Whatever happened to Baby Jane? Or John?

Recently I heard a former student of mine singing a major role in a major opera at a major opera house and thought, 'This can't be the same person I used to teach'. Admittedly, it's been a while since he sang for me, and I have no idea what viscissitudes of life and health he has gone through in the meanwhile, but I didn't recognize the voice at all. What I remember as a strong, free, sonorous instrument sounded pushed, covered, especially at the top, and raw.

Whew!

What a rude awakening. I can remember Mrs. Neidlinger, my first voice teacher in New York City in the fifties, saying that when her 'Stars' came back to her after a tour (this was back in the days when the Met toured every year), she had to scrape the rust off their voices. They had fallen into bad habits while dashing around the country singing, singing, singing. Probably not always thinking what they were doing. And, believe me, she had a number of stars.

But this man's voice is way beyond the point where a little vocal de-rusting is all that is needed. It makes me very sad to hear something like this happening to a  voice that I have worked with and loved.

All of us as singers have to try to keep the rust off our pipes. Each of us is responsible for preparing whatever we plan to sing so carefully that a moment of nerves doesn't haul goblins out of our vocal closet. We must also make sure that we are well rested and filled with energy every time we perform. A tired singer can be a bad singer. Muscle memory can be a good or a bad thing. In this case, it did the dirt.

I find that if one prepares a new song technically and emotionally in a free and honest way from the beginning, old muscle memories can't butt in when we're under pressure. A song or aria that we have sung for a long time can have many bad habits attached to it if we are not constantly aware that just because it used to work in a certain way, it won't always be there unless we constantly pay attention to what we are doing.

When working with Lorraine, if she had a passage that was not working well, we would try this and then try that and then try the other thing, until we found an easy way to solve the problem. Then, on the spot, she would sing it over many times, one after another, until she was satisfied that any bad karma, aka muscle memory, had been tossed into the trash. It had become a part of her DNA. Then, when I would hear her sing the role on the stage of the Met or the Salle Garnier, or the Santa Fe Opera, she would sing it exactly as when we solved the problem. The technique was so much a part of her being that you didn't realise it was a technique. The technique, the musicality, and the emotion had become one. It seemed that no matter how many times I had heard her sing something in the studio, and she always, even within a lesson, sang completely involved musically, technically, and emotionally, when she sang the same thing on stage it sent shivers up and down my spine. She was able to add that magical thing that can only happen on stage when one unleashes all those wonderful forces each of us has within us. She had thrown out the garbage and kept the gold. It belonged to her. Even as she became very ill at the end of her all too brief life, this was the way she sang. She had an amazing strength within in her that is very rare. Hearing her sing the Neruda Songs by her dear husband Peter Lieberson with the BSO a couple of months before her death, somehow that stength of purpose was still there in full bloom. She simply pushed the cancer aside and sang.

Nervousness has to be channeled into excitement rather than being allowed to knock our vocal feet out from under us. This can only happen when we have so carefully prepared what we are planning to sing to the nth degree and have learned to channel our mind and voice and body into a well organized singing spot that we know it will work.

Olga Averino used to say, 'Think what it is you want to happen, and it probably will.'

I realise that everyone is different and that while some people can channel their nervousness in this way, others are not able to do this. To be a consistent performer you must find a way for this to happen. If you make wrong choices vocally at the time of performance, you're dead. What worked at home won't work on stage unless you refuse to give it other choices at the moment of truth. Because that is what every performance really must be!

With my student's singing the other day I thought, 'I wish I could have done something to help you.' Of course, you can't call up a former student and say 'Honey, you need a couple of rust-scraping lessons before you take on this major challenge', can you?

In real estate it's 'Location, Location,Location'. In singing it's 'Preparation, Preparation, Preparation!'

You'd better believe it!!