While considerable research has explored the skills elite professionals use to sustain performance excellence in a multitude of disciplines, much less research has focused on professional musicians. Multi-faceted skills are needed to maintain performance excellence. This research investigates the deliberate skills and processes professional opera singers employ to preserve elite performance. Data drawn from individual semi-structured interviews with ten professional opera singers, with a minimum career length of ten to twenty years, were analyzed within the methodology of grounded theory. Results revealed a strong role for creation of a music "road-map" in the context of deliberate preparedness in both physical and mental skills, which contributed to high levels of learning self-efficacy. High-level skills cultivated in the preparation phase were applied directly within the context of live performance, facilitated "flow" experiences, involved energy exchanges with other performers and audiences, and resulted in higher levels of performing self-efficacy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:TORONTO/oai:tspace.library.utoronto.ca:1807/36000 |
| Date | 13 August 2013 |
| Creators | Skull, Colleen |
| Contributors | Bartel, Lee |
| Source Sets | University of Toronto |
| Language | en_ca |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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