I'm not a soprano

Told y'all plainly that I wouldn't sing Beder's aria very well. It's not written for my voice, and I didn't even have to demonstrate the songs for Portrait of a Knight or These Words Are Meant For Someone. I just sent people MIDI exports, and that's all they needed, alongside rehearsals where I gave some feedback. Rodgers whistled the R&H tunes. My voice isn't that of a professional opera singer. - As for the tunefulness of my voice: actually, it's quite good. One thing that massively annoys me about opera voices is that a lot of them have vocal wobble or vibrato that is really wide, yet that's seldom called 'out-of-tune.' The technique where the orchestra backs the singer's melody is either called doubling or heterophony, but either way one generally expects a slight variation in pitch, much as you hear on those Arabic albums.

Sondheim said that it's not that he couldn't nail his demos, but simply that it takes too long to memorise an entire song - well, one of his ones, at least - and that an approximate version is fine. - I don't need singing lessons because my vocation is composing. Hamish and Ken, who are both conductors, have very similar vocal abilities. Giving notes and demonstrating a phrase or two is generally considered part of the remit of a composer or musical director. If you don't like my singing, that's fine: if you're being rude to me because you wish that I'd lift my boycotts, then you're just failing to understand why those boycotts exist. Transphobic attempts to force me to alter my gender expression must cease. Personal attacks and actual threats to return to VUW or face jail must cease. Negging me and insulting me isn't going to change my view. Classical musicians will simply find that I'll hire those who aren't bigots, and also that they might not be best suited to this particular opera. NZ Opera has basically pissed me off to the level where I might deliberately work with other people to spite them. VUW isn't even in the running. Their business decisions = no deal.