Week two feels a lot like week 8, in the best possible way!
I am feeling very comfortable and have fallen in to a great routine.
After a fabulous weekend of great music and fun with the Lackner family, Pat Jennings, Susan Wagner, Mimi Jong, Maurizio Berlincioni, and countless others, I am back to work.
I did have rehearsal on Sunday, which was a fantastically productive afternoon of Merry Widow.
Monday and Tuesday were both fairly regular days here in the Burgh. Merry Widow rehearsal in the afternoon after a morning of practicing.
On my quest towards my capstone document/lecture-recital I did come across some interesting information in Michael Henstock's book on Fernando De Lucia :
On page 158 he writes
"Lohengrin [which must have been sung in Italian] was an opera in which Gayarre, Masini, and Stagno, De Lucia's predecessors and models, had each had notable success over several years. But for De Lucia this excursion into Wagner was never to be repeated after that season..."
"An analysis of when such a massacre of the singing voice might have begun must consider both the gradual rise in pitch from A = 422 or below in the time of Mozart, to the modern A = 440 or even higher (a rise of almost a semitone), and a corresponding increase in size of the orchestra..."
But most interestingly:
"Wagner evidently attached great importance to the clear and emphatic enunciation of the words, and to those vocal qualities essential in the performance of Bellini's operas, to wit: ' ... rounded coloratura ... genuine, unaffected, soul-stirring portamento ... complete equalization of the registers ... steady intonation through all the varying shades of crescendo and diminuendo... '
His operas, he told Manuel Garcia II, should be sung using the methods of 'the great old Italian opera... with complete mastery of voice technique.' To Angelo Neumann, he exclaimed: 'They think that when they stand there and shout at the top of their voices, this is the 'Wagnerian' style.'
Henstock even goes on to mention Wagner's Bayreuther-festspielehaus with it's orchestra pit that is 70% underneath the orchestra and partially covered.
Interesting thoughts...
Tomorrow I am singing at a Children's Hospital here in Pittsburgh. I am going to bring some Neapolitan songs and maybe I'll do my first La Donna e' mobile ... what do you think? Might be a safe place to give it a try? Maybe you ain't never had a friend like me from Alladin?
Thanks for reading,
Joe
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