Willow Song from The Ballad of Baby Doe - Douglas Moore

Anna Mosoriak is a Cincinnati-based voice teacher and artist who explores singing through an artist-centered + trauma-informed perspective. Anna owns her own voice studio, Sing Anyway, whose mission is to help singers heal and trust their voices again. You can connect with her on Instagram @sing_anyway or visit her website www.singanywaystudio.com.

The Lost Piece

I don't have many memories from my childhood, but I remember this one hauntingly clearly.

I began taking private voice lessons from a new teacher when I was 16. I initially started working with her to prepare for ISSMA, which where I grew up, is a classical solo + ensemble competition for middle and high schoolers. ISSMA is many young people's introduction to classical music — by force, I might add, because students have to choose from a pre-approved list of classical pieces when selecting the music they'd like to compete with.

I digress.

So after ISSMA had come and gone, my voice teacher's next goal for me was to focus on applying to colleges for music programs. I had originally expressed that I wanted to apply to musical theatre programs because I really wasn't into Classical Music.

My teacher was pretty insistent that I had a rare gift as a coloratura soprano and that "it would be a waste of my talent to do musical theatre." At this point in my life I had never even heard of that term. Apparently, I was told, it's a soprano that sings super DUPER high notes, often very quickly.

So she sat me down and showed me this piece (as to convert me to the dark side) — Willow Song from The Ballad of Baby Doe. An opera aria. Again, never heard of any of this before.

I remember as the piece started being shocked it was in English. Opera can be in English? Okay...I'm listening...

And then Beverly Sills (the singer in the recording you're listening to) hits a high D near the end of the piece. My 16 year old ears had never heard a note that high come out of a human body. It felt supernatural. It felt like I was out of my body.

That's it. I was sold. My teacher thinks I, little Anna, can do THAT?

So that was the decision, if she thought I could do that, I could and I would.

So, I worked on the piece diligently. For months. I brought it to a music camp I attended that summer and worked on it with a different voice teacher, who told me that the piece was a bit ambitious for me and she wasn't sure I'd be able to sing it.

The piece died. Immediately.Despite my love for it. I never really found the courage to pick it up again.

Words and how we use them as educators are so important.

My first teacher simply telling me I could do it was enough to set me on a path of becoming an opera singer, while another teacher's unkindness was enough to kill the magic of the piece and whatever yearning I had to sing it in the first place.

As a singer, every piece I've sung has a rich history like this — and it's usually tied to whatever teacher I was working with at the time. Unfortunately, there are so many stories like mine, where voice teachers haven't been careful enough with their words and it creates this trauma around a song that began as beautiful.

It's emotional to share and to recall in my own memory. Music has a special way with memory. I don't have many memories from my childhood, but ask me about a specific piece of music and I can remember almost everything about it.

It's an intimate experience learning to sing a song. It's doubly intimate working with a teacher on learning to sing a song.

I'm sending young aspiring-opera-singer me some love as I write this. As a kid, you took in every word, every piece of feedback from everyone and deeply internalized it. Half the time, what they said wasn't even true. It was just a reflection of their own pain and you looked like a sensitive soul to project it onto.

You could've sung that song then, and you can definitely sing it now.

I hope you pick it up again. I'll be listening.