High Notes at High Volume

I spent the afternoon at the Portland District Metropolitan Opera Trials. It was fun—but I don’t know if I can promise cyberfriend Marion Stein (see her blog Idiots at the Opera) another Met star any time soon. Angela Meade, the songbird of Centralia, won this competition a few years ago, so Portlanders brag that we discovered her. However, I’m sure she must have been featured in other singalongs long before she appeared in Portland’s ‘Lincoln Performance Hall’. 

The winners this year were Daniel Ross, a young tenor from Salem, Oregon, who has sung in various venues across the country—and Felicia Moore, a soprano from New Jersey who is scheduled to sing ‘First Lady’ in Portland Opera’s production of Magic Flute. Congratulations to both of them. 

I can't argue with the Judges—they were both fine singers. I’m happy to say that I, too, awarded them winning scores in my own inexpert ratings system. I allow up to five points for singing, and five more for presentations that don’t irritate me. The flaws in my system are that I know almost nothing about singing, and am easily annoyed by overacting. However, the system is apparently precise enough to recognize winners. 

I was less successful judging the four ‘encouragement awards’. I agreed with two of the four choices, Ksenia Popova, a Seattle soprano, and Abigail Dock, a Boston mezzo. I also would have ‘encouraged’ the other tenor, Aaron Short, and another mezzo, Jena Viemeister—both of Portland. I particularly liked Viemeister who is a student in the Portland State University opera program. I hope she sticks with it, and I wish her success. She should do well, particularly at the lighter end of the opera spectrum. 

You noticed my phrase, ‘the other tenor’. As usual, there were six times as many women as men. The three men were ‘the two tenors’ mentioned above and a counter-tenor (the first live one I’ve ever heard.) No baritones. No basses. I guess all the potential male opera singers have opted for rock and roll. Who can blame them—learning opera is difficult. 

Acoustics is another subject I know little about—but I wonder if our venue is soprano friendly. Our 'Lincoln Hall' is all hard surfaces and seems awfully ‘lively’. It’s also a small fraction of the size of New York’s. All that resonance, combined with high notes at high volume, and it wasn’t long before I was experiencing soprano overload. Maybe a larger hall, with softer surfaces, would dampen some of that excess, and give a more accurate reading of how they’d sound at the Met. 

Anyway—I generally found the mezzos more pleasing—and I guess I generally do. 

There was a woman sitting just to my right who tapped her program on her knee, not quite on the beat. It reminded me of the wonderful opening scene in Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander, in which Dr. Maturin (as yet unacquainted with Captain Aubrey) sits next to him at a concert. Maturin finds Aubrey’s tapping so irritating he challenges him to a duel. Fortunately, the Captain apologized and they became lifelong friends. 

I thought about this—and resolved not to slap her upside the head.