• Drink lots of water. Your urine should be pale gold, rather like champagne unless you take Vitamin B, then it is orange. (Yuck.)
• When you’re tired, sleep. Or at least lie down. Sleep will heal anything.
• Humidify your house in the winter.
• Don’t stress your voice by gabbing on planes, trains or in noisy restaurants. Don’t hold the telephone against your shoulder and talk.
• Avoid excess tension. (Pardon me for laughing. You’re a singer aren’t you?)
• Don’t clear your throat or cough if you can help it. Drink more water or blow lots of air through your wide-open glottis to clear the glarts.
• Women, don’t push your voice around the time of your period if it feels husky and unresponsive. You’ll tie yourself knots, and it still won’t be clear. Shut up or sing husky.
• No post-performance meals. I broke this rule every time I could. That’s why I never made it to the Met. Come to think of it, the Italians break all the rules and they sing (or used to sing) just fine. Do they get special dispensation from God or what?
• Don’t whisper, especially if you have voice strain. Don’t talk after performances. Cool your voice down (Stemples or middle-voice soft singing to massage your vocal chords.) Then SHUT UP.
• Caffeine, alcohol, smoking, and drugs. Need I say this? Don’t do them.
• If you have laryngitis or a bad cold and your vocal folds are affected, don’t push your way through a performance. You’ll sound awful and the next day you’ll be out of commission for six weeks or more, maybe forever. Yes, I suppose you can find some back-alley otolaryngologist who’ll give you a cortisone shot, but you can still damage yourself beyond repair, so think carefully about it. Nobody needs you that badly, especially if you are fogging out and pushing to make it louder. Get your understudy (the little brat) to sing for you, and go home and go to bed. The smaller the organization, the more annoyed they’ll be with you. Big companies and orchestras just go find somebody else who’s healthy. Except the BSO of course. Guess what soprano sang in Carnegie Hall with the BSO with the flu?
