Opera Tampa Singer Vanessa Rodriguez reveals the four parts of the body to “place” the voice. Plus, she shows how to hit those high notes with no microphone.
“It’s the Tweety Bird end of the spectrum,” says Vanessa Rodriguez. We’d asked her to explain what she meant when she told us she was a coloratura soprano. “We sing all the notes, all the notes, people don’t want to sing—high notes, fancy runs, we do it all.”
Born in Queens, New York, Rodriguez studied voice at the University of South Florida in Tampa, eventually finding her way to small roles in big operas and building her career. She started as an ambassador with Opera Tampa Singers in 2013, and this season she appears as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro and as Angelina in Gilbert & Sullivan’s Trial by Jury this summer. She’ll also take on the role of Green Alien/Blonda in Opera Orlando’s Star Trek-interpretation of Mozart’s comedy, The Abduction from the Seraglio.
We have a powerhouse opera season launching this weekend with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, followed by Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro in March and culminating in Verdi’s Macbeth in April.
We aren’t opera singers here at Caught in the Act, so we sat down with Rodriguez and asked her to give us a crash course in singing, starting with the basics: posture, breathing and placement. Here’s her tutorial, complete with glorious “head” placement and a demonstration of “nasal” singing that made us want to burst into Ethel Merman impressions.
Enjoy!