The Fredösphere

The concert was hosted by a prominent music school, featuring some of its best student performers.  The program was devoted to works by one composer, a professor with an international reputation.

Among the performers was a soprano.  She was not a student, she had moved into town and set up an independent voice studio.  Clearly she wanted to be more than merely a voice teacher.  She had been busy finding performing opportunities on the fringes of college life.  More to the point, she had the kind of over-muscled body that, especially in a woman, signals ambition.

The composer was present; indeed, he was the MC for the event.  Somehow the soprano had finagled a spot in the program.  She was to sing an aria from the Great Man's hot new opera.  It was a Big Chance.  Her business plan depended on this, on Getting Noticed by Someone Famous.

She sang the aria.  It was designed to be a showpiece, so naturally it was difficult.  The soprano certainly did not sing it badly; this is not the story of a train wreck.  (For one of those, I refer you to the incomparable Florence Foster Jenkins.)

Her performance was simply less that wonderful.  Truthfully, the quiet, high note at the end exposed her incompletely developed technique.  It sounded strained.  She made it sound hard.

Her performance training failed her at that point.  She could not hide her bitter disappointment.  She slunk off the stage.  Her dream was shattered.  The composer returned to the stage to introduce the next piece.  He said nothing about the aria, but he had ears and eyes just like everyone present.

It's been many months since that night of disappointment but I still think about it from time to time.  Did she recover?  Did she put this lesson to some good use?  Did she redouble, redirect, or simply give up?  The tragedy for a woman performer is that the clock ticks with cruel rapidity.  I never found out what happened to her.