Sorry to lump these responses together.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Ravel's opera
L'Enfant et les Sortiges, possible wrong spelling
there, about a child whose playroom toys come to life.
It's not "top 40" but it's somewhere in the
less-than-standard rep, somewhere around Louise and
Carmelites in "French operas I've heard of but aren't
done every few years like the big stuff." There is
some fantastic music in it, including a Feu (fire --
not a toy, I know) aria that is close to Olympia in
tessitura.
About the lister with the short range -- a handful of
things popped into my mind while reading your post.
These things may or may not be what's going on with
you, but here are some thoughts:
1) Regardless of what your ENT says, the fact that
there are ANY nodules, even small ones, still on your
cords makes me very nervous. Can you find a
singer-friendly ENT and get a second opinion (by
calling a local opera house for a recommendation, or
scheduling a visit while you're on vacation in a big
city, or something)? Small nodules should be a huge
cause for concern, I would think, and may very well be
affecting your range.
2) I have found that it's a common experience for
sopranos to short-change their high notes because of a
certain type of technique that teaches a big, fat,
full, rich middle voice -- at the expense of the top.
The concept of the (mature) voice as an hourglass is
helpful for me -- the passaggio MUST remain small and
narrow for the top notes to be able to blossom.
This is also a problem with lots of tenors I've heard,
who have great, gorgeous, glorious and full and warm
G's and even A's, but the B's are a strain and the
high C isn't there (or it's tiny, instead of big and
brilliant). If you open up the middle voice and
passaggio too much, you're sacrificing the top. I
don't know how you're trained, but there are lots of
singers like that out there.
3) Mix is the way to go below the middle C. I don't
think any soprano, dramatic or soubrette, is going to
produce any real sound below middle C in "pure" head
voice. Chest-voice exercises strengthen the voice,
but you shouldn't feel like you don't have a good low
range just because "pure" head is soft. If you
actually are morphing into a mezzo, concentrating on
the mix sounds like the way to get that sexy, rich
lower sound that mezzos are famous for.
Are you studying with a teacher now? In a way, you
can choose either direction -- keep the fullness of
the voice and find a teacher to beef up your lower
range -- go the mezzo route -- or find a teacher who
teaches the hour-glass theory and spend some time
re-tooling your range (thinning and narrowing it out,
for a while) to get your top notes back. The second
option is a LOT more work (it's hard, hard work to
take a too-open voice and focus it up), but if you are
truly a soprano, it's probably the best choice.
On the other hand, I haven't heard your voice and
don't know if you are naturally more mezzo or soprano,
or if you are singing too full-open in the middle
voice, or are already mixing in the lower voice, or
what have you. Maybe you could take a "tour" of the
singing teachers in your area, taking a lesson from
each of them and asking for their advice and analysis?
Or do that thing Tako did, and put up clips of
yourself doing a bunch of things on a web page. I'm
trying to figure out how to do that myself -- I think
it would be a huge leap in Vocalist diagnostics!
Isabelle B.
=====
Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
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