Singing for my supper

A recent discussion among teachers dipped into the perennial question: should teens and developing singers be encouraged to sing core 18th and 19th century operatic repertoire before their technique is fully developed?  There is no one-size-fits-all answer - there are a handful of exceptional students who are ready to start building their operatic chops as teens, but  in general I personally come down on the side of "no".   I encourage these keen students to become familiar with the  dramatic stage works they love and  maybe even play around singing them for fun, but as performance and audition pieces?  "Not yet....".  They don't love me when I steer them away from O Mio Babbino Caro or Queen of the Night but, if they continue as serious singers, their 30-something selves will thank me for not letting them build youthful insufficiencies into what becomes their mature bread-and-butter repertoire!    Beyond Handel and the 24/26/28, this still often leaves teachers

For this post I'm delighted to pass the baton (keyboard?) to my dear friend and colleague Laura Woolbright Mashburn . Laura is a wonderful singer and teacher with seemingly bottomless knowledge about repertoire:  whenever I feel "stuck", I ping her for a quick Facebook chat and instantly have a dozen suggestions to consider (many of them "new to me" selections)!  So much repertoire out there to explore ... :)

In Part 1 , I shared some of the rationales that I use when selecting repertoire for students; this post explores some specific sources of repertoire for developing classical singers. ( "The Yellow Book" of course refers to the ubiquitous "24 Italian Songs & Arias of the 17th and 18th Centuries" that seems to be a rite of passage for every classical singer!)