Rosalyn Lake battled her ailments to present her senior voice recital March 20 in the Harriet Fulton Theatre.

Lake, a Vocal Music Education major from Millington performed songs in Latin, German, French and English. The pieces were selected by Lake and Amy Yeung, Lake’s music teacher.

“She (Yeung) tries to find pieces that are really suitable for the person singing them,” Lake said.

Lake opened the recital with “O Praise the Lord” by Wolfgang Mozart, followed by “Your Blue Eye,” “Like a Melody it Flows Through Me ” and “A Futile Stand” by German composer Johannes Brahms.

Next Lake performed three selections from French composers. She sang Gabriel Faure’s “Here Below” and Reynaldo Hahn’s “If My Verses Had Wings,” with Claude Debussy’s “It is Languorous Ecstasy” preceding a brief intermission.

“They are not very easy to interpret,” Yeung said. “I think she can actually feel the songs and convey that to her audience.”

“Expressions are needed in the music and she shows it,” said Daniel Burke, a freshman Finance and Economics major from Springfield.

After intermission Lake performed part of “Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson” by American composer Aaron Copland. She sang “Nature, the Gentlest Mother,” “The World Feels Dusty,” “Heart, We Will Forget Him” and “I Felt a Funeral in My Brain”.

The recital ended with “It Ain’t Necessarily So” by American composer George Gershwin. Lake was accompanied on piano by faculty accompanist Delana Easley.

Lake was nearly forced to postpone the recital because of allergies that caused her to lose her voice for several weeks.

“I was not able to talk when we went on spring break,” Lake said. Over the break she could only memorize and work on expressing the pieces physically.

“It would have been nice to have a little more practice time,” Lake said.

Lake said the allergies also prevented her from hitting some of the high notes during the recital.

“I was really kind of horse and if you were there you saw that many of the notes weren’t coming out,” she said.

Yeung agreed. “It may have affected her high notes a little bit, but she covered it up well,” Yeung said.

Lake drew rave reviews from audience members despite her allergies.

“Rosalyn did a good job of bringing out the character in the pieces,” said Linda Farmer, a senior Music major from Dresden.

“She’s had allergies and her voice has been gone for the past two months,” said Sarh Lemons, a Vocal Music Education major from Brentwood. “It only came back last week. It’s pretty incredible.”