Dreams change and that's ok
Just a little about how it all began and the resistance that led me here
I was lucky to have a goal from before I could remember. I first caught the opera bug when I was a toddler. I was sitting in my playpen and my mother switched the channel to PBS’s Great Performances. Nothing like the age-appropriate ending of Carmen to get a two-year-old hooked on the music and theatrics of opera. When it was over, I threw a tantrum and yelled for more. Luckily for me, my parents found this amusing and continued to feed this opera obsession. VHS tapes of Met Productions were my pacifier, and as an only child, this kept me pretty occupied. Since then, opera has always been a part of my life. I dreamt of singing Carmen and the Queen of the Night (I was five and didn’t understand fach/ voice-type). I wanted to be like Beverly Sills, a Jewish girl from Brooklyn turned opera star.
In high school, I’d listen to the Four Seasons and the Brandenburg Concertos on my daily subway commute. It wasn’t opera, but I developed this taste through my father who would constantly play the Brandenburg Concertos non-stop. Classical guitar was also a fixture in the household. We’d often play it in the car when we needed to bring our cat to the vet, and it was the only thing that would stop him from foaming at the mouth (hey, anxiety runs in the family). Perhaps I’ve always associated this music with comfort and healing.
But I didn’t like the vocal music of that era. I found it boring, which fair enough, I was 15 or so. And then I was introduced to the young opera singer bible, 24 Italian Songs and Arias. They were pretty pieces but, it felt like a chore. I was eager to skip this step and go straight to singing the role of Queen of the Night, the Willow Song, and Glitter and Be Gay. But I also found myself descending from the soprano 1 section my freshman year, to alto by the time it was my graduation. So maybe Queen of the Night wasn’t going to happen, but I still had Carmen and Rossini in my sights.
In college, I discovered that I had good coloratura (think the Rococo version of a Mariah Carey riff.) It felt like I had this superpower. This was the first time I truly felt talented and believed I had something special to share. I couldn’t wait to perform my first Rossini aria for the rest of my department. I still think of that performance as a milestone even though much has changed since then. Afterwards, I heard the department head tell people that this is what I would sing, Rossini and mostly Baroque music. I deflated. Now, there is nothing wrong with this, but I was in an environment that valued bigger voices and early bloomers, so naturally, I developed a complex around this. Rather than seeing it from the perspective “I am skilled at this, it speaks to me and I enjoy it,” I saw this as a limitation; a box. And anyone who knows me well knows that I don’t do well with any kind of confinement. I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder, and I often have this devilish impulse to prove people wrong. So I continued to attach myself and my dreams to singing massive repertoire. While doing this, I was also ignoring a voice deep inside of me.
I had a eureka moment a few months back while talking to a friend. He was going to pursue a career as a character tenor. At first, I felt that it was almost a waste because he is classically handsome with a voice that can easily capture a leading man role (something the industry is weirdly fixated on). And I realized that was the conditioned resistance bubbling up again to the surface having been taught that one type of singing was lesser. We all know that a great character role can steal the show, and how wonderful that the character tenor world is about to gain a great voice. Plus, he just loves making people laugh, so why not pursue that? Why follow someone else’s dream?
This led to my own realization. I was always drawn to Baroque repertoire. I chose to listen to these concertos from a young age. I signed up for every historical performance/early music course that I could. I binged recordings of the same pieces performed by different artists. But I resisted owning it for the longest time. Why? I was attached to a dream I outgrew, and I continued to be in environments that saw early music as a genre that singers pursue if they can’t do the big sings.
Things are different now. I finally allowed myself to be led with curiosity rather than obligation. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’ll probably never sing Carmen professionally and that’s ok. This was the dream of a different person; a younger Alexa. But younger Alexa would have never imagined starting a blog for fun or helping to produce opera and concerts from the UN to the cemetery. Younger Alexa wouldn’t have ever imagined rocking a pixie cut and enjoying the taste of eggplant. Hey, we change!
And a little treat for those of you who made it to the end of this, here is a pre-teen Alexa singing opera. Skip to around 5:13.