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For this recital, I am performing "L'amour est un oiseau rebelle" from Carmen by Georges Bizet. This aria is more famously known as the Habañera.​ In this performance, my main focus is to capture the mood of the aria, which is overtly intimate. This aria serves as the entrance aria for Carmen, the title character. Carmen, a gypsy, is attempting to seduce José because he is the only person around who is ignoring her. After the aria ends, she calls him the "fastener of [her] soul" and tosses him a flower. At the end of Act I, she successfully seduces him. This seduction leads him to kill her at the end of the opera.
For this recital, I am performing Nebbie by Ottorino Respighi. This is not a very common or well-known piece by Respighi, so I decided to bring it to life. The text is about a depressed and lonely person, with many descriptive terms. The speaker describes their grim environment, ending with a call from the void to come to it. For this performance, I had to work on my breath support to get through the slow rising lines. I also focused heavily on text inflection, a well-supported tone, sudden dynamic contrasts, and truly performing the text. I focused on all of this while recovering from an illness that I had come down with just a week prior to the performance.​