right, I move a dime to the left. Then I sing it again. If I get it right, I move a second time. If I make a mistake, the first dime gets put back. Once I have successfully sung the part I am practicing ten times in a row without a mistake, I can move on.

Eventually, I get it somewhat right--allowing, of course, for the fact that recording myself makes me nervous!



I tackled the hardest part--the bit in the video above--this afternoon and will get the easier parts tomorrow. I'm still fuzzy on words when I try to sing it from memory, but the notes are in my head.