Chapter 7.8 - Lightly 8 (2/2)

She stared at me with a dumbfounded expression.

Why, did I say something wrong? I was tilting my head when Lee Suh-ah scoffed from the side.

“Kim Wuju can go up to D and you’re saying you’re higher? Even Che gelida only goes up to C, which is one note lower though?”

“Well yeah, but the interviewers wouldn’t know that Kim Wuju is able to go up that high right? ‘La Promessa’ which Kim Wuju would be singing doesn’t have a very high note after all. Was it A or A flat…?”

Seeing me in thought, Lee Suh-ah made a blank expression.

“…How do you know Kim Wuju would be singing La Promessa though?”

Oops.

I felt like I had made a slight mistake.

It was obvious how I found out. Unlike Lee Suh-ah who hid herself to the bitter end, Kim Wuju was very open and appeared in lots of variety shows as well.

Thanks to his fame after having reached the top tenor position of the world, plus his handsome appearance and sympathetic looks due to him being blind, he had gathered popularity nationwide. Later, there was even a documentary based on him.

Being an opera singer myself, I had watched it several times so I knew his preferences well when it came to songs.

When he was in high school, he should have been deeply indulged in Rossini and on that list, there was only one song composed by Rossini.

La Promessa.

…But since I couldn’t explain all that, I turned around towards Kim Wuju.

“…You are, right?”

Kim Wuju nodded his head with interest.

“Right. I was thinking of singing that.”

“See?”

Lee Suh-ah asked back after hearing me say that.

“No but… how did you know?”

“I could just tell after seeing his face.”

Hong Yoojin interjected when Lee Suh-ah was about to reopen her mouth with a frown.

“Good. Indeed, Che gelida is better than La Promessa. It was a good selection of song but I said it right? You need to sing well for a song choice to be meaningful. Are you sure you can sing this?”

“You will see.”

When I said that calmly, Lee Suh-ah whispered to herself.

“You mean hear.”

I grinned and postured myself properly. Then, I met my eyes with Lee Suh-ah who was glancing at me with crossed legs, before matching teacher Hong Yoojin’s gesture and opening my mouth.

“Che gelida manina–”

[What a frozen little hand–]

Che gelida manina

This song which started off with the lyrics saying, ‘what a cold hand~’, was a classic song about hitting on a woman – a song of a male who had fallen in love at first sight, introducing himself.

He introduces himself sorrowfully as a poet with no belongings and only a big dream. The song goes on to say that the dream had all disappeared after seeing the woman and that it had been replaced by the hope called ‘you’… it was that kind of a cringy song.

There was a reason why this simple love song had become famous. It was due to the lyrical, beautiful words of the song, and the overwhelming melody at the above – a high C singing of hope.

It was an aria you couldn’t help but falling in love with after listening to once.

“Chi son–! e che faccio…”

[Who I am, what I do…]

Now, as long as it wasn’t a C5, high notes served no issue. Since this song was an aria, it had to be sung a bit louder but… well I guess I could omit that this time.

I just tried to embed all my feelings into the song. This was that kind of song after all, so I had to sing beautifully with a voice like I couldn’t fall any deeper in love.

Looking at the front, I saw Lee Suh-ah staring at me with a strange expression and judging from that, it seemed to be decent so far.

In fact even during the practices, the middle part wasn’t very problematic. Although it was a song that required rich expression skills, I had lived 20 years more than other high schoolers so I was confident in not losing in that aspect.

Because expression skills, were things gained through life experience.

When do you feel like ‘this’ and how should the tone be to embed that feeling into the song, as well as matching the various expressions to their fitting songs… seeing through all that was what ‘expression skills’ were about.

“L’anima ho milionaria–”

[I have the soul of a millionaire–]

I also liked the song itself so I listened to it a lot. The lyrics saying that he was poor but dreamed of being a millionaire; didn’t it sound just like me?

With a grin, I quickly proceeded through the song.

High notes, grace notes and a long legato.

Now, my breath had reached a level where I could sing naturally like I was breathing out and the only problem now was the highest note.

High C

“Poichè v’ha preso stanza…”

[For their place has been…]

Right before the high C, I collected my breath and focused.

In fact, when making a high note, that high note itself wasn’t very important and what was more important was the note right before that.

High notes could only be made from a perfect vocalisation structure, and the ‘perfect’ mentioned here shouldn’t be an impossible task for opera singers.

And yet, why do they still get them wrong? It was because they got nervous right before the high note, or maybe they had put too much strength or done something else that broke this ‘perfect’ vocalisation structure that had been formed.

And a broken structure was naturally impossible to make any high notes.

In the end, as long as you could sing the note before that very well, the high note would flow out naturally, like water gushing out from an open tap.

Like this

“La spera—-nza!”

[Taken by hope!]

The air pressure that came exploding out from my stomach echoed in the practice room with an overwhelming high note.

After counting around 5 or so seconds of breath output, I cut off the supply of air.

“…”

I could see the kids watching with closed mouths.