Baroque music is great to sing - particularly Handel. The slow, serene arias are wonderful for working on pure vocal legato while the fast ones have wonderful fioratura that gets your coloratura really working.
No reason why you can't start working on the arias without worrying about ornamentation. Particularly in the da capo arias, one doesn't usually even DO any ornaments until doing the da capo repeat. So you can certainly master those arias without the ornamentation first (and this would probably be a good way to approach them anyway).
Something my coach told me about ornamentation (we were working on "Cara sposa" and "Iris, hence away" - both by Handel) is that it's important to keep in mind that any ornaments you do must be brought on by the emotion of the piece at the time. If you don't absolutely FEEL the ornament you're doing, then don't do it. Don't just ornament for the sake of showing off.
Karen Mercedes http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html *************************************** What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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