I was going to go to university to sing opera and become a music teacher, but I hated the actual not-singing part of it. It just wasn't for me. I couldn't read music, I disliked the music program and I absolutely hated the teachers and fellow students. Music students are almost all diva assholes. I miss singing opera a bit once and a while, but being an English and education double major is better for me. I never had stage fright, but my body would make itself sick just trying to hard to really practice and improve before a performance that I just wasn't happy with it anymore.

I still sing to myself. I get compliments on my voice, but it's not nearly as good as it was back when I was still training and that makes me a little sad. I used to be a coloratura soprano, which basically means the highest singing role of a soprano. I hit those high notes like it was nothing. I miss it. It makes me a little teary to think of my performance. The one good thing about not training anymore is that I've gotten better at singing and making harmonies to songs; I've been de-sopranoized so I can hear the harmonies better than ever.

We're kind of alike then, RE! Keep working on those range exercises and you'll get over that high C easily as you get older. I forget the highest note I've sang in performance, but I think it was in this song (that or Black Swan) which is coincidentally the last song I've ever performed.

YouTube - Dorothea Röschmann - Ach ich fühl's

Check out other songs from this opera, btw. The Magic Flute has some of the most amazing songs; I really want to see it this summer, but those tickets are like, insanely expensive and really complicated to order because the Metropolitan Opera House in Manhattan is all fancy. The Magic Flute also has really good arias for sopranos.

YouTube - Magic Flute (Queen of Night Aria)
(This was the song I was next planning on learning if I had kept with music school. I was going to learn it privately. I wasn't expecting to ever perform a song of this level while being an undergrad in university, but the school wanted my first performance to be a song of a middle school level - I did literally perform it in middle school for NYSSMA. I was extremely insulted; my performance instructor was the one given to the most advanced opera singers coming into the music school, but when they found out about my level of music reading, they forgot about the fact that I actually got selected for him for a reason (ie; I had a fantastic ear and was a great learner despite being a poor music reader), and thought it'd be cute if I sang The Water is Wide instead of an aria.)