I still maintain my somewhat pig-headed conviction that chorus singing is a waste of time for an opera student (at best) and a dangerous reversal of technique at worst.
I, and you, are being trained to stick out of a chorus -- to cut through the big ensembles. If, for example, I end up full-blown spinto at some point, I'm not going to want to "blend" when Susannah and Aida are singing full-blown lines right through a huge onstage chorus. In Floyd's preaching scene, the chorus swells up to a forte and Susannah cleaves right through them with her "No"s -- and it's upper middle singing, right through their upper-middle singing. Singers have to be trained to pierce through a chorus; why are you sabotaging your training, especially before your technique is stable, by teaching yourself NOT to stick out of a group? Not to mention the exploitation of pianissimi that directors force upon unfinished voices.
Duets and ensembles are still a matter of "cutting" singing -- listen to any Cosi ensemble; you can pick out every voice individually at every point.
If you can possibly get out of a chorus requirement, do. If you can't, mouth your words -- sing in falsetto if it doesn't fatigue you -- sing only your "good" vowels (for me, the [i] and [e]) and mouth the rest -- sing comfortably at a low dynamic level but drop out of the pianissimi and the forte lines before you start building tension -- do whatever you can to fake your way through rehearsals and performances, and get the requirement over with as soon as possible. Just let your chorus director think you're one of those soft-voice students he never hears. Then put that vocal time into your practicing.
Or you can sing everything correctly, with ring and cut, and practice seeing if you can (at the same dynamic level as everyone else) stick out anyway. Then when your director glares at you, say, "But I have a naturally large instrument, I am a future Butterfly/ Radames/Eboli/Wotan!" This tactic will arouse the jealousy of your fellow students and the ire of the director, however, so I think mouthing/faking is a better choice. Or volunteer to turn pages for the pianist.
I just think it's a waste of time. Opera chorus is not so bad, since everyone in it is a trained singer and directors have usually given up on the blend thing and stick to staging (at least at San Francisco Opera, where the chorus sounds horrible most of the time and you can hear individual voices sticking out all over the place). There are better ways of learning sight-singing than by spending three hours a week NOT cutting, NOT piercing, NOT sending your squillo out to the back of the hall from the midst of 50 other voices.
Isabelle B., opinionated as always
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
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