Emanne Beasha, a 10-year-old singer on America's Got Talent, stunned crowds in her first audition with a beautiful performance of a Puccini aria. Hailing from North Port, Florida, the young soprano sang ‘Nessun dorma' an octave higher than is written, showing off a number of impressive top B5s.
- This 15-year-old is rumoured to be Pavarotti's granddaughter – and she sings ‘Nessun Dorma' magnificently. 26 July 2019, 13:53 Updated: 29 April 2020, 14:11.
- Reason being is because the young opera singer was set to perform alongside famous Neapolitan-Austrian baritone star Patrizio Buanne. How could the young girl's voice possibly compete with Buanne's vocals that he had spent a lifetime perfecting? However, as soon as she started to sing, all doubts instantly faded away.
Dear Readers,
I find myself with the desire to share what experiences I have had since graduating and entering the new world of a young opera singer. This desire stems from a want to record my own curiosities that I currently have mixed with the inevitable ones I will most certainly have as time goes on, as well as the conclusions I've drawn from the result of those curiosities. I also wish I had a similar resource to read through of other people who were once in my position to find out what they were curious about as well as what conclusions they drew from their own curiosities. So, I've decided to take it upon myself to chronicle my own experiences in the hopes that they will one day find someone much like myself to provide some much needed guidance as I find myself now craving. There is a growth that can only exist in the writings that someone discovers in a journal that spans a lifetime as compared to a biography which only encapsulates the experiences of one who has grown because of them. I think I find that growth to be especially interesting as I've forgotten many of my own perspectives growing up as a student of singing.
Young Opera Singer From Holland
DeYoung is a graduate of the Metropolitan Opera's Lindemann Young Artists Development Program. She won the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1992 and has been a regular performer at the Met ever since. In 1995, she was the recipient of the Marian Anderson Award. Amira Willighagen (born March 27, 2004) is a Dutch soprano singer who won the sixth season of Holland's Got Talent in 2013, at the age of nine.
One of the most important perspectives that I now fully understand is that of the young opera singer as compared to a young aspiring singer who wants to be much older than he or she is. I trusted my teachers going through school as well as the various coaches I have had the pleasure and privilege working with to only sing what was appropriate for me. But I found myself all the while dreaming of the big roles, the leads, the exciting parts that everyone remembers… instead of the task at hand. That being of course the core, the basics, the foundation that I will build my house of roles on top of.
I think an opera company must look at their singers much in the same way a contractor looks at a laborer. If that laborer wants to build the most amazing looking fireplace but he doesn't know how to lay a level brick, that fireplace might look fantastic when it first settles but over time it will crack and lean and eventually fall to pieces. The home owner (person in the audience) will be angry that they no longer have a fireplace, the contractor will have to pay for it and likely the homeowner will go to another contractor in the future, and the contractor will only have himself to blame for hiring a laborer with big dreams and largely lacking skills. So they don't hire the dreamers, they hire the laborers who can get the job done.
Only a master mason really knows how to make an outstanding looking fireplace that also functions for twenty years without major repairs. A master mason only becomes a master after years of being a laborer, apprentice mason, journeymen mason, and so on. Of course this makes perfect sense when it comes to something as practical as construction. Mostly because most of us who have seen a newly build house fall apart likely aren't surprised when it was due to shoddy construction. We are also very skeptical of a new contractor for the very same reasons. (Or we should be!) But most of us I imagine have never seen a voice fall apart on stage, or over a few years. Most of us have never seen or met someone with vocal damage.
Dreaming of the big roles without really figuring out how your individual voice works, without doing the language prep that is completely necessary, without understanding the difference between good acting and bad acting, is as pointless as dreaming of a really good looking fireplace unless you have the time for dreaming and the ability to actually build your concept. I am all for dreaming don't get me wrong! I was a construction worker who became an opera singer after all. But I wasted time that could have been better spent refining the skills I needed to know because I didn't think they were that important or I thought I would eventually have those skills as time went on.
Young Opera Singers Competition
I didn't want to listen when many of my teachers harped on me about my languages, acting skills or lack-thereof, and technical problems that I could have worked on more at the time. I didn't fall down the pathway of thinking I was much better than I really was. Rather I fell down the pathway of figuring I would learn the things I was being harped on about as time went on. This works only if you learn the things being harped on about as time goes on. Certainly I learned much of it as time went on… but there were things I could have accomplished then that I have to accomplish now. Time is so valuable. I'd rather be getting paid to sing than continue to pay to figure out what I need to in order to get paid to sing.
This brings me to my overall point and what I consider to be the major difference between a dreamer and a young opera singer. The desire to do the hard work. It's not about talent. Sure, we must all have an aptitude for the field we wish to study. Rather it's about having the constitution to make it through the difficult times when we would rather be doing something much easier. One of my voice student's father is a surgeon. He recently told me he shared the same perspective in a conversation I had with him on my experiences involved in becoming a young opera singer. He said that most people think it takes a really smart person to become a surgeon. Scary as it might seem to some, this isn't the case. What is the case, and actually more reassuring to me, is that it takes someone willing to do all of the hard work who might not be the smartest of the bunch.
I am sure that I went to school with folks who were far more talented than I am. I was jealous of some of them to be perfectly honest. It seemed to easy for them to be on stage, learn their roles, and entertain those around them. These things didn't come easy to me and still don't. I have to work for every inch. Where my true talents lie are not in music or stage craft, but in hard work. I know how to work hard. I know how to ignore the frustration, I know how to tune out the voice that tells me I can't succeed, and I don't feel entitled to anything that I haven't already worked very hard for getting in the first place.
One of the guys I went to school with who I was entirely jealous of due to his talents and abilities ended up quitting for the sake of smoking pot of all things. He was a janitor for a while and has ended up in dead end job after dead end job. He never learned how to work hard at the things that didn't come easy to him. To truly be successful in singing professionally, something will eventually come up that the most talented person doesn't get right away, and that work ethic will come into play. Most people give up.
I didn't give up and here I am. I graduated with more performed roles and professional contacts than most of my colleagues and at least as many as the rest. I graduated with 60% of my tuition paid for. I've been to China as an opera singer and sang opera in China. I've had the privilege of getting training with some of the greatest names in the business and sitting down to lunch, dinner, or coffee with the same folks to pick their brains on what it takes to be a professional.
I am avidly auditioning, but more importantly on an immediate level, I am staying committed to being a singer in the most difficult time of any singers career. I am lucky to live in an area which is affluent enough to supply a steady line of aspiring middle school and high school singers which provide me with a great deal of enjoyment and work. I could be doing any number of jobs in the beginning, but I get to live with music every day.
This first post has turned out to be a rather long introduction. It is my intention to write smaller installments because I know most folks aren't interested in reading mini-novels in a blog space. But for those of you who are long time bloggers or blog readers, it takes time, please be patient.
Young Opera Singer Male
I look forward to writing for you again soon.
