Driving Rachmaninoff
If you take up singing, don't wait till you're over 40. If you do wait, don't try singing in Russian to a Russian. But if you must sing to a Russian, make sure he has more than 40 years of experience such as a concert artist and dean emeritus of a prestigious Moscow music institute.
To my "I low are you?" upon entering his voice studio in Claremonr, New Hampshire, Professor Scmyon Hregubov exclaimed, "I am normal!" He is 80 something, looks 60-something. Feeling 90-something while enrolled in Dartmouth's Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) program, I started studying voice on a dare. The last time I'd studied Russian was in high school, during the Cold War.
MALS—a gem of an interdisciplinary degree—is unusual at Dartmouth. The program requires blending independent intellectual experiences with those on campus. My dizzying, eclectic courseload has combined ethics, opera history, oral history, language and identity, screenwriting, and conflict management. Extracurricular singing, I thought with a non-Dartmouth professor in a non-Dartmouth settingmight relieve my interdisciplinary stress.
The Professor sighs, "My dream is you sing high without fear in your eyes." I descend a scale, "Sol-Fa-Mi-Re-DoSssiii..." and he shudders. He mimics me: "Sssiii! Akkhh!! In Italian, pronunciation must be exactly! 'Si.'Very delicate." The "Sssiii" escapes from my molars. "This pronunciation is not your fault you are American. English Akkhh, what a language!"
My days are spent on the road collecting FinnishAmerican oral histories for my thesis. While I drive I practice songs and arias en route. After 10,000 miles I can, in Russian, maintain vigil for wandering Norsemen, pray my man gets malaria, fake a migraine, experience unrequited love for an oak, and talk hubby out of beating me beneath a birch. In Italian, I can spurn attentions of lovesick shepherds, petition God to return my philandering nobleman, search for lost family jewels, and threaten to drown myself. Voice students learn the foreign vocabulary they sing. The Professor insists, "Know what you mean by everyword."
Today's assignment: sightsinging Rachmaninoff's Vocalise, a masterwork of sublime sensibility. The College motto is Vox Clamantis in Deserto, though, and that's where I amstruggling through Vocalise's 70-wordless measures of "Ahhhh" like I'm crossing the Sahara on two cylinders. The Professor's voice rings in my ears.
"Akkhh!! You follow his signs! Rachmaninoff tell how to sing every note!" Are we there yet?
"You will never sing on Metropolitan stage," The Professor has warned me. I know this. So why does it still sting? "Butyouwill sing excellent for your friends." Decades ago, such a friend and I waited, trembling, to perform in a piano recital. I pleaded," Why do we do this?" She pondered, "To feel alive?"
Which is how it feels, wailing Vocalise, transmission in overdrive, screaming southbound on I-91, high above the Connecticut to singing lessons. Aside from the thought of graduating, it's the closest I've come in more than 40 years to flying.
