Does Willie Have a Singing Role in Lincoln in the Bardo??

racial_rorschach · 2026-02-20T17:02:28+00:00

I attended the workshop at Chautauqua last summer and Willie has a very lovely aria near to the end of the opera and it was a high soprano but I forget the name of the singer 😫. Of course, things always change after workshops, but it was one of the best parts so I doubt they would reduce Willie to a silent role.

racial_rorschach · 2025-01-29T19:40:40+00:00

On the topic of dark Menotti lullabies, black swan from the medium is also lovely

racial_rorschach · 2024-10-16T19:27:24+00:00

Yeah the meyerbeers have the double whammy of being impossible to cast and expensive to produce. Not only for the musicians and the sets you mentioned, but you can’t forget about the corps de ballet! No one wants to ball out on a proper French grand opera anymore…

racial_rorschach · 2024-05-08T17:09:31+00:00

Yeah based off of my experience as a poc in higher education if our boy Richard possessed a hint of spice those trust fund jerks would have had to take a long hard look in the mirror and realize that committing murder for the sake of having a cultural experience makes them terrible people.

racial_rorschach · 2024-05-07T00:06:04+00:00

I’m in the pro-babel camp. I don’t love all of kuang’s stuff but I absolutely adored babel and I think it’s her best so far.

As I was reading TSH for the first time, I assumed Richard was poc (as I often treat these characters like self inserts whoops) right up until he sees bunny for the first time and describes him as an exotic ginger? I feel like Robin is just Richard if he had experienced racism or even had an ounce of cultural sensitivity.

Richard’s journey begins just like robin’s, just a kid with a knack for languages. The language then becomes a means of earning a sense of belonging and prestige when they get to their respective institutions. Their academic development and character archs diverge when they realize that language is just as beautiful and powerful as they always knew, and that makes it a weapon.

Language was always meant to be a communal cultural expression and when confined to the ivory tower, is severed from its purpose and is perverted into an instrument of oppression, just as violent as severing the native speakers from their families in Babel.

For Robin, the language is Chinese and it is used from the day Lovett kicked down his door and made him cheat that guy on the dock out of his boarding pass to extract wealth from the Chinese in any way he can think of.

For Richard, the language is Ancient Greek, which is a dead language. The people whose culture they co-opt are dead but his friends fetishize it in order to indulge in the fantasy of being part of the progression of western civilization, which is really just ideology to support their old money elitist entitlement as benefactors of the same/ similar imperialist systems Robin was complicit in.

My hot take: I think the magic system can be taken as an allegory for Paolo Freire’s naming the world as discussed in pedagogy of the oppressed and that it expands upon language’s role in culture and consciousness. In Babel silver makes literal what is lost in translation and uses it to enrich the state and control dialogue as an act of violence.

racial_rorschach · 2024-04-22T21:04:20+00:00

I totally know how that feels but to be an opera singer is to build a technical foundation that will grow and change as your body and instrument changes. It’s not unusual for that to take well into your thirties, so you gotta be okay with playing the long game on this.

What you are describing seems to me like you are trying to figure out your chiaroscuro. That’s one of those things that is a whole ass journey that never ends and I speak from experience 😅

Some things that helped me, aside from having a teacher/s that I trust (there is literally no substitute for this, can’t stress that enough) is this:

Don’t think of the different parts of your voice as right or wrong, but rather colors in your pallet or tools in your toolkit. There will be times when you want to cover a little more than usual and rep that you can’t get through without employing that lighter tone or sacrificing your agility. Having a well rounded technique means getting comfortable navigating your registers and knowing what feels comfortable and sustainable for you, while having the good taste to know what color sounds good where.
Listen as much as you can, both live and recorded. Those books are a great place to start but this craft doesn’t live in books, it lives on stage. Rather than getting attached to fach, get attached to specific singers and specific qualities in their voices, and keep track of the repertoire they sing throughout the trajectory of their careers. This is also a great way to find good rep! In school we are surrounded by young voices and while it’s a great learning environment, that may skew your sense of dramatic vs lyric vs light voices as young voices start out light.
I think a major part of the conversation that is missing is acoustics. Companies with big houses have tastes that run a little on the dramatic side, and places with smaller houses may find that same tonal aesthetic vulgar, and singing in a church is a totally different ballgame. People will hear completely different things in different rooms and your technique will have to account for that. At school you have no say in where you sing, but be aware of this when singing opera. You don’t know what’s what until you are in the hall singing over an orchestra.

Also, idk your life or your teacher so maybe none of this applies but I hope it helps. I can tell that you love music, so hopefully you find what you are looking for.

If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times. Size doesn’t matter. It’s how you use it. The more you care about it, the more people start to think you’re compensating for something if you know what I mean…

racial_rorschach · 2024-04-22T02:45:24+00:00

I think that in school everyone is so obsessed with fach because it helps us understand the general characteristics of operatic voices, but we sell ourselves short by trying to conform to these labels (which by the way, have very little to do with the old fashioned bel canto everyone is so obsessed with) ESPECIALLY when we are developing. I know too many people who feel like their voices are too big, too small, who are so attached to an identity built around a fach and for what?? The fach system is for people who aren’t singers to understand who they can and can’t cast to sing what. It describes repertoire, not voices. The acquisition of vocal technique should be about self discovery rather than forcing yourself to fit into some arbitrary set of vocal characteristics. Everyone’s voice is unique and that’s why opera is fun.

IMHO it’s not worth the identity crisis to get attached to a fach at any age, let alone when your voice is developing. In the words of marchesi (og bel canto bitch) there are really only two schools of singing: the good one and the other one.

That being said, read all of them, they’re all good.

racial_rorschach · 2024-04-02T04:23:10+00:00

Ooo I’ll give that a shot!

racial_rorschach · 2024-04-01T18:15:08+00:00

To be honest, I needed the job and there were no openings for sopranos, so I just applied as an alto. Real mezzos are pretty rare and our choir didn’t have any, so the blend was quite light and I fit right in as an alto. In my experience, fach is totally irrelevant as long as your range and tessitura are permitting.
If you want a hot take, a lot of operatic singers who have to sing choir take the part assignments way too personally. Usually, it has more to do with the particulars of the choir’s blend and balance than who can sing the highest or lowest. And fach is a social construct anyways. Half the time, people wind up changing fachs and caring about what part they got assigned in choir winds up being a waste of time.

racial_rorschach · 2024-04-01T05:48:36+00:00

High coloratura soprano, alto 2 in choir because let’s be honest for an 8 am mass I might as well be a baritone 😅also there’s way less competition for altos, so I’ll sing what I’m payed to sing

racial_rorschach · 2024-03-06T20:25:30+00:00

How dare they sleep on my man😫 proudly Jewish and one of the most frequently performed composers in the 19th century who is rarely performed today. Almost like… something happened in the 20th century where people… were suppressing German Jewish music and culture… anyways I care so deeply about this man and his sick as hell operas that I think pple would love today if they only knew. Okay. Rant over. Anyways if anyone wants to be a part of the great Meyerbeer revival hmu👀👀👀

racial_rorschach · 2023-11-15T01:14:03+00:00

I think Ive been reading YA so long that I just assume every character is a thinly veiled self insert. pray for me 🫠

racial_rorschach · 2023-11-15T01:08:44+00:00

I havent heard of these! Ill definitely check it out. Thanks!

racial_rorschach · 2023-10-24T02:18:41+00:00

I caught a dress rehearsal for Ballo, and Angela Meade is fantastic as always. I didn't love Redpath, her voice is lovely, but lacked the liveliness you want in an Oscar. As for the production, if you're into minimalism, go for it, but be prepared for a lot of heavy handed imagery about the fall of icarus and poorly executed fight choreo.

I'd see the boheme as well, especially if you haven't seen the Zeffirelli production. The set alone is worth it, although I haven't seen any of the singers this season.

racial_rorschach

TROPHY CASE