Dear Doris and list,
now the second part, about myself.
No, I did not take part on the masterclass. Next year I will try to do that; I think by then I will be technically good enough to dare to sing for Dietrich Fischer Dieskau and by then I think I will also have persuaded my pianist to join me. Of course I don't know whether DFD wants me to take part, but time will tell.
I am a tenor who sang as a choirboy, did not sing for twenty years after that, started again when joining a choir performing the Mozart Requiem, took singing lessons and became very serious about singing soon after that. Classical music has always been extremily important to me.
This is now almost five years ago. Since then I have practiced almost every day for at least an hour. I have made great progress on interpretation but my technique was always heavily leaping behind my interpretational skills. But in the last half year I have made a tremendous technical progress, especially in the last weeks. This I will describe in another mail after I return from the Bartoli concert/mini holiday, under the title: Never say never.
I live in Holland, near Amsterdam (about 700 miles from the Schubertiade region), studied Dutch language and literature, worked as a journalist for many years, lived in Germany for 7 years after marrying a German woman (see below) and started in the IT business when I returned to Holland, a job which allows to live comfortably while giving singing almost all the attention it needs. I also made many reordings of concerts and always record my practicing. I just bought a new set of very good microphones.
I am divorced from a woman who did not like the fact that I took singing so serious and have a daughter who thinks Cecilia Bartoli is Cinderella, who has heard La Cenerentola about 700x and The Magic Flute about 699 times. She also went with me to a performance of the magic flute and sat during the complete opera on my lap, mouth and eyes wide open. It was very cool, she said. She is 6.5 years.
I gave my first solo-recital in May, which was the best and nicest thing I have done in my life, apart from procreating myself.
O, I almost forgot: I like Lieder very much because I like to interpret poems (and Lieder, of course), and I like the combination voice / piano very much. But maybe even more important: since I have been listening to Lieder and been reading Heine, Rilke and Goethe poems during the many years I was supposed to study but in reality devoted to suffering from an unhappy love, listening to Mahler, Schubert, Schumann etc., visiting bars in search for 1003 new loves, of whom none turned out to be the right one, to marry finally (years later) my first big lost love, who divorced me seven years later because ..(see above), so all those romantic suffering heroes feel very much like me, a few years ago.
P.S. More about the masterclasses next week, after my return.
Best greetings,
Dre
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