I know, I know...this must be getting old. I'm sorry. I'm just trying to look for something for myself now.
In trying to put together my rep for next years Met Auditions I'm trying to come up with the ideal aria in English. Unfortunately, my favs are done to death and my teacher and I are both of the same opinion that the lesser known works can be the most effective (and she judges a lot of competitions all over the country so I tend to hold her opinion in high regard on this topic - she says the judges often times just can barely stomach hearing the same aria done over and over and over and over and...well you get the idea). So, that now leaves out one of my very favorite arias to perform: No Word From Tom. It also eliminates other favs such as "Steal Me Sweet Thief", The Letter Song, Glitter & Be Gay and a couple of others I'm just not recalling at the moment.
Now, I understand that there's some book available that helps a person to cross-reference the arias and roles, etc. that would be appropriate for various voice types - for me I'd look up soubrette, lyric coloratura, light lyric coloratura, lyrico leggeiro (sp?) and try and find commonalities in all of those. But I don't know the name of this book in order to find it, and I suspect it's fairly expensive at that.
I looked at Ariel's aria from Hoiby's The Tempest, but that has a high F in it and well, I don't think I've had that note since I was a teenager. So that eliminates that lovely thing.
I'd definitely be open to lesser known, but exciting and fun arias by Handel (or any other early earlier music composer - like Purcell) although I suspect most of Handels are in Italian.
I've got access to the USC music library and several other really good libraries if I know what I'm looking for, so any suggestions that can be sent my way would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance everyone!!!
Laura
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