The icing on the week's tasty cake: The Second Coming of Helen Pt 3, May 8, 1505-1548
With confidence flowing from the essay marks all-but-guaranteeing a 2:1, the focus could shift to this lesson, delayed from Wednesday because Helen's workload had not yet abated. We got a larger room than normal, with a grand piano instead of an upright, and that can't have hurt proceedings.

Did a couple of different warmup exercises - and Helen invited me to devise my own, an invitation that (it goes without saying) I will accept - before finishing off Defying Gravity. Went through sections, got some technical advice, placed a bit of emphasis on breath control, so far so quotidian.

Got to the end bit, and in a fit of adrenalin - already starting to manifest themselves as tears on the line 'everyone deserves a chance to fly' and 'to those who'd ground me, take a message back from me' - suddenly decided to sing the second line of the final chorus in the manner Idina sings it on the recording, i.e. up to F5 (F4 an octave down, natch), which is marked as optional on the sheet music, an option I had yet to take (and had been advised not to). I got it. "Did I actually get that?", I interrupted in a stunned falsetto squeak, before I could sing 'and soon I'll match them in renown'. "Yes," Helen said, and I was stunned. (I've put the recording through Audacity's pitch-recognition function, and I did indeed get it. Was a tiny fraction sharp, in fact. Said falsetto squeak was at C#5...) It proved inconsistently repeatable, which was a reasonable result; I'll still quote my highest note as E4, but hopefully not for long.