I love opera music. Actually, what I really love is singing it. I feel so lucky because when ever I want, I can pull out music from any composer that strikes my fancy and sing til my heart’s content be it Mozart or Verdi. It’s one of the perks of performing in my living room. Aside from the sheer pleasure of singing the most beautiful music ever written in the whole wide world spanning all of history (no bias here), the other reason I love yodeling a casa is there is no one telling me what I can and cannot sing. You see in opera, there are a lot of RULES.
Some of these rules make sense and are actually in the best interest of the singer. For example, if a score is written for a very large orchestra, the singer must have a very big voice to carry over the instrumentation otherwise they risk shredding their vocal chords in an effort to be heard. However, a lot of the rules seem to be somewhat arbitrary and very restrictive. Certain voice types simply “should not” sing certain roles. If you are too tall, you will probably never be cast as the ingenue. In an audition, you should not wear anything too sexy, wait, no it’s that you should not be too conservative. Hmmm, no I think it is that you should never wear a turtle neck… [Read more…]