Brooke Larimer
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Chewing the scenery when there is no scenery

11/15/2016

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I do lots of auditions. Lots and lots of auditions. So do all of my opera-singing friends and colleagues. When I started auditioning, my anxieties around auditioning were about basic preparedness and the fundamentals of singing well. I never knew what would come out of my mouth, so I could just as easily give a terrible audition as I could give an amazing audition. Fortunately enough for me, there were a few amazing auditions in there that landed me jobs in those beginning years, because I know many a singer who did not have that luck.

After doing this for years, I no longer worry about preparedness. In the extremely unlikely event that I mess something up, I just laugh, everyone else laughs and I start over. I am also confident in my ability to sing pretty well, barring illness, even if I don't get to warm up as much as I would like to. Even on terrible weather days, like we have today, my voice works, and my brain works, and audition disasters are practically a thing of the past (knock wood).

You would think that would make auditioning a piece of cake. But no. My standards are higher. I want to deliver moving, emotive performances that make people stand up and take notice, even if I look like a drowned rat, it's 10:15 a.m. and the auditor spends the whole time huddling over her coffee cup, barely looking up.

I am experimenting with different ways of "bringing it" in auditions, and today my experiment had me directing all of my attention at the imagined space and imagined people that would be in the scene if I were actually in the opera, instead of in a run down dance studio performing for the person sitting behind a table at the opposite end of the room. In other recent auditions, my attention has been directed more inward towards the emotions that singing the character's words make me feel, but I've found that deeply unsatisfying after the fact.

I, personally, find it very challenging to chew imagined scenery, but 90 minutes after my audition this morning, I feel much more satisfied with my performance, so I guess I'll try to do it again next time.

N.B. If you know any professional opera singers besides me, give them some extra love and kindness during this time of year. Audition season exacts a very high toll on all of us emotionally and financially.
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A prayer (with apologies to Homer)

10/27/2016

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O Divine Mucinex,
Product of Reckitt Benckiser
Sustain for me
Vocal cords free of phlegm
Which, after they have sung the many notes
Of Handel and Rossini and Bach,
Were made to endure tirelessly
About the tyranny of Rhinovirus,
The sport of whose whims, all malevolent,
While their desire,
Through all of the mucous
Ached, in agony, to vibrate cleanly
And produce beautiful tone.

Vain hope - for them!
For the head cold strove against them,
Its untimely and unwanted visit;
The despot,
To inflame for no reason at all,
The mucous-membranes of my nose and throat!
Where the audition god failed to stop
The virus in its tracks.

Make my throat free of goo,
In all its delicate tissues,
O Mucinex.
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    Opera singer, opera producer, podcast co-host, lover of music, travel, food, and all things mind-bending.

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I acknowledge the land politically designated as New York City to be the homeland of the Lenape people who were violently displaced as a result of European settler colonialism over the course of 400 years. The Lenape diaspora remains closely connected with this land.

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