Jeannette LoVetri

Thank you, Daniel. Always appreciate your feedback.

Thanks, Billy. Glad you like it!

Thank you, Barbara. You represent the best of what teaching singing should be!

We still have a lot of work to do!

Your age doesn’t matter as much as your lack of serious classically-oriented training over the past decades. You can absolutely be a light lyric soprano (I am, at 67, exactly that) but you can learn to sing in a variety of colors and qualities. Being a big dramatic voice will just kill you and your throat, so do follow your intuition and stay away from that. If you study seriously and practice, you might be just fine in opera by Mozart, Handel or Gluck. You might do French opera or modern works. Not everyone who sings opera has a big, dramatic voice. Functional training should help you have more stamina, more control, greater freedom, better skills and not be at all concerned, especially right away, with what “voice category” you are in, regardless of your age (which, by the way, is not “old”.) Look around until you get someone to train you who doesn’t tell you what you are supposed to be. Work with someone who allows you to discover what your voice wants to do and find repertoire that suits you. It might change or even get fuller, but if it doesn’t, and it might not, there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing.

This is the beginning of allowing yourself to come home to who you really are. Please go slowly, and allow your body to relax. It will start to breath and to feel and you will begin to “tell your truth” in the world and find your real voice, both literally and figuratively. The breathing will help your depression and your confidence will grow as you know that you deserve to be heard. Be brave, don’t give up, and let us know how you are doing.

Thank you, Rose. You are an amazing singer and I am so delighted to know that you are, at least, giving forth the true beauty in your heart through your voice and your singing. Brava!

If you are allowing the throat to slightly adjust as you go, you will probably feel that shift at about the B-C the octave above middle C. Beyond that, the sound has to change if it is going to keep going without going to full head. The amount of change is a combination of how you shape the vowel, the amount of breath pressure at the level of the vocal folds, the vocal fold vibratory pattern and the actual volume of the sound. Patti LaBelle says she can belt a high C. She’s been around a long time, so I don’t argue with her on that point. Most people, however, top out at either the C5 (octave above mid C) or the F/G at the top of the staff. Much depends on your physiology, your training and your conditioning through singing and training.

You are not alone, Sharon!

What a wonderful thing to know, Melissa! Thanks for sharing it here for all to see.