I've been taking voice lessons from two people in my time here. One is an American living in Wien that IES appointed me. Her name is Donna Robin, and she has spent almost all of her singing career here in Vienna singing at both the Volksoper and the Staatsoper! She is a lot more focused on the body and how I use it as a tool than the musicality of what I'm doing, or at least that's how it seems to be so far. It's always a challenge getting used to a new teacher! Everyone has slightly different perspectives and ideas, and even terminology that takes time to get used to. But so far it seems like I like her style. Unfortunately I've been too sick to sing for the last few weeks and she got sick as well. So between the two of us, there hasn't been much time for lessons...
My other teacher is a friend of my Professor from home. His name is Benjamin Bruns, and he is currently singing as one of the leads at the Staatsoper!!! Pretty amazing :) So for my lesson with him I got to go into the depths of the backstage of the Wien Staatsoper... I got to sing my lesson in the same warm up rooms as some of the MOST famous opera singers in the world. WOW. Benjamin is an Austrian, so our communication was a little rocky, but not too bad considering the language barrier. As a performer, he is mostly focused on the presentation aspect of my singing, in contrast with Donna's style. I think this is a really interesting pair for the semester, just because it will allow me to get coaching on pieces from both a technical side and performance side. Awesome :)
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