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The Consternation of Coloratura Cadenza Crafting

Well, hello all! Welcome to another Thursday morning, just like any other really, except for the nagging guilt of my taking time off of cadenza research and instead writing this blog post for you! Why do I write today, you ask? Does it have to do with the cacophonous collision of c's in the title of this blog post? Why yes, yes it does. My, aren't you awake this morning!

Currently I find myself in a 'Groundhog Day' of sorts. One which was created by the dreaded task that faces all singers sooner or later, and especially those of my particular voice type: Coloratura Sopranos. Ha!- as if it wasn't enough that we have to sing the dang things, someone still decided to rub it in by naming our variety of Soprano by the very thing that is currently making me look for excuses to clean the house, namely, coloratura cadenzas. Coming up with cadenzas with coloratura passages that ultimately show off your voice but also 'fit' the style of the music is something that each and every singer will either totally love or completely dread. Guess which side I'm on? That's right, the dread side.

And sadly, dread it I do. Because what's there to love? I'm not a good enough piano player to work them out on my own (like some people can do who just sit down at the piano and say, "Hmm, this is built on a dominant chord so let's see here....(and then play something totally amazing) and then be like "....yeah, that'll work." And then they don't even need to WRITE IT DOWN to remember it. Show-offs.) No, I'm certainly not one of those people. And I'm also not one of those people who just has the creativity to keep trying to make things up by ear until something sounds good (because, let's face it, what I think sounds good and what the people who know the style think sounds good, are two very different things). So, what I'm left with (Garn!) is doing research instead. In concrete terms, that means that I listen to a thousand different versions of the aria that contains the cadenza passage (which okay, there's not a thousand, but it certainly does feel like it after you've listened to every person of note singing the aria and then rewound each cadenza at least three times to listen to what they're doing, and then transcribe it (!!!) and then compare all of them side-by-side to determine which ones you like the best, or if any of them happen to lend themselves to being combined together to make something a bit old and still a bit new....) and then finally, after that long process, figure out which ones are right for me and my voice and my sense of the drama (by singing through all of them, naturally). And until that point, my friends, sometimes days have gone by! And this is just one Aria we're talking about!!! God forbid it has a da capo and then you've got to figure out all new ornaments for the second time around.

Of course there is that moment where you finally find the cadenzas that you want to use and then it seems as if the heavens have opened up and Beverly Sills and Sumi Jo and Joan Sutherland are all patting you on the back.......but that's a very short-lived moment.

So.....while you take this moment to ponder how I can improve my cadenza research so that it takes less time (please God, is there actually a way!?) and let me know your ideas in the comments below, I'm going to go vacuum the apartment. :)

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