Feelin' hot, hot, hot!

Wow, all I do is sweat anymore. The elevation is so high here, that the sun just beats down on Graz. No matter what you do, you end up feeling sweaty and disgusting half-way through the day.

Well, now to catch up with the events of the past few days. I met my teacher, Stephanie Weiß on Sunday. I feel like I should mention that on Monday the faculty gave a concert, and she sang the rage Aria of Venus (Gelibter, komm!) from Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. Look it up, it is very difficult. I have never heard such a powerful voice! I also had my first lesson with her on Monday. We spent half of the time warming up, and she introduced me to a couple of new and interesting warm-ups. The first was an ascending arpeggio on ze ze ze ze-a-eh-o-u-a-e (descending on) he he he he-a-eh-oh-u. That exercise will help me on my u vowel, which is going too far back. Hopefully this will teach me how to keep it forward.

The second warm-up was even more interesting. I have always had issues with breath, and this warm up is designed to help with breath. Again on an ascending arpeggio, sing tro tro tro tro. Then, break and relax the abdomen without actually breathing and after a short time come back on the highest tro and descend the same arpeggio. You can also add on to the length of this exercise by then jumping up the octave again and running the scale down. She is always stressing to keep the abdomen relaxed. That reminds me of Barbara's saying that the abdomen should never be rock hard. And Bag also has a saying to keep the abdomen out until you need it. But this idea of keeping those muscles relaxed helps me to do that AND keep the air support going.

We also worked on some vowel issues in some of my repertoire. For example, I seem to like to add a shadow vowel at the end of my u vowel. (there are a lot of Du's in the german language!) She used "ng" to move placement forward (sing ng before the vowel that you are trying for) a lot like Barbara does. So again, it is good that we are on the same page, and I understand her terminology. Sometimes it can be like learning another language, trying to figure out what they mean.


And that is exactly what happened today in my coaching. My coach and I worked on Widmung, and there were some things that he suggested which truly helped. For example, the piano accompaniment for Widmung is so full and moving and this makes me want to sing marcatto, but it is much easier to sing and relaxed if you keep the legato line. Again, the u vowel was mentioned, so I guess that is really a bad habit of mine. However, he seemed to be wanting me to place the sound in a completely other place. I don't think that he meant to not lift, but he did not want me to do any of the normal things that I do to help with that. The only other way that I know how to get space is by pushing too much on the larynx (like I was before I came to Bag), and I simply can't go back to that. So, in our studio class tomorrow, I am just going to round / elongate my vowels more (I should do that anyways, and it is probably that sound that he is actually looking for), and focus on the other aspects he told me to work on. Besides that issue, he is a good, honest and hardworking coach accompanist who will definitely push me to see all the little details that make a song truly polished.

Tomorrow night there is a ball that is given for us. I get to wear a gown and dance to probably lots of Viennese waltzes. :)