Planning a dissertation on the topic of Cantonese opera film, lately, I've been working on a bit of voice studies. The hardest part is probably not the semantic but the empirical: one day, I hurt myself from incorrectly practicing ventriloquism, despite years of singing experience. (Yes, one can hurt one's self if one doesn't know how to correctly use one's voice. I need some new voice lessons it seems like.)
Here are some fascinating performances by Juliana Snapper (1972-), an LA experimental soprano:
Singing under the water-"You who will emerge from the flood..." (underwater operella), a post-modern, re-imagined version of the Mexican folktale of La Llorona: the wailing woman whose ghost wanders the rivers of Mexico crying out from the trauma she suffered in life after disobeying society's gender roles: (Who would imagine how intense it could get? Just ingenious.)
Singing upside down, perhaps also visually inside out:















































