From Mezzo to Soprano

Episode TwoSong Qian arrived in Shanghai as a stranger. She had grown up in another city, and when she first walked the streets of the metropolis to buy something from a local shop, she found herself unable to follow the accent, unable to penetrate the particular pride that Shanghainese carry in their voices. The conservatory was famous, and getting in felt like an achievement. But belonging to the city was something else entirely, a process that took the better part of three years.She had not intended to be a mezzo-soprano. Before her entrance examination at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, her teacher had not trained her strictly as one voice type or another. She sang some soprano repertoire. But when the audition panel assembled for the final round, her voice — broad, wide in colour — read as mezzo to most of the judges. There was also the matter of timing. That year, mezzo applicants were scarce. The panel needed to balance its intake. And so it was decided.Song Qian received the news without much in the way of strong feeling. She was not sure of the difference, not really. Her main thought, she admits with some amusement, was that at least mezzos do not have to sing so high. High notes required daily drilling. This seemed, at the time, like a reasonable arrangement.The five years that followed were pleasant enough. She won scholarships, partly because she policed her dormitory with a ferocity that her classmates still remember — threatening anyone who left the room untidy with the loss of the communal grade-point average on which the scholarship depended. Her teachers were pleased with her. She ranked well among her peers. But looking back, she recognises that she did not yet understand what she was singing. The music and the soul, she says, had not yet collided.After graduating she joined the Shanghai Opera House, then as now her institutional home, though in those years it was taking on young singers only into the chorus. Her motivation was at least partly practical: that cohort of graduates was the last for whom a Shanghai work unit could sponsor a permanent household registration, the coveted hukou. She wanted to stay in the city she had finally come to love. The Opera House was the obvious answer. Being a mezzo helped. Sopranos lined up to audition every year. Mezzos of quality were always in shorter supply.The turn came a year into her posting, at one of the Opera House’s routine annual assessments. Sitting on the panel that day was Luan Feng, a celebrated bass who had spent more than two decades in Italy and had recently returned to China. He noticed a mezzo-soprano in the chorus. He asked to meet her. As it turned out, he had already seen her once before: she had attended a masterclass he gave at the conservatory during her fourth year, and her face had stayed with him without his quite knowing why.Luan Feng was taking a small group of singers to compete in Italy and invited Song Qian to join. She was the only one from Shanghai; three others came from Beijing, two tenors and a baritone. They travelled to Pavia, Mantua and Busseto. Both tenors reached the finals but won nothing. Song Qian won merit prizes at two competitions. Being the youngest competitor, she also received a special encouragement award at one of them. She had spent the weeks beforehand drilling her Italian rolled r every morning the moment she woke up, having been told in no uncertain terms by Luan Feng that without it she would not get far.After the competitions, Luan Feng was invited to give a concert at the Italian Embassy in Beijing. Song Qian performed. The Italian ambassador, watching her sing, turned to those around him and said this young woman should come to Italy to study. She had a future. He would give her a scholarship. She could not understand him — she spoke no Italian beyond ciao and buongiorno — and Luan translated after the fact. The scholarship turned out to be a joint arrangement between the Italian cultural ministry and the Chinese Ministry of Education, covering tuition, with a monthly stipend of 1,000 euros.Her father was not entirely happy. He was not worried about money. He was worried about safety, about distance, about a daughter beyond his reach in a foreign country. Her mother took the opposite view: the opportunity was there, she was young, she had to take it.The family talked it through. In the end they agreed she should go.She arrived in Milan on December 31, 2005. The next morning was New Year’s Day 2006. She enrolled as a visiting scholar at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Music, the institution the public exchange programme had designated. A year later, having fallen in love with the city, the buildings, the air, the sound of the language, the coffee, and the particular elegance of the way Italians carry themselves, she realised she had barely scratched the surface. She resigned from the Opera House, severed the practical ties that would otherwise have required her to keep paying into the Chinese social insurance system from abroad, and went back to Milan to sit the entrance examination for a full master’s degree.It was in that first year, buying student standing-room tickets at La Scala for about 15 euros a time — a fraction of tthe 100 or 200 euros a regular seat could cost — that something shifted in her understanding of what she was doing with her voice. She would queue at four or five in the afternoon for an eight o’clock curtain, collect her numbered ticket, and stand at the top of the house listening to singers whose sound she had never encountered anything like at home. The resources available to students in China at that time, she says, were simply not the same: fewer visiting artists, fewer concerts, little of the daily immersion in live opera that the Milan years gave her. Standing in that auditorium, she made herself a promise. If she could one day sing on a stage like that, even once, it would mean something.It was also during those years, not at the Shanghai Conservatory but at La Scala, that she began to understand what bel canto actually was. And it was in Italy, in the third year of her time there, that she stopped being a mezzo-soprano and became a soprano.To be continued…This is a Chinese language programme without subtitles. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit klassikom.substack.com