If I were you (don't you hate that phrase?), I would ask my teacher for
clarification as to why she has "pooh-poohed" all the Italian arias you've
already worked on. As I was selecting repertoire for some upcoming
competitions, my teacher kept pressing me to include "D'amour l'ardente
flamme" (Berlioz, DAMNATION DE FAUST). I knew very well that I was not yet
vocally ready to perform this in public, let alone in competition. But she
kept after me to do it. So I had it coached, and worked diligently on it,
only to sing it at the first rehearsal with the competition accompanist
and have my teacher tell me it wasn't ready for me to perform in public. I
just smiled, and said I knew all along that I wouldn't be able to get it
ready in time, but had worked on it because she was so insistent. At which
point she finally revealed that the only reason she had been pressing me
to use it had nothing to do with my ability to sing the aria well, but
because she just happened to like the aria, and particularly the fact that
it wasn't done very often, so would be something of a "novelty" to the
judges.
I tell you this to illustrate the need for you to get clarification from
your teacher about why she is pushing you to perform certain pieces, or
not to perform others. If her motivation is that she doesn't feel you are
vocally or artistically ready to perform a certain piece, that's valid. If
her motivation is that she just doesn't happen to like a certain piece, or
she likes another piece better - well, you need to learn how to politely
and graciously remind her that this is YOUR recital, not hers, and that as
such it should reflect YOUR preferences. As long as you sing a piece well,
the fact that she may not happen to like the piece very much should not be
a factor in your choice to use the piece or not.
This said, there are some pieces about which she may have a "point" even
if you do perform them well:
IN a joint recital with other singers, it's probably a good idea to avoid
having the same piece performed more than once. If you're in the
unfortunate position of having a teacher who isn't willing to insist that
YOU get to be person who sings "Heidenroslein", and that the other three
singers who want to do it will just have to pick something else to sing,
then you may have to be the one who concedes the point, and picks a
different song. In an ideal situation, if such concessions had to be made,
no one singer would have to make more than one. But the politics of the
situation may be that your teacher feels she can't argue in favour of your
keeping a contested song because it may be more important to her that
another of her students be able to keep one of their contested songs. She
may simply have you "pegged" as a person who can learn and assimilate new
music easily and quickly, and she's taking advantage of that perceived
ability. If it's MISperceived, you need to let her know this in no
uncertain terms (again, politely and graciously).
It would also help if you could get her to explain the criteria she's
using to judge whether a song is "right" or not for this recital. It may
be a case of "I'll know what I want when I hear it". This isn't good
enough. If she can't clearly verbalize the characteristics of the pieces
she wants you to sing (and the fact that a song is by a particular
favourite composer of hers is NOT a meaningful characteristic), then you
must again restate your belief that, as it's YOUR recital, YOU want to
choose pieces that YOU want to sing.
It's pretty easy to determine whether three different pieces, among them,
display enough variety in style, vocal demands, etc. to make a good "set"
for you to perform. For example, if you perform a slow Baroque piece like
"Cara sposa" as your Italian offering, you may want to choose a
lighthearted German Romantic piece, like one of Schubert's comic or
story-telling Lieder, and a moderate-tempo 20th Century English art song
or sacred song or even a folk-song arrangement (e.g., by Britten, Copland,
or Quilter) as your third offering.
If you do decide to go forward with the recital, a few things I've
observed about the "learnability" of various composers' music may help you
choose some pieces you can learn quickly and easily:
Vaughan Williams wrote art songs that I find are musically self-evident
(i.e., easy to learn), yet vocally challenging (but not excessively so),
and artistically rewarding. Some songs of his you might want to look at
are "The Bird's Song" from PILGRIM'S PROGRESS, "The Call" from FIVE
MYSTICAL SONGS (the only one of those songs that's frequently excerpted
and sung by voices other than the baritone voice for which it was
originally composed), "The Roadside Fire" from SONGS OF THE WAYFARER, and
"Silent Noon" from THE HOUSE OF LIFE. These are personal favourites of
mine, and represent VW at his most eminently melodic.
If no-one else on the programme is doing it, Schubert's famous
"Heidenroslein" is charming and popular favourite. But there are many
other great Schubert Lieder that will contrast well with "Cara sposa" (if
you can persuade your teacher to let you do this gorgeous aria for the
recital - the only reasons for a "no" from her would be its length...it
does run about 8-9 minutes...or her perception that you don't yet have the
subtleties of Baroque style down as well as you should, or haven't
conquered all of the breath management challenges o the piece). Also
consider Lieder by Mendelssohn and Beethoven. Or perhaps you could do one
of the alto arias from Mendelssohn's oratorio in the
original German as your German-language offering (a particularly good
option if you already know "Rest in the Lord" or "Woe unto them who forsake Him"
in
English, because you can concentrate on memorising the German words
instead of on learning a whole new piece).
I'm curious: is there some reason you can't use a French chanson instead
of the German Lied? Just wondered if this is firm criterion of the
Recital, or if it's because you don't know French. Or how about a Spanish
song, e.g., one of the de Falla Siete Canciones or the Montsalvage
Canciones Negros? Any chance you might do one of these instead of the
German - only because they are both easy to learn and stylistically unlike
pretty much anything else.
You should also pick your own brain to see whether you don't actually have
more possible options than your original assessment turned up. For
example, do you know Katisha's aria from THE MIKADO or Mad Margaret's from
RUDDIGORE - both of these are vocally and musically demanding enough to
justify their inclusion in a recital program, IMO.
Of course there are LOTS of other German Lieder composers and English art
song composers. But the time imperative is such that you need to find
songs that virtually "learn themselves" - thus my suggestions of
composers.
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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