JOHN DEMPSEY writes:

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing.

I can understand your being touched by this beautiful, accomplished girl and the famous aria, which is lovely. But, I have to say respectfully that I did not have the same reaction. To paraphrase Neil Postman, childhood has truly disappeared and this girl’s performance reminded me of that.

Children of nine should not be singing Puccini arias. The music is too demanding and could even injure their voices, in the same way encouraging a young boy to pitch baseball for many innings in a row can damage his arm, which isn’t mature. But of course that’s the whole point here, she is singing something rarely performed by children.

In the aria from Gianni Schicchi,  the character Lauretta sings of her desire for the boy she loves and begs her father to approve of him. She even threatens to jump in the Arno River and says she wants to die. It’s just not the kind of thing a girl of nine should be singing. But notice the reaction of the adults.  Why are they so thrilled? I would say they are thrilled because she seems like an adult and they are excited by the novelty of it. It’s they who are the children in this scene.

The natural and healthy hierarchy between children and adults has been largely obliterated. How is it possible for children to grow up in a world run by children?

— Comments —

Mr. Dempsey writes:

I agree with everything you have written with one exception; your conclusion:

But notice the reaction of the adults. Why are they so thrilled? I would say they are thrilled because she seems like an adult and they are excited by the novelty of it. It’s they who are the children in this scene.

The natural and healthy hierarchy between children and adults has been largely obliterated. How is it possible for children to grow up in a world run by children?

I don’t think that’s the case here. Maybe they were in awe simply because it would have been so unexpected that a nine-year-old could produce such a sophisticated, yet lovely, sound. The people in the audience didn’t have a week to think about it. They simply reacted, in the moment, to something beautiful.

Laura writes:

My reflexive reaction was the one I described. I took some time to think about whether I was missing something. She’s a child.  So it’s hard for me to react to the sound without taking that fact into account.

Don Vincenzo writes:

I completely share Mr. Dempsey’s reaction of being bowled over by the performance of Amira Willighagen, the nine year old whose voice surely has been trained, with bel canto clarity, to perform the aria from Gianni Schicchi. That a tear would be a result is not unusual, for Puccini’s music has always had that affect on others and me: to this day, whenever I hear an accomplished rendition of Puccini’s Che gelida manina from La Boheme, albeit more than a half century after I first heard it, I note that my eyes still get watery. But on the larger – and more important – issue, I have to come down on the side of the sentiments expressed by the mistress of this website.

For those of a certain age – mine – the idea of the loss of childhood was unthinkable, for it was an integral part of one’s maturing. Granted, we all had separate, and often different and difficult childhoods, but to make the person whole, the passage of childhood was a required norm. Living amongst those of our age group added to what kind of person we would be in our later years – childhood was a necessary rite of passage we all went through. Not, I’m sorry to say, any more.

There are far too many cases to cite, but I always felt sorry for the absence of childhood in the former tennis player, Chris Evert. From the time she was younger than Amira currently is, Evert’s father trained his daughter to be a superb tennis player, and she was, but in the process Evert noted: I never had a childhood.

Successful as she was in tennis, her other life was not complete: failed marriages (in a Catholic family, no less) only pointed to something missing in her life.

While I cannot authoritatively claim that her life would have been better with a normal childhood, I suspect that it would have been a lot easier. In the final analysis, what was gained by hitting tennis balls for hours as a child against a wall? If I may paraphrase the Gospel: What doth it profit a woman, if she gain the whole world and suffer the loss of her own childhood?” (Matthew 16:26)

Buck writes:

I recently sent you this video of an elephant painting an elephant, because it got me a pondering what I thought that I understood about non-human animal self-awareness; a question of whether or not they are conscious of each or of any mental state that they are in. Is the elephant aware that it is depicting itself and of the significance of holding flowers, as art for a non-elephant audience? Can it be? I don’t think so. Yet, I was floored by it.

The nine-year-old girl singer is in a conscious mental state, but she is not conscious of the mental state that her performance mimics. Her performance is an ordinary meme by a well trained and talented nine year old girl. She floored those in the audience who simply did not expect it. Few if any, are inclined to give it any real thought. Fewer and fewer find it necessary.

Jewel writes:

I agree with you. Children should be singing purely, in hymns to their Creator and to Christ.  They can sing masterfully in a manner most pleasing to their Maker, and surely all the angels will be singing with them.

I’m reminded of Lee Ann Rimes singing the Patsy Cline song, “Blue,” the song which rocketed her to unnatural fame at 13, singing a song more properly sung by a washed-up alcoholic woman in middle age. In the video this 13 year old girl is Lolitafied. And she hardly looks blue, as she smiles with shades and her lipsticked mouth.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

Children with great, though strangely adult-like, talent should not be forbidden from expressing it. They will hate their parents just as much as if they were forced to sing in public. Where parents have to be careful is dealing with record companies, etc.

Suppose Mozart’s parents had rapped his fingers when they saw him composing music?

Laura writes:

That’s a ridiculous analogy. I never said children should be forbidden from performing or making music. You seem to have missed my point.

Paul writes:

You gave a sound opinion that also illustrates how young people can be overburdened. The pitching analogy was perfect. I suppose we can understand it as simply people wanting to commune with one another.

Fegalo writes:

I do not agree with some of your thoughts about Amira Willighagen. First of all, nobody is pushing her and she has not had any singing lessons yet. She started singing all on her own, learning by youtube tutorials. She should now be taken care of by a very responsible teacher and kept away from too much contact to the music industry – which is surely anxious to devour her – until she has reached sufficient maturity.

I also disagree with what you write about the childhood being taken away. Since Amira is just doing what she loves, what could be wrong with it? That is something completely different from a childhood being taken away like with Michael Jackson or some tennis kids. That she reminds us of an adult while singing is just our perspective. She is not the only very young person that has a deep intuition of what is transported by music or other arts without the intellectual maturity of grasping it. It simply need not be.

Laura writes:

She was not just acting on her own. Adults had to make possible this performance. Therefore, some adult should have encouraged her love of singing and forbidden her to sing this particular aria, which is not appropriate for a child of nine and which could seriously strain her voice, which is obviously a precious instrument. A little girl should not be singing about suicide no matter how beautiful the melody is.

 Mary writes:

I think what bugs me about the video is that this is not just a little girl singing an aria; it’s a little girl imitating a grown woman singing an aria. Children of nine don’t close their eyes with emotion when they are singing, especially in a language other then their own. Not to be a wet blanket.

She is very talented and maybe she will still grow up to be a wonderful opera singer, but I’m afraid getting on “Holland’s Got Talent” was the desired goal and that the opera angle was just a hook.

Miss Catherine writes:

I find it rather disconcerting that very few people take into account the detrimental physical repercussions for this young girl. A nine-year-old voice, no matter how mature cannot sound like an adult voice without the use of serious vocal manipulation. I have been singing professionally for the last ten years, and teaching classical music for the last three. In order to ape an adult performance this girl must use unhealthy vocal techniques. If you listen to her performance you can clearly hear that her diction is very muffled, which betrays her bizarre sound placement. Also, her breathing is very odd, often taking breaths in the middle of phrases. This could be the result of no training, or a lack of musical understanding, but I would argue that it is the result of a young girl singing repertoire that is simply too difficult for her vocal development.

In order to achieve that sound that is shown in the video she is mimicking an adult sound, rather than appropriately developing her own voice. If she continues to sing in this manner without the proper training and guidance she could permanently damage her voice. The voice is a very delicate and sensitive instrument, through singing in this manner she could hyper develop certain muscles in her larynx, while under developing others, and create a severe muscular imbalance as she grows older. This will result in the malformation of her vocal apparatus, and put the kibosh on hopes for a future as a classical singer. Just as body building would be inappropriate for a nine-year-old, as their body is still growing and developing, so too is singing repertoire that is this technically demanding for a voice that is still maturing.

I have no doubt that this girl has a lovely voice. However, how it is being used to mimic an adult performance could be harmful to her in the long run.

Laura writes:

Thank you for writing.

I know of a couple of opera students in their twenties who don’t sing certain arias because their voices are not mature and they could damage them. This girl is perhaps not going to be able to sing in the future.

Please follow and like us: