Today I hope you will indulge me as I rant about recits. About the necessity of theoretical proficiencies as your scaffolding and foundation. Doing recits. exposes all the weaknesses or holes in a singer's preparation process and without which their portrayal of the character on all levels vocal, linguistic and dramatic is weak. Of course, the hard skills come first (and then the interpretive or soft skills) but when you've got the one, the other gets so much stronger at the same time. There is PAYBACK for your hard work. You need to be proficient as a musician NOT only in intervallic reading but as those pitches relate to and are derived from the harmonic context and/or the previous notes or chords that were heard. ALL THAT AWFUL THEORY YOU HAD TO TAKE IN SCHOOL POINTS THE WAY TO KNOWING THESE SKILLS. Ah, if only we knew then what we know now! But these skills can be acquired!!! Just ask me how. If you can't do this (in ensembles as well) you might as well sing aria concerts for the rest of your days! The "melodies" of the recits. (maybe not very interesting in and of themselves and seemingly arbitrary but in fact carriers of the harmonies and the emotions) are always dancing in and out and over the harmonic sequences that shape them to move the plot/dialog forward. What is the emotional temperature of a progression and where it arrives? (Or doesn't?) It also obliges us to think deeply and psychologically about each character's motivations, intentions, emotions AND HOW TO PORTRAY THEM WITH THE VOICE. There's your choice of speed of delivery, pacing, timing....where there are false hesitations or necessary but missing pauses... and all the appoggiatura questions. Plus when and how to ignore the rhythmic settings of the words... Just think of doing your recit dialogs as a radio play and you realize that you can do so much without the visual aspect. Incorporating these into your results is crucial, even mandatory to be artistically viable. I don't see enough of this and as I end this rant, hope to make even a few more folks GET EXCITED when they realize they can do so much more!!!