Composer Intentions?

I have noticed that is plaguing the modern opera scene is the postmodernist approach of "How can you tell what the composer's intention was?" which is the artistic variation of the postmodernist quote “How can you be sure of anything?”  If you want to see an unhealthy helping of it, search "intention" and "composer" at what is unfortunately the most influential site about opera today, Paterre.

Here's a notable quote illustrating of what I am speaking:
"Even we dusty academics stopped talking about 'composers’ intentions' long ago. They’re unknowable in any final sense, the phrase is always introduced as a false appeal to authority, etc. etc."

I think that the composers' intentions concerning operas should be considered in the light of the material available. It is impossible to say that 'intentions are unknowable' without having to necessarily discard *everything* from libretto to score in one fell swoop and just abandon it all. You either have a way to glean the composer's intentions through the material he left behind (some more clear than others) or not, on principle.

If it were not possible, on principle, to glean meaning here then all art would fail to move and communicate, it would be simply noise, color and shapes (or, in other words, post-modern art)- form follows function.

Memorized - Yes? No? Maybe?

I was a soloist in a Messiah Sing-along this evening at my church.  I sang "O Thou That Tellest Good Tidings".  I have known this song since high school.  I memorized it back then.  I used it as my college audition.  Then it went on the shelf for awhile.  I brought it out again in 2003 (or thereabouts) for another Messiah.  Then it came out again this year.  I have it memorized.  I've sung it several times in the past week with no mistakes, completely memorized.  But when it came time to sing tonight, I used my music.  Weird, right?  Here's why:

1. All the other soloists were using music.
2. I had a panic moment where I envisioned myself screwing up the song
3. I have this little voice in my head that continually tells me "You don't really have this memorized.  You are going to mess up."
4. With all my years of training and performing, I sometimes flat out don't trust myself. 
5. I'm a chicken.

So, I used my music.  I kind of feel like it was a cop out, but I didn't mess up my song.  I sang it perfectly.  And I was comfortable, because I had the music in front of me.  I really need to learn to trust myself more, but apparently tonight was not the night.  Maybe next year.

Regie Of The Dead

While I prepare my next article, I thought I would add two quotes about Regietrash.
That bastion of journalistic integrity, The UK Guardian (is my sarcasm showing?), wrote about ‘Regietheater’ about a year ago in this article by Andrew Haydon:

When we go to see a new play in Britain - even most of the time we go to see an old play or a classic - we expect that we are going to see the play "as written". Say this to a mainland European critic and you get a pitying look, often followed by an explanation of why that is a terrible approach to making theatre. Europe has a long tradition of "Regietheater" - there isn't even a word for it in English, but it roughly translates as "director's theatre".
The authority and vision of a director in this tradition is so total that the director is considered to have failed if they have not firmly put their stamp on a text. This is no mere matter of understanding the characters' motivations and getting the actors to be convincing: it can run from spectacular set pieces through to eviscerating the script in order to present their vision of the play. This sort of artistry requires a whole different level of critical engagement, and of course, at that point, wanting to know what the play was like before the director interpreted it becomes a wholly understandable impulse.

I want to know when did defacing a work of art become the definition of ‘art’ itself? The ‘artistry’ that Haydon is referring to is the antithesis of art. A dear actress/director friend of mine who was trained by Vittorio Gassman is always truly appalled by current European theatre traditions, and  wholeheartedly agrees that the joke has gone on long enough already and that the adults should get a turn at playing instead.
Interestingly enough it was the New York Times back in 1996 that posted an article about “The Pestilence That Is Regietheater” by Paul Moor. I find the alusion to the director’s possible ‘retarded psychological development’ a very accurate impression of what I usually undergo whenever treated to a rare heaping pile of “Director’s Theater.”

What Germans call "Regie-Oper" — opera dominated by staging — has become epidemic in Germany. Hans Neuenfels's new production of Verdi's dear old classic "Il Trovatore" exemplifies this pestilence.
Regie-Oper takes some hapless staple and renders it ostensibly more relevant today by horsing around with its nonmusical aspects. For example, Harry Kupfer's production of Gluck's "Orpheus and Euridice" at Berlin's Komische Oper depicts the tragic hero of Greek mythology as a lovelorn drifter in T-shirt, jeans and sneakers with a guitar slung over his shoulder.
Since 1981, the Deutsche Oper Berlin has had at its helm Götz Friedrich, one of the world's finest stage directors. Friedrich lays remarkably few operatic eggs, but he has himself horsed around with some works, to distressing effect — for example, wrenching Strauss's "Rosenkavalier" out of Empress Maria Ther-esa's Vienna into the period of its 1912 composition.
Friedrich also engages other imaginative directors with whose styles his own has little in common. For such courage he deserves commendation, but he has much to answer for when guests foist upon audiences such an affliction as this "Trovatore."
Visually and dramatically, outrage succeeds carefully premeditated outrage. If you enjoy egregiously immature brattishness, you'll love this production. Forget about realism, or any semblance of it.
Leonora sings of the mysterious troubadour of the title, and down drops a gigantic photograph of a scruffy Latin youth, nude except for a tattoo on each folded arm, genitalia concealed by crossed pieces of black tape. An intervention by Professor Friedrich?
One can scarcely imagine Neuenfels shrinking from nudity, particularly after briefly interpolating three topless extras who serve no purpose except to display half a dozen breasts.
As Leonora continues her aria, a hooded executioner type holds up before that photograph's pubic area first the body of a guitar, then a human skull.
Dramatic subtlety? Forget it.
The evening's first part closes with breechclouted Jesus, thorn-crown a-twinkle with Christmas-tree lights, rising from a tilted cross long enough to place a ring on Leonora's finger, among nuns in pleated skirts in every color of the rainbow. Jesus picks the cardinal as his partner to lead the wedding dance.
Weird becomes ever weirder. The second part opens in the neon-lighted Bar of the Immaculate Conception. At the end, in a Nazi concentration camp, Manrico manifests facial lesions: AIDS.
Musically, this otherwise execrable production has much to offer. Paolo Olmi, on the podium, drew convincing italianità from the orchestra, but the Toscaninian pace he strove for caused occasional audible distress among his sluggish principals. One, Amanda Halgrimson as Leonora, at times contemptuously shut her eyes tightly and arrogated to herself the conductor's responsibility for setting the tempo, but otherwise she turned in a superior performance.
Violeta Urmana, as Azucena, almost stole the evening with a portrayal of vocal and dramatic brilliance. In Kristjan Johannsson, Luciano Pavarotti has an obvious idolator, and the Mediterranean sunshine suffusing his voice belied his Icelandic origins. As Luna, Paolo Coni solidly rounded off a stellar quartet of principals, and Karl Kamper's chorus sang magnificently.
Long before the end, one envisions Neuenfels as the victim of retarded psychological development, a bright but petulant adolescent testing his elders not only with nose-thumbing but also whoopee cushions and the occasional hotfoot. Had Salvatore Cammarano and Giuseppe Verdi, who created this operatic gem, happened to attend this premiere, one could easily imagine one of them knocking Hans Neuenfels down and the other kicking him, along with his equally culpable designer, Reinhard von der Thannen.

As singers, what is our best weapon to combat this sort of inanity? Dare we use our clout to stop this in its tracks, or are we too swallowed up by the idea that we have to be fluffy, smiling little Pomeranians ready to perform tricks at anyone’s command?

Otherwise we might end up with more things like these: Nemorino, Telephone Repairman (Una Furtiva Lagrima whilst climbing a utility pole? WHY?)

Wrong words!

Don't you hate it when you forget the words to a song you know backwards and forwards?  Seriously, it's one of the most annoying things about singing.  Instrumentalists don't have to remember words as well as notes!  I remember one jury in college, they asked me to sing my French song (I can't remember now what it was) and I totally forgot the words in the middle.  I just sang whatever French sounding words & syllables I could think of until I got back on track.  The professors were looking at me like "What?!"  I could see my voice teacher chuckling a little.  I got through the song and made a hasty retreat.  My friend was in the hall and had heard the whole thing.  "That was interesting," she said.  I just smiled.  I had survived the song, whether the words made sense or not!

I've learned all kinds of tricks over the years to remember certain words and phrases in songs.  Heck, not just songs.  My lines in shows, too.  I recently did my first play in many years (I primarily do musicals), and I had a ton of lines to memorize.  I figured out clues in other actors' lines and clues in my own lines to remember what came next.  And I made it through!  I never dropped a line!

Well, nothing could have prepared me for what happened at my voice lesson last night.  I am singing "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" for the recital this Sunday, and I know that song backwards and forwards.  I've obviously known the poem for even longer.  Well, I was singing away and this is what came out of my mouth:

All bundled in fur from his head to his foot
His clothes were all tarnished with apples and soot.

What?  Apples?  I started laughing.  Where did THAT come from?  It just came out.  Ashes.  ASHES!!!!

I can be a fairly random person, but even this took me by surprise.  Ah, the joy and silliness of singing!

<3 Vocebella

Taking Out The (Euro)Trash

 

You’ve prepared yourself for a night at the Erfurt Opera, you’ve bought your tickets and go forth to watch the production, secure in your knowledge of the libretto and looking forward to good acting, directing and singing.

 

Only something must be wrong, you realize, as the curtain goes up: You do not remember Verdi’s Un Ballo In Maschera taking place in the middle of a post nuclear holocaust wasteland, and you are almost certain that the libretto did not call for a Female Hitler (who manages to maintain Der Fuehrer's signature moustache in an estrogen-defying feat), Uncle Sam, or a chorus of naked elderly men and women wearing nothing but Mickey Mouse heads! Where is the King of Sweden? What happened to the costume ball? Did somebody switch your ticket when you weren’t looking?

Or, let’s say, you show up for your first “Norma” rehearsal and the ‘concept’ of the show is explained to you: the sets are geometric, the costumes look like Cirque Du Soleil rejects, and you are informed of the proliferation of a good number of naked people onstage—and you are one of them.

If any of these, or weirder, have ever happened to you, then you have my commiserations: You have encountered Eurotrash or Regietheater. 

How can you tell what a Regietheater/Eurotrash production is? Well, let’s look at some of the properties that these productions usually exhibit:

1. It is an European house, or it is a production staged by  Famous European Stage Director #125.
2. A specifically defined historical or fictitious event suddenly acquires a completely different, unrelated and ‘polemic’ subtext that wasn’t obvious to any of the Great Unwashed who studied the libretto but which did not escape The Great Director’s clever interpretation (the assassination of the King of Sweden in Un Ballo suddenly becomes a Marxist anti-capitalist critique of North America in the midst of the September Eleven terrorist attacks. What? Didn’t you notice? It’s obvious, for crying out loud!)
3. Natalie Dessay is somehow involved (not 100% true all the time, but if she’s there your odds become considerably higher)
4. Someone, somewhere, is walking around butt-naked for no discernible reason (other than maybe a desire to catch pneumonia, considering the temperature of most theaters).
5. For some reason, a sexual act is simulated, usually Out Of Character (such as Scarpia’s use of prostitutes to perform fellatio on him during the recent Met Tosca— Scarpia is a rapist, not a sex addict, and rapists don’t pay their victims) and performed in the most shocking or ridiculous manner (that is, if your own spouse were to act that way you would be served with divorce papers after you laughed yourself silly).
6. Something ‘symbolic’ is taking place onstage (or above it, below it, to the sides, etc) which serves as a means to tie the Great Director’s vision with what the libretto actually says, and it is usually as subtle as a firecracker in an oil field (as she sings Sempre Libera, Violetta climbs onto the giant clock that looms over the stage and attempts to push its hands backwards--- telling us that Sempre Libera is just the 19th century version of Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time! )
7. Something happens onstage that could have only been inspired by generous doses of Peyote (human-sized bumblebees are dancing the Charleston around a soprano during one of her challenging coloratura arias).

Semi-humorous lists aside (we wish we were making things up), we can say that Eurotrash / Regietheater is the practice of allowing a director an unprecedented level of freedom in devising the way a given opera is staged so that the composer's original, specific stage directions (as well as location, timeline, cast, plot) can be changed to suit whatever The Great Director’s vision is. 

Tracking Regietheater’s roots, we find that a Wagner is  at the heart of it. In this case, Wieland Wagner, grandson of the infamous misanthropic composer Richard Wagner (a man who was the exemplification of the Kant-Heidegger dynasty of thought).

After World War II, Wieland ran into several problems concerning his grandfather’s works onstage: during the apogee of the Third Reich they had been appropriated and adopted as the Reich’s ideological banners, with Wagner being named the composer whose musical ideas were the artistic expression of National Socialism ideology (this is no coincidence, as Quee Nelson demonstrates in her book “The Slightest Philosophy”: The chapter “The Same Walking as Dreaming” is dedicated to demonstrating the continuous and harmful effects of post-modern philosophy, starting with Kant and Heidegger and their insane philosophy’s hand in the birth of the Third Reich). 

Wieland was the ideological pupil of Adolphe Appia, a famous theorist of stage lighting and set construction. Many of Appia’s approaches were revolutionary- including the preference of three-dimensional sets over flat painted ones. In Appia’s theory of artistic unity, Wieland found the answer by which he could sidestep the unfortunate political undertones that were attached to his grandfather’s works: instead of focusing on specifics, he would divest the production of all detail and instead emphasize a minimalistic approach in order to render it more symbolic and, in doing so, put the focus on the universal quality of the Wagnerian dramas – with a heavy dose of Carl Jung on the side.

Most stage directions were reinterpreted or discarded as, Wieland said, they were already illustrated in the score (of course, we would have asked him ‘then why bother with a costly fully-staged production? Just put the whole thing on as a concert version and we’ll close our eyes, since it is all illustrated in the score?’ We imagine Wieland would not have liked this question.)

Unfortunately, this is where one of our stereotypical villains first makes his entrance: Say hello to monsieur Jacques Derrida, the father of Deconstruction. Derrida first published Of Grammatology in 1967, and the seeds were planted.

Incidentally, Monsieur Derrida admitted to be indebted to none other than Heidegger, without whom (he said) he would never have said a single world.

So what is Deconstruction, and why is it important in the field of Eurotrash? J. Hillis Miller, a deconstructionist himself, put it best: “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently-solid ground is no rock, but thin air.” ("Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure," Georgia Review 30,1976)

Essentially, the whole point of Deconstructionism is that any text has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably and that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible. Sounds absurd? No more absurd than the fact that Derrida, who created the movement, was completely unable to express a definition of it: "I have no simple and formalisable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question."

The only attempts Derrida ever made towards defining his philosophy occurred only in negative statements: He says, for example, that deconstruction is not an analysis, a critique, or a method, without saying that it has nothing in common with an analysis, a critique, or a method. This is as effective as saying, when attempting to describe an automobile: “It is neither the moon, a centipede nor a pregnant milkmaid.”

By refusing to define deconstruction, Derrida  allowed himself the con man’s way out: he could include anything under the realm of deconstruction, and thus allow for the possibility for the deconstruction of everything.

To say that post-modernist philosophy aims towards the destruction not of all standards but of the mind itself is not an exaggeration: Derrida and his anti-intellectual philosophy are perfect examples of the nature of the beast. When deconstruction swelled as a movement, Wieland’s adaptations of Grandpa Wagner were seen in a new light: they were the ideal tools for post-modernists such as the disciples of Derrida, a perfect means to represent their non-standards.

 

 

Skip to 1976: nine years after Derrida’s first publication,  Patrice Chéreau is tapped to produce the centenary Bayreuth production of Wagner’s Ring. Chéreau, applying the postmodernist (and Derrida’s) approach towards meaning, took the story of the twilight of the gods and created an anti-capitalist and Marxist sub-text (that is another thing that postmodernism has: capitalism is always en vogue as a target of a reinterpretation of anything ever said or written), so the Rhinemaiden became three ragged prostitutes doing business before a hydro-electric dam, the gods are (of course) industrialists, and Siegfried used an industrial steam-hammer to forge his sword.

Since then, the operatic world—specially in Europe and particularly in Germany—has undergone a strange and harmful madness. Because of postmodernist approaches to the libretto and the score, they are no longer considered to be useful guides from which to derive meaning but rather they’ve been supplanted by some obscure crystal ball into which the Great Director glances, sees what he wants, and from which he extracts a deconstruction of the original material which, when examined, has very little to do with the context of what either composer or librettist wrote down: one gets the impression that the Great Director would get rid of the pesky inconvenience of these two personages if only the singers and orchestra didn’t have to sing and play what they wrote.

Over the years we have seen productions that suffer from terrible dissociations of context: We have seen a Contes De Hoffman which takes place in a sanatorium with fly-away walls and elderly extras who apparently take delight in rolling on and off the stage (Natalie Dessay was cast as Olympia in that particular production, is anyone surprised?), We have seen eggs singing, enormous fetuses a la Space Odyssey 2001 suspended from the ceiling during Sigmund and Sieglinde’s passionate exchange (how subtle and foreshadowing!), A Sonnambula that was essentially a meta-mockery of opera, and more nudity, lewdness and vulgarity than you could ever find in the whole of Las Vegas.

When allegory, heavy-handed metaphor and rampant symbolism hijack the staging so much that the actions that take place (and the environment in which they take place) are so absurdly bizarre that they could pass as a Dadaist’s secret fantasy, then you’ve gone too far. The audience is not incapable of understanding and, in fact, applying these ridiculous postmodernist approaches is a double insult: You’re essentially telling the audience that it is too stupid to understand the actions and meaning of the opera without your Magnanimous Intervention, and you are saying the composer/librettist team was too much of a boob-troop to make the opus understandable.

An example is Emma Dante’s most recent crime, a   ‘radical re-imagining’ of the opera Carmen. To the opening she has added the cheap effect of a hearse, and whose undertaker waits for Carmen at the beginning of the opera and takes her away at the end (postmodernist subtlety at its finest).  Every character will have a doppelganger accompany them around the stage -- a priest for Micaela (a metaphor for her desire to get married, explains Dante), and Escamillo (Erwin Schrott) under his cape will hide a third arm as a metaphor for his bullfighting and his swordmanship. And five gypsy girls will always follow Carmen, silently, just like five veiled old women will never leave the stage, as silent witnesses of the action, a symbol of inescapable Fate.  Escamillo’s bullfighting costumes are  inspired by Michael Jackson’s wardrobe.  The point of all this? Nobody really knows, except perhaps to chastize Bizet for not writing any allegorical characters into an opera that was never meant to be a symbolist’s paradise in the first place.

I would like to point out that there is a difference between the updating of an opera, a re-interpretation of it, and Regietheater/Eurotrash.

Many operas can be tastefully updated:  Fidelio, for example, can be transported forward in time  to the dictatorship of Franco in Spain without losing a great deal in the process, although it does provide some incongruence due to the appearance of Don Fernando at the end, the savior minister of the King (this being Franco’s regime, he was the de facto regent starting in 1947 and therefore Don Fernando would have been sent by Franco himself- this incongruence could be seen as defeating the whole argument of the opera because Florestán and Leonora are being freed from the tyrant Pizarro only by the superior force of the greater tyrant Francisco Franco).

Nevertheless, these difficulties must be confronted by many opera updates: any updating of Rigoletto proves troublesome because of the explicit mention of titles of nobility and the plot resting on the power relations between an aristocratic class system that does not exist in our current society as an adequate parallel. Likewise, updates of Nozze di Figaro run into similar predicaments because the power that the Count of Almaviva exerts over his wife, Susanna and Figaro also has no parallel in modern Western countries.

At their best, when done with taste and sagacity, these updates can be a breath of fresh air. Most of the time they end up a mixed bag of brilliant moments and awkward ones (when anachronisms and incongruence appear), and sometimes they do not work at all.

While updates can still follow the score and libretto as guides for establishing parallels in the updated settings, Regietheater seeks to create a whole new subtext that was not present before and use it as the main focus of staging and interpretation.

Because postmodernists lack standards (since their eternal loop on the ‘meaning of meaning’ leaves them impotent to actually perform a judgment of values,) these Great Directors of the Regietheater world resort to all sorts of macabre and depraved effects in order to drive their ‘Concept’ across. Journalist Heather Mac Donald wrote in her article “The Abduction of Opera,” explaining to what lengths one of these Great Directors (the culprit’s name is Calixto Bieito, don’t forget it!) proceeded to mutilate Mozart’s famous rescue opera, Abduction from the Seraglio:

“Mozart's lighthearted opera The Abduction from the Seraglio does not call for a prostitute's nipples to be sliced off and presented to the lead soprano. Nor does it include masturbation, urination as foreplay, or forced oral sex. Europe's new breed of opera directors, however, know better than Mozart what an opera should contain. So not only does the Abduction at Berlin's Komische Oper feature the aforementioned activities; it also replaces Mozart's graceful ending with a Quentin Tarantino--esque bloodbath and the promise of future perversion.”

Nudity, vulgarity, needless violence and perversion are Regietheater’s best friends. Only a postmodernist mind that could be capable of conceiving of any of them as central exponents of a serious and worthy intellectual proposition. Let us not be fooled here: Underneath the posturing of intellectualism, these promoters of Regietheater and ‘avant-garde’ productions are little more than savages who delight in seeing any proposition of structure or coherence consumed by flames. The champions of this ‘art form’ are posturing, false intellectuals who hide behind a murky and undefined concept of metropolitanism by which anything is proper onstage, as long as you can create a flimsy argument to rationalize it.

These faux intellectuals accuse those who dislike these shenanigans of being ‘provincial.’ There is nothing provincial in attacking Regietheater, but those who fight against it must know the reasons for which they must decry it, mere emotional appeal will not work, but rather one must take these people on what they pretend are their terms- no concept within the universe of Regietheater will remain standing when ruthless critical judgment is applied. They make great show of their circular intellectualism and esoteric arguments questioning the validity of esoteric arguments, but a postmodernist is no more an intellectual than a cow is a barn.

Another attack the Regiespecters use to defend their master’s works is the appeal against Puritanism. Their use of nudity and sexuality, they claim, is a celebration of the beauty of the human body. There is nothing wrong in using the naked body in productions, and it is you who should be ashamed to find anything wrong with it.

Yet, if there is nothing wrong with onstage nudity, why are only a select number from within each cast deigned to be naked at one time or another? And why does this nudity come, as it always does, at a moment that seems all too specifically engineered to cause shock, dread or horror?

The truth of their sham is that there is nothing ennobling in their use of the nude body. Their appeals to innocence are tarnished by the fact that they used nudity as nothing more than a gut-level shock-value. Scarpia’s prostitutes  flashed their breasts at the audience, not in celebration of their beautiful bodies but as a brazen and infantile slap at the public on behalf of Great Director Luc Bondy.

Cherubino’s simulated masturbation to the tune of Non so piu, the aforementioned depravities in Seraglio and the pervasive nihilism of similar antics do not state “Behold, here is man in his greatness, with his body as his manifestation on earth, celebrate and admire it!” but they rather seem to say “Behold, you are a depraved and monstrous creature, here you lie naked like the beast you deserve to be!”  It cannot be any other way: Postmodernism is a philosophical movement that hates the mind of man and its achievements above everything else, and therefore will hate man for being man. Whether consciously or not, these premises cannot help but concretize themselves in the horrendous actions that these Great Directors thrust upon the audience.

It is fitting that Great Directors are fascinated with prostitutes, because they are not unalike: when it comes down to it, anyone can have sex- but very few can actually make love. It is easy to appeal to the carnal and instinctive, but creating something of great significance requires a level of mental and emotional integration that a postmodernist mind simply cannot conceive. Hence, the prostitute is the perfect symbol for them, whereas their opposite would be the Romantic Ideal. It is inescapable to compare the nude creations of the Renaissance masters with the abominations of the Regietheater: The great masters sought to express internal and external perfection in their nudes—true celebrations of what it means to be truly human, whilst the postmodernist artist wants the human subject to be depraved both within and without and, in the fashion of true monsters, revel in its sight.

The greatest singers of our age have managed to move audiences to all manners of emotions without the removal of a single item of clothing or the use of any gimmick. Shirley Verret’s early Dalilah, for example, is the quintessential seducer- she exudes beauty, passion, danger and eroticism whilst remaining completely clothed. Natalie Dessay, Queen of Regietheater and onstage histrionics, could sing Lucia’s Il Dolce Suono stripped to her unmentionables (and in her case, indiscernibles) whilst swinging to and fro on a hobby-horse and not a single member of the audience would experience a single transcendental moment compared to what Callas achieved (even with a flawed instrument) in the role.

So let us be provincial, if that is the way they wish to call us (I prefer the term principled), but we have to call a spade a spade: Regietheater is nothing more than a grotesque gimmickry, pornography masquerading as the celebration of the body, anti-intellectualism passed off as deep thought. It must end, and it must end now so that true and talented directors can take over and truly perform innovative and fresh approaches with these works of art, without resorting to the horrible postmodernist tool set.

John Riley at Counterpoint put it best:

“Why not just trust the audience to know that this is a fictionalized portrayal of historical events that, as far as modern parallels are concerned, fits where it touches? This may of course lead to productions where the hero of A Masked Ball is an 18th-century Swedish monarch who is assassinated, or Henry V has a sword rather than a submachine-gun that he, for some reason, fails to employ against his enemies, but if that’s the case, we’ll just have to put up with it.”

As singers who hold our art as a great standard, it is our obligation (if we hold Honesty to be a virtue at all) to put a stop to the atrocities perpetrated by these Great Men, and if possible to end the Age Of The Director once and for all in favor of the Age Of Opera, simply put.

We are the instruments of the opera- through us, the orchestra and the set and house crew the will of the composer is manifest into a complete multi-sensorial work of art, and we add our own individual and unique interpretations when we truly sing and act at our highest potential.

What, then, should be our call to pride when we allow men and women of such low caliber to use us to cheapen and debase that which we love most?

What statement are you letting someone else make with your body?

It is finally time to start taking out the trash.

It's expensive in the middle

This is a post that I wrote a couple of years ago on my personal blog.  It seems fitting to share it here.  Enjoy!

Original Post Date:  June 4, 2007

I am a mezzo soprano. It basically means that I am not a soprano and I am not an alto. I used to be an alto. I sang Alto 2 in high school and college. My voice has raised considerably since then. I can now sing a high C, if I'm warmed up and if I worked up to it.

Anyway, that's not what I'm writing about. Here's the thing...since I am a mezzo soprano (a lyric mezzo soprano, if you want to get technical), I can sing pretty much anything. There problem comes when I am trying to buy vocal books. I have recently decided to learn 4 songs by Stefano Donaudy. I went to the music store to order the book, so I can my voice teacher's back to her, and I had the choice between the high voice and the low voice books. Ummmmmm....which do I need? I have absolutely no idea. So I ordered both. This is the not the first time this has happened. When I did the Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel program with my mom and friend last year (2 years ago? When was that? We've done it a couple of times.) I had to have the High Voice and Low Voice books. I sang two songs, one out of each book. Because of my range and the tessaturas of the songs, I couldn't sing them both out of the same book. I have a feeling the same thing is going to happen with the Donaudy songs. Oh, well. I guess it's my lot in life, being a mezzo!!!

If you're still confused about the whole "mezzo soprano" thing, I have a great explanation I gave to lady at choir practice last night. She heard me sing a really high note and wanted to know why I wasn't singing soprano. I replied "I'm a mezzo soprano. If I want to sing for a long period of time, I have to sing alto." That's the best explanation I have. Any other mezzos want to weigh in on this?

Got a response from my friend "K":

I'm there for you girl: I top out at a high e flat when I'm warmed up, but then I can also get to a low C (that is, below middle). People at [college] had me sing soprano for almost two years because they figured with a high range I must be soprano. BUT it's not what you can sing, but where the warmth is in your voice, and for me it's mezzo. Also mezzos are just cooler people in general. BUT it's always nice to have flexibility in range to keep people guessing, am I right? How's that for an explanation?

Reviews Coming Up!

I am currently reading three books on the subject of singing (and related), which I wish to review for this blog soon. They are (in the order of in which reading I am furthest ahead)

 

1. Marketing For Singers by Mark J. Stoddard
2. The Third Line: The Singer As Interpreter by Daniel Helfgot
3. An Interpretive Guide to Operatic Arias by Martial Singher

As soon as I finish a book I will post a review of it here.

Awkward Audition Experiences #1: Auditions In Wonderland

A few weeks ago I had an audition that was a bit on the unusual side.  I contacted the conductor of a local performance ensemble because I was interested in performing the tenor solo in a concert that was to be performed in the area within the next few months.

I sent the conductor an email:

“Dear Mr. Gardner, My name is The Radioactive Tenor and I am a tenor currently studying with Mme Iris. I learned of the upcoming X performance through  [Local classical music/opera newsletter] and I would like to express my interest in auditioning for the tenor soloist. I would like to inquire about the audition process and whether there are any dates available to audition. I can also send my resumé over e-mail using either PDF or Word/RTF format, whichever is more convenient.”

The exchange was bizarre from the beginning: After my introductory letter (where Ispecifically indicated that I was interested in performing in this concert) he suggested a meeting time and place, mentioned that there were “several tenor solos available” (the Cantata in question only has one aria and one recitativo for tenor) and referred to my audition as “trying each other out.” This gave me a weird vibe, since this is usually the kind of language a prospective voice teacher uses with a prospective student- hardly what you would expect to hear from a conductor and a performer, at least within my experience.

The second bizarre tidbit about this was that he requested no audition repertoire. In 99.99% of auditions, you walk into the room and you sing one or several pieces from a prepared list of repertoire that will show your strengths as a performer.  The parties interested then will judge your skill and artistic level and decide to whether sign you up or not for the opera/concert/gig/whatever.

What I mean by ‘requested no audition repertoire’ is that he said that he could give me a full hour or half an hour, the full hour having an accompanist at hand “depending on if you would like to work on rep with me,” the accompanist fee to be charged at my expense.  Now, normally you go to an audition and either the interested parties provide the accompanist or you can bring your own (and therefore negotiate a fee with the accompanist, in exchange for an accompanist who is familiar with the rep you are singing, and familiar with your way of singing it.) 

It was the second part of the sentence that puzzled me. I have never really been to any auditions where the conductor or music director was interested in ‘working on repertoire’ with me. Working on repertoire is, again, something you do with a coach or your voice teacher – for an audition, you present material you already have polished and ‘worked on’ with somebody else, so I was getting increasingly mixed signals. The email continued with:

“If an hour, we can do other rep as well. We neednt spend a ton of time on [The composer whose Cantata I was interested in.]”

In my mind I thought “I’m not going there for a voice lesson or to be coached, I’m auditioning for a concert,” so I told him I would rather do the half-hour (again, most auditions never take more than 5 – 10 minutes), and that I would like to bring [X aria from the cantata in question] for him to hear.

Instead, this conductor said “I will be very familiar with your unique instrument and talent from the vocalise session. Don't worry about rep in that case. We'll just take it easy.”

Vocalise session? As one of my favorite authors once put it, curioser and curioser.

I arrived at the designated place and met with the conductor. The vocalise session started – the first thing he had me do was do a 1-3-5-3-1 arpeggio on a purely nasal squeeze. I am not exaggerating, the sound he required me to do was a high laryngeal, frontally placed nasal emission that made my larynx figuratively shoot up through my nose… very uncomfortable. This was to be followed by another arpeggio properly produced – I knew that aftersqueezing in such a manner I wouldn’t be able to get the space I have been developing with my teacher, but he insisted. 

Eventually I finished vocalising for him through several other exercises – he kept demonstrating in his own voice what he wanted me to do, and it was very much the ‘pinched’ nasal tone that had proved to be my undoing from previous teachers in the past. I approached it the way I have been learning with my new teacher—where frontal placement and resonance is a by-product of the combination of an open throat, a raised soft palate, proper breath support and lack of excessive pressure (the problem with having frontal placement as a primary effort and focus is that you end up with a collapsed soft palate and a raised larynx… i.e., how I was singing before I started with my new teacher) … I succeeded to a certain extent, but the first squeezed vocalise had given me a whole lot of tension to work with and not much time to reset my larynx.

When we were finished he didn’t address the Cantata casting per se, but vaguely hinted at the fact that he would like for me to work in ‘this environment’ (the place where this group sings) and even take lessons from him (knowing full well I was studying with another teacher), saying that he didn’t know how ‘the politics of that’ would work out. He mentioned that he had worked with ‘all the big boys’ and did a brief recount of his credentials for me, hinting at the fact that he could teach me how to do things in the style of the aforementioned big boys. He said that it was also possible that one day I might end up with a position at this place, provided I was willing to work with the music director who is a rather intense fellow (who must be so due to the enormous amount of music he must cover in such a short time.)

I was more or less stunned at this and said I’d e-mail him back. The whole deal struck me as simply bizarre. He said he thought my voice was excellent, gorgeous and beautiful, but the overture of offering lessons to me disoriented me – in ‘the field’ so to speak, it is considered very unethical to make overtures towards another voice student unless that student has openly expressed a desire to change teachers. Mme Iris would not have me discuss changing into her studio, for example, until I had settled the matter with my previous voice teacher, out of professional respect. So, in a way, I came out with a certain unsettling feeling at what had happened.

Ultimately, it came to nothing. The conductor ignored any e-mails and never responded afterwards. I judged that it was best not to pursue what was obviously an endeavor with a very toxic person who lacked in principles. I did some digging around among singers in the area and he has a reputation for doing exactly what he did with me: I know of a tenor and a soprano that have gone through his rigmarole too. In the end, although the concert exposure would have been positive, it is a good thing that it did not come to be.

All in all, a supremely bizarre experience.

Now that I’ve shared this mini-horror story with you, singers (more surreal than horrific, I guess), I want to ask you the following questions:

 

• What signs would have told you from the get-go that this audition/gig was a rotten deal?
• Do you think I handled the situation in a good way, or would you have been more outspoken? Why?
• Have you had similar experiences, or worse? If so, can you share what you learned from them, so that other singers don’t have to go through with them?

 

I look forward to your replies!

Audition FAQ

As I have witnessed my former colleagues sweat bullets, and now that I am preparing to enter the audition circuit myself, there are some questions that my predecessors were concerned with, and thus the present generation of auditionees are confronted with. The Audition is an intimidating experience, everyone agrees, and while there are many variables that you cannot control, you have the ability to have some power over the situation. This post is concerning the nitty-gritty of the auditioning experience. All aspects of the audition are up for grabs, and if I neglected to mention one aspect or situation in an audition setting, please feel free to add another number to the list, and if you would be so kind as to send me a message with the amendment, I will update the list as soon as possible. Thank you for your consideration, and I look forward to other singers' responses to the following questions!

Preparation and Before the Audition:

1. Of course we have coached our arias to within an inch of their lives, so that kind of preparation is understood, but on the night before you leave for an audition, do you have a ritual for last minute preparation? Other than your music, clothing and toiletries, what do you bring with you on your check-bag?

2. Unfortunately, la voce is a delicate and fickle mistress, and due to travel, or lack of rest, or dehydration, or other un-forseeable reasons, you will inevitably wake up with a dry throat, and immediately panic. Has your teacher given you the recipe for a secret cure for the dry throat, or clogged sinuses, or other common symptoms of too much stress, or travel?

3. What clothes do you wear to the audition? How formal is too formal? How casual is too casual? What do you think of color vs. the traditional and professional black and white?

4. How soon do you arrive to the audition location?

Audition Hell- The Waiting Room:

5. Assuming that you have 15 or 20 minutes to kill before your scheduled audition, what do you do while forced to be silent in the waiting room? Do you try and make friends? Do you listen to music, if so, is it the music that you will be singing in your audition?

6. What things do you think about to calm yourself down for the audition that is about to take place?

Inside the Audition Room:

7. How do you greet the panel of judges sitting at the front of the room? Once again, how casual is too casual, how austere is too much?

8. When announcing the pieces that are being performed, what format do you prefer to use to introduce your pieces?

9. Interpretation and feeling "in the zone" are both good things, but where is the line drawn for you that turns acting and interpretation into presentation?

10. What are some techniques that you use to cope with the stress of having to sing for notable judges, such as the Merola program, or other YAPs?

The Aftermath:

11. When exiting the room, what farewell salutation do you use? How do you deal with addressing the accompanist after an audition?

12. Concerning colleagues waiting outside the door: When asked how it was, or how you did, what do you typically respond?

13. In the follow-up do you send email, card, phone call? How do you make sure that the conductor or the casting director doesn't forget about you?

There is a lot of room for discussion! I look forward to reading responses, and I am working on the answers to them right now! they should be up tomorrow!

until then,

Buona Sera

Ciao!

Buona Sera a Tutti!

My name on this site is really two-fold; I chose an italian name because I wanted people to know that I am able to offer my assistance with difficult to find translations of art song, aria, or just poetry.

First off, I want to thank TRT for inviting me to participate in this blog. I have had the pleasure of singing with and performing with him during the past 2 summers and am honored to be a part of this venture.

I am a student at a conservatory that has been called "a diamond in the rough" by Opera News, in the piedmont of North Carolina. I, unlike The Glowing Tenor (hehe..), am a true leggiero tenor, or as my name says, un tenore di grazia.

I am working with a notable teacher (who will henceforth be known as La Dottoressa), and like us all, am working out vocal kinks and trying to balance my love of opera and classical singing, with the performance and acting based musical theatre. I have done tons of musical theatre, film, TV, oratorio and most recently opera. I think that it has the potential to be the worlds hybrid artform, with all the best singing, acting, and dancing, all in one performance. I hope that I can be a part of the movement that tries to bring realism to the operatic stage, merging the vocal virtuosity of opera, with the dramatic intensity of musical theatre for an unstoppable art form.

All of that to say that I love musical theatre, and I love opera, and would be more than happy to discuss Larson's "Rent," and Puccini's "La Boheme" in the same conversation and be familiar and emotionally connected to both. I look forward to meeting everyone and discussing technique analogies and metaphors, audition experiences, and everything else involved with the insanity that is being a student/pre-professional/professional in the classical vocal field.

This is going to be a blast.

Greetings and Salutations!

I will be known as VoceBella, but you will probably figure out that my name is Angela.  I am a lyric mezzo soprano.  While I do sing a little bit of opera and other classical stuff, my true love is musical theatre.  I have a BA in Music and have been involved in theatre & musical theatre for 18 years.

I don't know what else to say about myself.  You'll figure out from my writing that I'm a bit of a goof ball.  Hope you enjoy what I have to say!

Questa Voce Rules:

Greetings, fellow singers! Consider this the introductory post for this blog- a blog aimed at giving professionals and students in the field a place to share experiences, tips and stories about the profession we love so much.

Without further ado, here are the general rules of this site:

 

1. The Place: Questa Voce is a blog where members may discuss any aspect of their careers as singers in the classical and operatic fields. This includes (but is not limited to) technique, repertoire, auditions, young artist programs, experiences, make-up, staging, ensembles and acting.  Members may discuss any subject they wish related to the field.
2. The People:  Some people like identifying themselves by name, where they are from, etcetera. Think twice before posting private information that would otherwise not be available to concertgoers or the audience (such as your phone number, street, etc.) 
3. The Decorum: Remember that everything you do in public sites on the internet will contribute towards your reputation in your field of work, as anyone can access them.
4. The Topics: Consider that every post published on Questa Voce expresses the views of each author. That being said, please refrain from personal attacks. If there is an idea with which you disagree, you may make your disagreement known within a civilized context. When discussing contradictory ideas, please do so in an intellectual manner and not in an not emotionally, refraining from insults and jabs. If you wish to engage in a personal feud, you can do so within the safe confines of your Facebook’s friend lists (a handy hint to remember: if you fight on Facebook, make sure it happens in your personal account and not on any professional accounts you may have created for yourself).  Never post negative threads or articles about other forum members. If any Trolls are present in a thread, you can either ban them or request for them to be banned.
5. The Guides: While we may talk about our teachers and their techniques, make sure you have their permission before you mention them by name.  This is just a rule of thumb out of respect your teachers’ privacy and basic courtesy. Until you know whether it is alright to post their names, you could use a nom de plume (or I guess here it’d be a nom de chant?).

 

A brief introduction: I am The Radioactive Tenor (I won’t disclose my name until I know it’s alright to write about my voice teacher here by name, and yes, I do glow in the dark)  and I study with Mme. Iris (my nom de chant for my teacher). I have only been studying with her for a brief four months, but they have been the most vocally productive four months of my life.

Prior to this I was considered to be one a tenore leggiero, also known as tenore di grazia, but now I have come into my true voice, that of a lyric tenor. I am currently discovering many new and interesting things about my voice and my body’s relationship to it, and now I am able to do things I never could before. All in all, it’s very exciting and I look forward to writing about my experiences.

Now, how about we hear from our other writers?