So I'll sort of just jump into things here. I just started rehearsals for Rigoletto with the Boston Lyric Opera - I am singing Borsa and covering the Duke. The Duke is a more challenging role than any I have approached, and certainly a bigger sing than anything I've done in the past. A couple years ago I wouldn't have dreamed I'd be singing Verdi. So needless to say, I've been practicing a lot in the past months to prepare myself for this role.
Today, my voice was feeling flimsy. I can never tell what causes it, but I feel like my voice is on a sine wave, and I will have a week where I feel amazing, like I can dominate the world and sing anyhting, and then I have a week where my voice feels a little underpowered and flimsy and I have trouble getting my breath and my body under me. Anyhow, I am finally at the point where on a "flimsy" day I can troubleshoot and use vocal exercises to get my voice feeling robust and vibrant as usual. Today my revelation came through singing musical theater. Sometimes when I am singing classically, the sound gets a little too far back - it gets muted and covered and I have trouble with my breath. I noticed at some point that when this happens, it is because my tongue is dipping down and back to one side. I have significant facial asymmetry, especially in the jaw, and I think my issues keeping the tongue in line have to do with this. Anyhow, I turned on a recording of me singing "Flying Home" from Songs for a New World from a cabaret at the Woodstock Playhouse last Summer. Listening to the recording, I thought I sounded full, direct and clean in the voice. So what was I doing now that was making my voice loose and flabby? I decided to sing a little bit of Flying Home, engaging fully in the musical theater style (which in this piece is decidedly non-classical). Immediately, I felt the presence back in my tone. I felt that I was phonating efficiently, and my tongue was not pulling back. This felt natural in the openness of the musical theater style. But how to translate this to my classical singing... First, I tried singing a section of an operatic piece in the style of contemporary musical theater. I even pronounced the Italian like an American who couldn't master the accent. I scooped up to notes in crooning ways that would make Verdi cringe. This was effective, so I tried working the real Italian back in, along with the correct stylistic mannerisms.
I had to think consciously about the tongue being wide and forward in the mouth. Essentially, what I am trying to do it to disengage the association of tongue movement with the creation of tone and vowel. Of course, the tongue does shift for idfferent vowels, but not in the drastic way I was pulling it back subconsciously. I thought of my voice as being something that already existed fully supported and fully formed into a vowel before it reached my pharynx, so I could just let it slide out over my tongue without morphing the shape of my mouth/vocal tract in order to control it.
I also had an image of keeping the mouth wide. This sounds controversial - but I do not mean that I was singing with a wide tone. Mostly, this sensation of wideness just has to do with my own sensations and proclivities. I was tending to round the lips too much and pull the cheeks down - this went hand in hand with the tongue narrowing and pulling back. I didn't give myself a smile (I hate what that does to the sound) but I did imagine the corners of my mouth continuing to point outwards to either side. This gave me just the right "width" so that the tongue could lie naturally in the mouth.
Another of my epiphanies today had to do with the sensation of "support." You see, it is easy to push air and think you are supporting - but in fact you are doing the opposite - you are over-blowing loose air. I found my sense of support while singing "Flying Home." Something about the natural intention of words brought about a supported tone. It didn't have to do with breathing deep, or moving air. It had to to with meaning the words, and leaning into the tone rather than into the breath. It's hard to describe, because we don't sustain pitches when we speak casually. But if you imagine saying and meaning something that is very important - there is an impetus - a source of expression - that comes from the gut. This impetus gives consistency to the tone. Many of us don't speak like this often in everyday life because our speech is lazy - but it happens in moments of heightened emotion, when the soul takes over and you truly speak your mind. Anyhow, it is very odd to take this sort of sensation and sustain it - but that is where support and consistency are found. I like to think that while I am sustaining a tone, I am not holding it, but rather I am constantly continuing to intend it - continuing to intend the meaning, continuing to deliberately intend the vowel.
Using musical theater as a way to connect to my classical voice is nothing new to me. Last year I went through a Jesus Christ Superstar phase when I would warm up for opera auditions singing Judas' "Heaven on their Minds." Something about that song and the rock style forces emotional directness and complete abandon. That kind of freedom that comes from letting go of technical concerns is often exactly what I need to temper the control of opera singing.
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