TRANSCENDING FACH: A SEARCH FOR IDENTITY INSIDE AND OUT OF MEZZO-SOPRANO REPERTOIRE

The German Fach system is a tool to classify voices in classical singing. This dissertation comprises three different programs that reflect my search for identity as a mezzo-soprano and my desire to transcend the limitations of Fach. The three programs, all presented at The Clarice Performing Arts Center, contain repertoire written for male and female voices thus allowing me to explore areas outside of the mezzo-soprano Fach, gain a better understanding of the Fach system and guide me as I strive to become a more mature performer. In my first program, I sang the role of Sesto, a role that was composed originally for a castrate, in the opera La Clemenza di Tito by W.A. Mozart. The Maryland Opera Studio production took place April 30, May 2,4&6,2003. Performing this gender-bending role provided an experience of physical behavior from the male view point along with the demands of coloratura singing. Program two (November 30,2004) contained the song cycle Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann and songs by Ludwig van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and Felix Mendelssohn, which are usually sung by male voices. This program experimented with extended range, tessitura and a gender-bending performance in the art song arena. 8 In program three (April 21 &23,2005), I sang the contralto role of Cornelia from Giulio Cesare in Egitto by George Frederic Handel. The role of Cornelia is psychologically complex, expressing emotions such as love, melancholy, rage, malice, joy and fear. To convey these emotions a voice needs warmth and darkness of quality. Although the range is close to that of the mezzo-soprano, Handel wrote Cornelia for contralto voice because he wanted a dark timbre and this role allowed me to develop my lower register and manage suitable ornamentations. The programs are documented in a digital format available on compact disc and are accompanied by the oral presentation at the defense of this dissertation.

Falling Out of the Sky

“Falling Out of the Sky” is a collection of poems, both formal and free verse, that explores an intimate familial landscape. In particular, these poems raise the question of what it means to be human through examinations of family mythology and its changes as bodies and memories become unreliable with time.

SEMIPARAMETRIC METHODS IN THE ESTIMATION OF TAIL PROBABILITIES AND EXTREME QUANTILES

In quantitative risk analysis, the problem of estimating small threshold exceedance probabilities and extreme quantiles arise ubiquitously in bio-surveillance, economics, natural disaster insurance actuary, quality control schemes, etc. A useful way to make an assessment of extreme events is to estimate the probabilities of exceeding large threshold values and extreme quantiles judged by interested authorities. Such information regarding extremes serves as essential guidance to interested authorities in decision making processes. However, in such a context, data are usually skewed in nature, and the rarity of exceedance of large threshold implies large fluctuations in the distribution's upper tail, precisely where the accuracy is desired mostly. Extreme Value Theory (EVT) is a branch of statistics that characterizes the behavior of upper or lower tails of probability distributions. However, existing methods in EVT for the estimation of small threshold exceedance probabilities and extreme quantiles often lead to poor predictive performance in cases where the underlying sample is not large enough or does not contain values in the distribution's tail. In this dissertation, we shall be concerned with an out of sample semiparametric (SP) method for the estimation of small threshold probabilities and extreme quantiles. The proposed SP method for interval estimation calls for the fusion or integration of a given data sample with external computer generated independent samples. Since more data are used, real as well as artificial, under certain conditions the method produces relatively short yet reliable confidence intervals for small exceedance probabilities and extreme quantiles.