“Opera Intensives: A Three Act Essay” is a braided memoiristic essay that explores my experiences with singing, a failed potential relationship, and critically examining the Western European classical music canon.

ACT 1:    Day Three of the Winter 2021 Virtual Opera Coaching

“What do you think singers should know that doesn’t get talked about enough?” I asked Blair Salter, the collaborative pianist with whom I was working on some music with.

This intentionally broad question was directed toward the collaborative pianist with the hope that what she’d shared was a commodity that is largely underrated in the postmodern art world—wisdom.

Wisdom, unfortunately, often gets cast aside within a classical singer’s headspace. A Western classical singer’s education tends to be a retread of technique development, cramming new repertoire, networking with new and old contacts, finding the next gig…etc. This stuff has been passed on for decades and has been archived. We live in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Google can present you several blog posts on how to become a “successful” opera singer without giving you guidance on maintaining one’s sanity in the pursuit of contracts at major opera houses.

Be it cheesy and non-logical, it is my hope you can embrace whatever feelings you’ve dismissed in your real life. Have you neglected your real life because you felt that you were only worthy when receiving praise for playing fictional characters?

After at least ten seconds of contemplating the question, Blair announced, “Singers should know it’s okay to disagree with their teachers and coaches.” I breathed a little deeper. It’s okay to disagree.

For almost 11 years, I’ve studied singing in the Western classical tradition. Since then, there has been a consistent increase of polarization and dehumanization between Americans of differing ideologies. I’ve been praised by people of all races for my development as a classical singer, and I’ve received pushback from my leftist friends of color for singing the languages of peoples who’ve colonized various parts of the world. Who has the right answers, and what is right? What is left? What is moderate? Can I still enjoy a tea party or a green party?

Singing is subjective because singing is an art and art produces opinions, which are subjective. Amidst all the opinions of the world, I tend to feel my brain absolutely befuddled as it attempts to do what is right. I ponder over the many teachers and coaches in the Western classical world who would advise: “Focus on technique, repertoire, networking, and business, and busyness.”

Blair is a Canadian living in Houston, Texas.  She’s enamored by books as much as I am. In January 2020, she began curating an Instagram of the books she was reading and ended the year having read 130 books. She loves contemporary classical music and she gladly answered my broad question. A true coach. Not only did she give me helpful feedback on tuning the notes in fast-paced, frenetic aspects of an aria called “Dawn, Still Darkness,” she also reminded me of an important practice I forgot these past 11 years: Self-trust.

ACT 2:     Do You Know What Emotion(s) You’re Feeling?

Singing a 215-year-old aria about a horny horny horny adolescent boy is nearly uncontrollable (why weren’t boys like this diagnosed with hysteria?). Pretending to lust for women should’ve been the last task on my January 6th, 2021 to-do list.

In the fall of 2020, I was a student in a virtual Opera Workshop course through Santa Monica College that my private voice teacher Melissa Treinkman had suggested for me. Melissa was a lifeline when I was living in L.A. before the pandemic. The day before Lunar New Year in 2020, I spent 12 hours sleeping and crying in bed because a guy I fell in love with cut off communication with me. I almost opted out of my first studio class and first live performance as a countertenor, a voice type in which I basically sing soprano, which Melissa facilitated. My throat was coated with phlegm residue⎯it felt like a game of thumbtack tic-tac-toe had been played on the back of my tongue.

Instead of celebrating the Lunar New Year, I cuddled with a bunched-up blanket for hours in my bed and took breaks from that intimacy to take a shit, which I succeeded in accomplishing three times. I wonder if anyone’s forced themselves to be miserable in lieu of taking an enema before anal sex. When the blanket no longer gave me solace and my bowels were cleared, I looked for online videos of my ex and watched those videos on my iPhone. When his face appeared onscreen, I’d begin to sob and yearn to return to bed so I could properly fantasize him sucking me off. To console myself, I drank milk. After the last gulp of milk, I dragged myself to the kitchen sink to hold the straw under the running water so it could be cleansed. My only wish was to hold his stiff dripping cock. God, my fate was about to be like Madama Butterfly—

“It’s okay if you don’t want to sing today, but participation can lead to vitality,” Melissa gently encouraged. Though I planned not to sing for the studio class, she let me stop by her studio for a tea before class started. She let me to watch her other students perform. Her hospitality and kindness ultimately motivated me to participate, and it didn’t matter if I sang flat notes for 30% of Handel’s “He shall feed his flock.”

“If you have a performance 70% down, as you just did, I say it’s a success!” Melissa assured me.

I fretted over my choice to record that performance on my iPhone, even though I would perhaps one day watch the video and think to myself, This performance really sucked. My life really sucked. But I made it to the other side.In the end, I deleted the video. Nearly two years later, I wish I could resurrect that video so I could compare it to the mock audition videos I made for the fall Opera Workshop course. Those mock audition videos somehow managed to get me into the inaugural Sewanee Opera Intensive of the inaugural Sewanee WinterFest in January 2021. I’d applied for the program on a bit of a whim with an unsupported shimmer of hope being a participant in this intensive will magically lead to an acceptance to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference someday.

• • •

On January 6th, 2021, a few hours after the insurrection in the White House, in my condo in my hometown of Bellevue, Washington, I entered a Zoom room to meet with an Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera for a vocal coaching. Bryan is a Canadian who is living in the U.S. To his right, the blinds were opened, and I could see some New York City skyline as it neared sunset in the U.S.’s most populated city.

“I brought a chair into my bathroom, where I’m conversing with you now, and I’ve been doing coachings and lessons here so I can look in the mirror to see what my mouth is doing, and I really just need to begin this coaching by asking questions because I’m just too overwhelmed with everything going on in the Capitol to sing. I just can’t!”
            “This is your time, so we can talk, go through a song, both.” His tone remained neutral, but reassuring.

I rushed my hands over the top of the chair brought in from the living room. The chair has a smooth brown wood back and base that holds a beige cushion. It’s never been a strength of mine to be privy to the detailed and the technical, so I can’t inform you of what kind of wood it is and what material the cushion’s made of. Even as a highly trained singer, my brain likely lacks at least 60% of the vocabulary that folks who studied music in universities can seamlessly imbue in their chatter over afternoon tea, if that’s how pre-professional classical singers spend their free time when not cramming new music into their brains. Unlike the 49 other singers in this opera intensive, I’m not enrolled in nor have I received a degree from a degree granting music program. Also, I haven’t befriended many classical musicians.

A career as a singer was a path that I hadn’t actively pursued. Singing is a form of therapy that I’ve committed to for my psychological well-being. One of my closest friends avidly hikes, another takes horseback riding lessons, and will soon partake in horse shows, and I participate in vocal related programs as a means of solace amidst the chaos that life can prove to be.

“What questions do you have, Winston?”

There I was on my ass, sitting in front of a staff member of one of the world’s leading opera houses, wondering why the fuck this coaching wasn’t cancelled when the most significant breach of the U.S. Capitol since the War of 1812 shook the world just a couple hours prior.

In front of the sink laid a piece of paper that could’ve been mistaken for a legal brief because of all the questions that inundated it. I wanted to investigate a singer’s practices beyond the craft and into the lifestyle at large, and I had many questions for him. Instead, I confessed, “I’ve never done a program like this before! I decided to try out the young artist program tracker website recently, the Sewanee Opera Intensive intrigued me and was a good deal, and now we’re here.”

“That’s alright! Every participant here is in a different stage of their path,” he reassured just as Blair had the day prior.

“What do you think singers should know that doesn’t get talked about enough?” I asked.

In less than 5 seconds, he said, “I’d say it’s important to be objective. That there’s a science as to what a good sounding singing voice is.”

Considering that most Americans don’t care to listen to classical music, I immediately disagreed. Many avid classical music listeners dislike hearing countertenors. “Well, I’ve had teachers and coaches with different opinions about Philippe Jaroussky, a famous French countertenor of Russian descent. Those teachers and coaches don’t like his voice because they think he sings like a skinny bird. Which is probably why he hasn’t sung in huge opera houses. Yet he’s one of the most popular living countertenors today. Personally, I love his musicality.”

It didn’t sit well with me that many Americans would mindlessly go on about their regular work routine after such a significant sociopolitical occurrence. But my heart needed vitality, which the practice of singing gives me, and I had the fortune of working with Bryan Wagorn, who I actually became familiar with months prior to this day. Even if I could only sing with 70% or 10% of my ability, I would’ve regretted not working through an aria that felt like just the right choice to woodshed with him.

“I want to sing ‘Voi che sapete’ for you before our time runs out. By the way, I saw the livestream of you accompanying Anthony Roth Costanzo for the Le Petit Gala in November. You know, I love the YouTube video of him singing ‘Voi che sapete’ as a teenager; it’s so precious!”

On the YouTube account pulled up on my laptop, a ,“Voi che sapete” piano accompaniment track paused at 0:00. I originally wasn’t sure I’d be singing at all during any of that coaching session. Perhaps I’d prepared the video to be played because I deeply wanted to share my love of the aria that afternoon.

• • •

I’m interested in the sensuality of female assigned bodies through art. I wouldn’t avoid an exhibit on visual depictions of vaginas in a museum so long as the works weren’t produced by misogynistic men. One of my all-time favorite films is The Hours, which features three kisses between women, one of which is incestual between Virginia Woolf and her sister. Virginia’s dramatic desire to relieve her misery is so palpable and powerful that it becomes a necessary scene. I love that mezzo-sopranos (singers of female-assigned voices in a middle range) occasionally play men in operas and pretend to lust after (though maybe the lust is real sometimes) their female co-stars because of the queer nature of the women’s interactions.

“Voi che sapete” is from the 1786 Italian language opera “The Marriage of Figaro” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The character who sings the aria is Cherubino, a young page who is often played by a mezzo-soprano in drag. In a masterclass with the renowned mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, Cherubino was described as “hormonally distressed” by Miya Higashiyama, who sang the aria for the masterclass. In the past couple decades, there has been a rise in countertenors playing him, and Melissa suggested I work on the aria because she believes my voice is suitable for the role. While I wouldn’t ever call myself “hormonally distressed,” I was definitely a neurotic, perplexed, grieving, rageful, horny mess for some time after that one guy cut ties with me through an email the day before Lunar New Year, which coincidentally was during the time of rising anti-Asian hate crimes due to COVID-19.

And while I’m gay gay gay, I could relate to the yearning that pervades “Voi che sapete,” meaning “You who know,” in English. The aria itself is sort of sweet, though it’s pitiful the character is professing this to a married countess. I like to believe that Mozart was subtly advocating for queerness through having a woman sing this role.

Voi che sapete

You who know what love is,
Women, see whether it’s in my heart,
Women, see whether it’s in my heart.
What I am experiencing I will tell you,
It is new to me and I do not understand it.
I have a feeling full of desire,
That now, is both pleasure and suffering.
At first frost, then I feel the soul burning,
And in a moment I’m freezing again.
Seek a blessing outside myself,
I do not know how to hold it, I do not know what it is.
I sigh and moan without meaning to,
Throb and tremble without knowing,
I find no peace both night or day,
But even still, I like to languish.
You who know what love is,
Women, see whether it’s in my heart,
Women, see whether it’s in my heart,
Women, see whether it’s in my heart.

• • •

The last section was flat. But I was 75% there, I thought about my performance as the final chords sounded.

“Beautiful!” Bryan exclaimed.
“Thanks. I know the final chorus went flat though.”

If only I could be as reassuring to myself as he and Melissa were. Self-assurance—not an easy practice, but neither is singing Mozart. Nonetheless, I’ve since decided to look back on the coaching thinking I sang pretty damn well overall.
“There’s a couple spots in the beginning I’ll coach you through. Have you ever done exercises with portamentos?”

“Possibly. What does portamento mean again?” The por in portamento conjures up the image of a pig in my head because por reminds me of pork. The mento makes me salivate over mints. I doubted pigs or mints related to the exercise.
            “It’s an Italian term meaning ‘carrying.’ I want you to carry your voice through each note as you sing. In other words, you’ll sing all the notes between each note written on the page. It’ll help you tune the flat parts. Montserrat Caballé was known for singing like this.”

Voi che sapete che cosa é amor—

The first line translates to “You who know what love is.” Cherubino addresses this to Countess Rosina Almaviva, whom he wrote the song for. When I isolate that line from the context of the character’s sexual attraction to women, I recall—in the past 11 years of my singing life—all the instances in which I hoped older people could thoroughly explain to me what the phenomenon called love exactly entails. Most of them could barely muster more than 50 words.

What would you say ‘love’ is? How has your understanding of ‘love’ changed over the years?
Is how Western society’s definition of ‘love’ overrated? Oversexualized? Antiseptic? Maybe friendship ought to be prioritized over romantic relationships?

I carry these questions into the music. I live out these questions through voicing the lyrics, Cherubino’s truth. As I sang the portamentos that afternoon, attentively singing all the nuances between one note and the next, I pondered how often I transition from one activity to the next while unconsciously numbing my emotions. Like how I didn’t want to feel anything that day when I transitioned from reading about the attempted coup to bringing the living room chair into the bathroom; from bringing in the laptop to bringing in the speakers; from connecting the speakers to the laptop to preparing the accompaniment video; from plugging in the iPhone charger to connecting it to my iPhone; to waiting until 1:15pm for the coaching to finally meeting with Bryan before not singing.

How easy it can be to single handedly train one’s front burner to cross items off a daily to-do list and simultaneously prevent one’s heart from feeling a full range of emotions along the way. I accomplished all those tasks like a robot. Why is there a plethora of journalistic articles exploring the encouragement of artificial intelligence when so many human brains and hearts have been socialized into becoming mechanical?

I’m a highly sensitive person. Throughout my entire life, people both young and old haven’t hesitated to present their unsolicited mini-lectures on how I’m too sensitive to be a functioning member of society. Sometimes I pretend to go back in time so I can spit at them with

Are YOU sensitive enough?

• • •

“You are sensible,” a German countertenor once shared with me.

“Thank you! A lot of people don’t see me as sensible.”
            “‘Sensible’ isn’t the English translation of sensibel. Sensitive is the English translation.”
            “Well. I’ve been informed that I’m sensitive plenty of times.”
            The other English translations for the German word sensibel could also mean “delicate” or “problematic.” The definition of sensibel needs a revision.

The only times that being a sensitive person has been problematic were when I’ve interacted with people with low levels of emotional intelligence. Calling someone “delicate” implies that they are easily damaged. In my experience, the most delicate people I’ve interacted with are people who seriously struggle to get curious about and reckon with any of their emotions. They’ve been damaged to the point of avoiding any attempt to make sense of what they’re feeling. My often intensely embodied emotions can get the better of me to the point of becoming a neurotic, perplexed, grieving, rageful, horny mess after my heart metaphorically shatters. But at least my heart hasn’t hardened so immensely that it’s permanently incapable of breaking.

The knowledge I’ve gained from investigating my inner life has allowed me to deepen my understanding of the layered lives of characters, such as Cherubino, in the arias I study.

• • •

“Good job on the portamentos, Winston.” Based on a subtly upward inflection in his tone, it seemed Bryan was impressed.

“Thanks. I’ve been told I make adjustments and retain them pretty quickly.”

I’m highly capable of attending to the sensory impressions my vocal folds pick up on when learning new exercises, and that has allowed my brain to easily remember how to sing through the new changes that I’ve been taught. I may not hold all the technical musical knowledge the 49 other singers in the intensive could spit out like a Jeopardy! contestant on track to win thousands of dollars, but the intuitiveness in my musicality led me to a spot in this program, and a coaching with a highly-regarded conductor who was casually chatting with me in a flowery shirt.
           
• • •

It’d be quite the mental challenge for me to imagine how my life would look if I hadn’t studied singing. I’m always tempted to say that the lessons I’ve learned through singing have saved my life, so perhaps I would’ve stuffed 20 pounds of rocks in my pea coat to sink in the local river if I hadn’t ever been singing or had stopped my private studies. Even though I haven’t persistently pursued a career as an opera singer, the path of singing has brought me to interesting places (virtual, lately!).
            Taking voice lessons and participating in Melissa’s studio class led me to the virtual Opera Workshop she taught through Santa Monica College. Being a virtual Opera Workshop student through Santa Monica College led me to filming mock audition videos of my performances of operatic arias. Those mock audition videos became actual audition videos that led me to becoming one of the first ever participants in the Sewanee Opera Intensive.

When I look back on my journey with “Voi che sapete” and that coaching with Bryan Wagorn on January 6th, 2021, I’ll assure and affirm myself—
The reality of the insurrection is horrid, but I received reprieve from the coaching In the end, I got a lot out of it. I’m happy that I followed through with the singing. With the participating—singing gave me vitality.

ACT 3:   The Present

February 14th, 2022

Have you ever heard of the Bengali language movement? International Mother Language Day? That UNESCO listed Belarusian as an endangered language?

• • •

Cosmopolitan.

Cosmopolitan distributes 64 international editions of their magazine in 35 languages over 110 countries. The cocktail called “cosmopolitan” gained popularity in the 1990s through the TV show “Sex and the City;” the show’s protagonist Carrie Bradshaw kept ordering the drink until, to use Sarah Jessica Parker’s line, “everyone else started!”

A friend once told me I have a cosmopolitan personality. In this context, she was referring to my ability and willingness to engage in cultures outside my own.

“I don’t mean cosmopolitan in a bad way,” she reassured me. Then I wondered why being cosmopolitan could be considered good or bad. I discovered cosmopolitanism is connected to globalization which is connected to capitalism, and there are articles of extensive criticisms about all three phenomenon.

• • •

Whenever I read of a scholar that focuses on post-colonial and/or postcolonial literature, I can’t help but ask, “What do they think of decoloniality?”

And I recently realized that the Western classical music I sing is Western European classical music.

• • •

I was born in the United States of America, and I grew up in the United States of America. I struggle to make declarative statements that characterize America. I didn’t learn the term “continental US” until I befriended a guy from Hawai’i in the summer of 2020. Sometimes, I liken different regions of the US to different countries in the same continent.

Melting pot, salad bowl, kaleidoscope, cultural mosaic, multicultural—this is a list of contradicting adjectives that have been used to describe America in 2021.

• • •

Despite the rise in anti-Asian crimes in the US, the Metropolitan Opera plans to present “Madama Butterfly,” an orientalist opera composed by an Italian man.

Despite the opera being set in Japan, none of the singers on the cast list are Japanese.

• • •

Why do I continue to sing Western European classical music? Why do I, a person of Taiwanese and Indonesian descent with a drive to dismantle white supremacy, choose to immerse myself in this art music? It’s a simple answer: my singing experiences have been, for me, psychologically healing.

Singing provides several psychological benefits to the brain. Furthermore, the European languages are simply fun for me to learn and sing. Furthermore, my 11 years of vocal training in the Western classical tradition have led me to people and places that have changed my life in profoundly positive ways. I don’t regret this musical journey.

I despise Eurocentrism. Nonetheless, I have a both/and mentality: I love classical music in Italian, German, and French, and I strongly believe traditional music of various cultures deserve as much praise as Western art music.

I credit my being a cosmopolite as motivating my striving for social justice. It is through my cosmopolitan life experiences that led me to me caring about wisdom, and getting curious about what it means to live in the messy 21st century.

Photo of masks by Andrea Woods on Unsplash

---