Master class

How does it feel when a master teacher comes along and contradicts everything a singer has learned about her voice and vocal production?  We guess it feels pretty good when the results seem magical. We just attended such a class taught by famed Italian soprano Donata D’Annunzio Lombardi. This is our third or fourth opportunity to observe her working with young singers and the results have left a huge impression on us.

 

Her teachings are based on extensive experience with anatomy, bioenergetics, and osteopathy. She has assembled valuable advice from several famous singers. She can immediately diagnose exactly where tight muscles are blocking sound production and provide strange seeming exercises and postures to ease the blockage. We have heard dramatic changes in the students’ voices within minutes!

 

Her focus is very much on accessing the back of the body and the several diaphragms that are apparently as important as the familiar one. The commonly taught posture and method of breathing into the belly seems to be all wrong.

 

Students got down on their hands and knees.  They lay on their belly and swam on the floor. They pinched their lips. They showed off their uvulas. They bent over the piano. Wow!

 

Participating students were sopranos Xiaotong Cao and Yvette Keong, mezzo-soprano Tal Heller, tenors Zachary Goldman and Oleksii Kuznietzov, and baritone Sunyeop Hwang. They all sounded just fine initially but after a half hour work with Ms. Lombardi they each sounded glorious with enhanced resonance. Accompanist was Fabio Bezuti.

 

We found ourself wishing that we had begun our vocal studies with Ms. Lombardi.  The bad news is that it is too late for us but the good news is that it isn’t too late for you. This remarkable teacher, brought to us by Glenn Morton of Classic Lyric Arts, will be returning in October.

 

If you are a singer you absolutely must attend.  And if you are not, you can come and enjoy witnessing some miracles.