Thursday, June 23, 2011

Opera Organically: The Fifth Principle

The Fifth Principle of Opera Organically is:

The Voice is Universal.

Singing is not a solitary journey.  So often it may seem to be, when we are along the Path to 'finding' our Voice.  But the truth is, if we really look at our experience, we've known our Voice, and that which connects us to other Seekers on the Path, all along.  Each new discovery, each bit of new understanding is like a retrieved memory: like a dance step we might have known as a child that comes back to us suddenly, or sentences from a language we heard in the womb.

What is this memory?  What are these whispers that say to us when we sing our truest voices: You have known me before?

It is interesting to consider that we singers, inspired to sing opera by what we might individually interpret as infinitely different reasons, may be being "breathed" and "sung" by a power, by a Universal Voice, which is beyond our individual experience.  When we are open to thinking from this universal perspective, our journey to honesty and authenticity as singers takes on a whole new meaning.  What once seemed a solitary struggle for the unattainable becomes a group quest to understand and "let go" into what already exists.

This Fifth Principle could be integral to the perpetuation of our art form. For as individuals, we are unique expressions of the Universal Voice.  As a community, the light which shines through us collectively in the form of music on breath, originating from that which connects us all...as a community aware of all the deep possibilities of our human existence, we shine so brightly that no questions like "Why opera..." need be asked.  The only thing left to experience in the awareness of Universal Voice is awe.

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