Singers who regularly perform in front of an audience, can you help me with a reoccurring problem I have (details inside)?

Next week I am singing in a charity concert and I am very concerned about my performance. When I am singing I often have a build up of saliva in my mouth (especially when I am nervous) and if there is no time in between phrases to swallow my reflexes end up causing me to swallow in the middle of a phrase which is obvious to the audience.

Now, usually I sing songs that have a decent amount of gaps between the phrases to get a decent amount of breath and swallow any saliva that is in my mouth so it’s not a problem. However, the song I am singing next week has very little space in between phrases to breath, let alone swallow and so I have struggled at every rehearsal to get through the song comfortably. This is causing my nerves to be even worse than usual.

My pianist has managed to put a little instrumental section in the song to give me time to compose myself but I feel that I am cheating if I do this. Ideally I would like to sing the song as it was written because it’s a personal favourite of mine.

I hope this makes sense and any advice you may have on ways to deal with this will be much appreciated. Even if you don’t have advice, I would love to know if you have the same problem when you sing.