From: Karen Mercedes
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: Re: First Bad Review
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

There are only four people's opinions that matter to me as a singer at any
given time:

1) My voice teacher's
2) My coach's
3) The conductor's (or Music Director's)
4) My own.

Yes, it's always nice to hear positive feedback from friends, other
singers, critics, audience members, etc. But as far as assessing my own
ability as a singer, these other opinions are simply "icing" (and in the
case of critics, resume fodder). They don't sway my own sense of how I am
performing. Yes, a bad review will get you down. But the best thing to do
is to forget about it ASAP. And by no means should you include it in your
file of press clippings. The obvious goal is to have everyone else forget
about it too, which means not adding to the archive copies that might be
lying about somewhere.

KM
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There is delight in singing,
tho' none hear Beside the singer.
- Walter Savage Landor
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MY WEB PAGE: http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
MY NEIL SHICOFF PAGE: http://www.radix.net/~dalila/shicoff/shicoff.html