After his CS interview, Alan Titus graciously agreed to answer questions from students, submitted over the Internet. Classical Singer got the questions together just as Mr. Titus was about to leave Madrid for Munich. Gil Carbajal met him at his lodgings, watched his bags as he flagged down a taxi, and had a very informative ride with him to the airport. After checking into his flight Mr. Titus sat down with Gil in a cafeteria and fielded the following questions.
Q: Please explain your idea about breath support. Some teachers suggest that the support is activated as a result of the air moving. Others suggest that air alone is not support, that the air must be supported by an inner resistance.
A: The concept of breath support is one of the most difficult to explain, because it’s a dynamic concept that requires, first of all, fitness. The abdomen muscles support the rib cage and allow the throat to be open, so that the sound can resonate in the mask: You know, it’s like “the shin bone is connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone is connected to the thigh bone.” That’s the closest I can come to describing my experience with how I understand this idea in my body.
This idea of pressing down I think is fallacious. I remember my first teacher saying, “Well, it’s almost like going to the bathroom.” I have found it to be, in fact, the opposite of that. It’s a little bit like keeping your gut in.
Obviously, if your abdominal muscles are fit, and they have energy in them, they can support the rib cage. Supporting the rib cage lifts it away from where the neck joins the thorax, which is where your collarbone is. And that’s what an open throat is. An open throat has to do with the back of the nasal pharynx, where, in fact, the word “lift” is more appropriate for the soft palate. And as somebody described to me once, “If you pour water in a Coke bottle and blow over the opening on top, you hear the air moving inside the bottle, which produces a tone depending on how full or empty the glass is.” It’s basically the same thing: the glass being your body, the dimensions of the individual, small or big, and the cubic liters of air inside the lungs.
The other important thing to remember is that the vocal cords are a valve. Their vibration is more comparable to that of a string instrument—rather than to a piano, which is a percussive instrument—and as the emission of air between the folds of the vocal cords adjusts to the pitch, the sound bounces off of the bones in the head; and you, as a singer, are a self-contained vibrating instrument.
A lot of times people use the idea of “projection” which means you push the air out. A lot of singers think, “Oh, I have to keep it in the mask.” There’s the contradictory idea I explained before of pushing down. All of these contradictory ideas make it so very, very difficult to really explain it. I hope that somehow gives a kinesthetic idea of my interpretation of that particular question.
Q: Did you ever foresee that your voice would grow to be a Wagner voice? How did that process take place?
A: Well, I never did, because Wagner was very difficult for me to understand, let alone the entire German language and the German mentality. Although as far as the music is concerned, I must say I was trained unbeknownst to me at Juilliard, in our harmony classes and in ear-training classes, to understand the kind of chromaticism used in Wagner and the extended harmonies of Wagner. But I did not think that I would have a Wagner voice, as a matter of fact. I was labeled in New York, “a Strauss Baritone.” But when I came to Germany, I think people like Wolfgang Sawallisch heard that in my voice and guided me in this direction.
Q: Did you have side jobs as a student at Juilliard?
A: Yeah, I did. I drove rent-a-cars for the department store Alexander´s Rent-a-car service. I painted apartments, to make a little extra money. I worked in a music bookstore. You’ve got to hustle. You’ve got to do church jobs, sing for weddings and so forth. You’ve got to do everything. And when you’re young, you can! At that time, I was married, so there was sort of a combined income. My wife had a job, so we were able to support ourselves in a small apartment. I got a scholarship my second year. I paid for my first year, but then I got the first Serguis Kagen Scholarship. So basically, after the first year I was on a scholarship, I probably had to pay a little something. But it was pretty complete.
Q: Do you think there is a big contrast in the economic situation between when you were starting out and today?
A: Yeah, I’m sure there is. It was 30 years ago. Certainly, prices were a little less 30 years ago than they are now. But the hustle is still there. It’s a challenge. If you have to sing on the street corner, sing on the street corner.
Q: I find that a good messa di voce is very difficult to achieve. How do you practice this kind of swelling effect, either forte to piano or piano to forte?
A: Well, first of all, try not to think technically. Pick a phrase that you like, in the right tessitura (which means not too high, not too low) that’s comfortable for your voice. I’m speaking to the person who wrote this question plus all the people who read it. Pick something that you feel comfortable singing and then from the expression of the words, try to color the words differently and find out if you want to caress a sound or use a messa di voce in order to describe the intensity of the emotion you’re trying to communicate. And if you feel that somehow you arrive at a sound which is appropriate to your inner hearing—and your teacher, who hears your voice outside of your body, agrees—try to remember what your muscles are doing. Then take it out of context.
And I would not recommend going from concept to expression. I chose to work the other way around, from expression to concept, expression to technique. If you think, “Oh, I’ve got to do it this way” it’s mechanistic. If you want to be an artist, you have to think of meaning and emotion. And words have colors because of how you think and what’s going on in your mind, the pictures that are happening in your mind. The association of the phrase, whether it’s musical or different words, conjures up in your mind a picture of what you want to evoke. Messa di voce is a very evocative color.
Q: How do you manage this on a high note? Does that make a big difference?
A: Well, it does. I think certainly you have to be sure that you’ve attained the note. These things happen very quickly and expression and technique sort of go hand in hand. It happens almost instantaneously. And if you take it out of context, try never to lose sight of what you’re trying to achieve.
At times, you might have trouble doing it, because it takes a lot of intense air pressure that your body might not be able to cope with. But my recommendation is always to go from the expression; listen to how you express the sound, and then extrapolate that into some kind of technical practice. Or you want to condense it and go from loud to soft, soft to loud. Try all those variations. Use every idea, but always go for expression.
Q: When did you realize you were a helden baritone? Was it something you had been aware of when you began, or was it something more gradual?
A: Well, I certainly didn’t start out thinking I was a helden baritone, which means a heroic baritone and that your body can withstand six Gs of air pressure. It also means, of course, the color of the voice. I’m sure Luciano Pavarotti has an incredible amount of air pressure that produces the sound that he does. That’s why he has such an enormous body, and finesse in his muscles, in order to keep that column of sound vibrating the way he does. But it does have to do with the width and thickness of the vocal cords.
I think temperament has something to do with it. And when you’re young, I don’t think you can be a helden voice. I think that it’s really not appropriate. Although people say Hans Hotter sang Wotan when he was 26, it’s also said in the business that singing those heavy parts, limits the voice to about 20 years.
Q: There seems to be an idea in American singing education that no one should sing any of the dramatic works until they are at least 45. Did you find that same idea in Europe?
A: No, as a matter of fact, I think to the great detriment of a lot of voices which sing roles way too heavy for them. I thank my lucky stars that I had so much sage advice from all my teachers and everybody who knew me when I was in America singing and was straining at the bit to sing heavier stuff. It does put a tremendous wear and tear on the voice.
Stick with the light stuff as long as possible. Don’t forget that you are portraying a character, and a character has a certain voice color. If you are 25, why do you want to sing King Lear? Sing the parts that are suited to what age you are. And then gradually, when you sing those parts and you’ve accomplished them and conquered them, there is always the next one to sing. That’s what’s so beautiful about theater and opera: There is always another part you can sing that is age-appropriate and therefore voice-appropriate.
Q: Any advice for those voices out there that happen to be suited to the rep, but are still relatively young? Should they sing the heavier rep that feels better suited to the voice, or should they do the rep that is considered in America age-appropriate?
A: Well, I think, again, hard-and-fast rules. I would say, first of all, if you have a big voice and your teacher says sing something heavy, don’t overdo it. I would mix your repertoire, if you’re in your twenties or your thirties. Yes, I think 45 is probably a good age to think about maturity.
Q: Please describe your experience and what you felt as you were going through the rehearsals and performances of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass.
A: Well, I realized that this was going to be sort of the big break. It was very nerve-wracking, in the sense that I had to come to terms with the reality of the situation. It was very exciting suddenly to wake up and realize that you have that much exposure in a nationwide event. And I sort of had to realize that there was an outer myth, that it was the opening of the Kennedy Center. My inner myth was that it was just another stage I was singing on, in order to somehow take away this grandeur from it. This helped me so I didn’t feel that I was climbing Mt. Everest and that I couldn’t do it. I concentrated on learning the music, concentrated on expressing the ideas that Maestro Bernstein wanted and just stayed to the mission, as they now say.
Q: Assuming that one has the talent, drive, training, etc., what are the “ins” to the business? It seems to be a mystery.
A: Well, that talent and drive also means that you’re interested in something, and that talent means that you can do something easier than other people. And there are other people out there who are talent scouts. If you’re an interesting person—in other words, you have something to give, you have something to communicate—people will notice you.
Q: What was the hardest part of your voice to train, and how did you fix it?
A: I remember in the very beginning I had a problem with B and B-flat. It seemed like there was sort of a hole in that note. And that just came by singing. The thing about training a problem area in the voice is to try it on different vowels, to coax the sound so that it has a kind of uniformity with the other sounds of your voice. The low part of my voice took a long time to mature, and then, suddenly, one day it was there. I really don’t know how it happened. Going into the heavier repertoire, I think, definitely helped.
Q: And one last question about some of the peak moments in your career.
A: Well, certainly the Mass at Kennedy Center was very outstanding. I think my Bayreuth debut was definitely outstanding, plus doing “The Ring”. Those are sort of the two bookends that I can look back at and say that they were truly outstanding. But there are myriad in between, practically 30 years of singing. I think if I mentioned them all we’d run out of tape!
