When singers come to work with me in my studio, many bring with them a common anxiety about their roles and arias. Often singers have no idea, or a scant one at best, who the character is or what they’re singing about. Or singers lament that their material is “stale” and needs a fresh viewpoint. I am asked to help “bring it to life” somehow, and I am inevitably expected to tell them what to think about while singing, or what to do with their “gestures.” One singer recently told me that another coach had found a way for him to portray the emotion in Nemorino’s “Quanto è bella,” which was to think about macaroni and cheese. This is an association that conjures up a feeling in the performer, but it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with Nemorino’s motivation. Memory aids are great tools for accessing a particular emotion, but they are as unreliable as they are frequently illogical.
The fault lies not with the singer, but with the singer’s education. So much time and effort is invested in developing the singing voice, yet so little attention is paid to the fact that the singer needs essentially to become an actor as well. Every time he or she appears onstage, or sings an aria for an audition, the singer is expected to pretend to be someone he or she isn’t, and without having been taught any acting skills. Singers are rarely apprised of the fact that creating a character takes as much concentration and effort as mastering the words and music.
Personal Artistry
Personal artistry is one subject I’ve discovered hasn’t even been brought up by many singing teachers, let alone by coaches or stage directors. While you may admire the great artistry of Dame Janet Baker, Maria Callas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, or Nicolai Gedda, the average singer is rarely asked to consider his or her own personal artistry.
Singers are for the most part accustomed to constantly having their imperfections pointed out to them in non-constructive, or even destructive, ways. One singer told me that as soon as she’s done singing, in a lesson or in rehearsal, the first reaction she feels is defensiveness. She knows that the first words out of the conductor’s, or the teacher’s, or the director’s mouth, will be to point out what she did wrong. I think it imperative for all singers to get in touch with the reason why they’re singing in the first place, and to hold on to that idea no matter what. In a masterclass, I once asked the singers why they wanted to sing in the first place, and the replies were universally the same: “I sing because it makes me happy.” When I asked them what they were most afraid of, the consensus was unilaterally: “I’m afraid other people won’t like me.” My advice, then as now, is to focus on why you are singing in the first place, not on what you’re afraid of. There are plenty of people in the business who will gladly enhance your fears for you. It is up to singers to stay in touch with their own personal artistry, to discover it, to develop it, and to base all work upon it.
The Contradiction
Faced with a business that requires people to open their hearts and souls, and which specializes, it seems, in generously rewarding a few and unceremoniously tearing apart the rest, what is the singer supposed to do? Facing the scrutiny of directors, conductors, and coaches, how does a singer go beyond singing the words and the music accurately, setting himself or herself apart by means of a unique personal artistry?
Acting Technique
There are possibly as many acting techniques as there are actors. No two actors will have the exact same approach to any role; each one has his or her own way of bringing a character to life. Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet is not the same as Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet because the actors are two entirely different people, yet both are acting the same role. For the same reason, the text and music of an aria or role will be presented differently depending on who is singing. The words and music are the same, but the singer is different. How then does a singer begin to structure a character, especially characters familiar to audiences, such as Mimi, Norina, Tamino, Belcore, Bartolo, and Cherubino? There are some basic guidelines, or techniques if that is a better word, which I’ve discovered help a singer find something solid and credible to help bring a character to life.
Motivation
This word is bandied about almost as much as the word “subtext,” and has just as little specific meaning to most singers. But motivation is simply the desire to set something in motion. No one does anything in life, from vocalizing to shopping for groceries to parallel parking, without a reason. What is your character trying to accomplish? What is he or she trying to set in motion? Moreover, what thoughts and feelings are leading to this desire? A character in an opera sings about something because of the need to set into motion the thoughts and feelings they hold inside.
Justification
Motivation is the character’s desire to set something in motion, including the feelings that create that desire. Justification is the reason behind the feeling. You say something because you feel it, and there’s a reason for how you feel. For example, you’re happy because you won the lottery. Every feeling in life comes from a reason, a justification, just as every character in opera has a justification for how he or she feels.
It is as simple as that. Singers tend to think of their characters as either oversimplified and one-dimensional or so complex as to be inscrutable. Often I hear singers describe characters as if they were their next-door neighbors: “Giovanni wants to have a good time,” or “Gilda is in love with the Duke.” And while to a certain degree they’re right, singers should remember that these are not commonplace people with commonplace emotions in commonplace situations. On the other hand, I’ll hear “I don’t ‘get’ Elsa” or “I don’t understand why the Count in Figaro is such a jerk when he was so nice in Barber of Seville.” Once again, Elsa and Almaviva are not people you meet every day. They are heightened beings in heightened emotional situations. Understanding what the character’s motivation is, and what justification they have, or think they have, for the way they feel, is the beginning of understanding how to create a character.
Communication
Once you understand your character’s motivation and justification, you must communicate these things to the audience. This is what eludes most singers and paralyzes them with the fear that they don’t know how to “act.” No one is going to know if you’re happy because you won the lottery, unless you specifically say what you are feeling and why. And communication doesn’t rest on what you say, but on how you say it. What you say is not nearly as important as how you say it, and this is where the composer can help you a great deal. Is Malatesta excited about this girl he wants Pasquale to meet? It isn’t the words, “Bella siccome un angelo in terra pellegrina,” so much as the music that Donizetti wrote that really tells the person listening precisely how he feels about what he’s saying. The meaning lies in the music and how it is sung, and not in merely understanding the words as they are translated.
Illumination
This is the most important acting tool of all. What you are trying to do, when you have a feeling based on some reason (motivation and justification), which you are talking about (communication), is to get the person listening, be it someone onstage or the audience itself, to understand what you mean. The need to be understood, or comprehended, is the basic urge here. Illumination can also be thought of as persuasion. You are trying to persuade someone of how you feel, as Malatesta tries to persuade Pasquale to be excited about this girl he wants him to meet. In other words, you’re trying to get the listener to think, “Aha! I know what you mean; I know what you’re saying!” Whether they agree with it or not is the basis of all drama. Gilda seeks to illuminate the audience, to get them to understand and/or agree with her, because she is motivated to communicate what she is justified in feeling.
Remember that all librettos are heightened speech. Singers spend vast quantities of time translating their foreign-language texts, but many singers rarely get beyond finding out what the text means in English. What you are singing is heightened prose to the point of poetry. Understanding the literal meaning of the text is only part of the process. The other part is to grasp the idea that this is how the character expresses himself. A singer has to enter into the character’s mind by means of what the character says, and to short-change this process by having only a cursory understanding of what the words mean is to short-change your own personal artistry. What’s going to make your portrayal of a role unique is your complete conviction in what you are saying and how you are saying it.
Librettos are easy to find, in libraries and anthologies, and inside compact disc cases. Read what the person says throughout the piece. Find out what happens to him or her, and why. Whom does the character speak to, and why? What is the character’s motivation? Based on what justification? Does it change, and if so, how does it change? So many singers memorize arias and have a scant notion of what goes on in the opera itself. But one scene from “The Lord of the Rings” is not what the whole movie trilogy is about!
The Questions
Motivation, justification, communication, and illumination are the four basic tools in your acting toolbox. But in order to begin to understand a character, one has to think of the process as something similar to a painter creating a landscape. The painter begins with an idea, a blank canvas, and a charcoal pencil. He sketches in the overall idea, such as where the sky is and where the trees are; he decides if there is a stream or a barn or a cow in the picture and plans their relation to each other. Once there’s a solid idea of what this picture is going to look like on the canvas, he starts filling in other elements, such as mixing paint to get the right color for a sunset, or the orange-red trees in autumn. Then the colors are laid in, usually the bigger, bolder colors first, followed by subtle variations to give substance and detail, form and shape. Finally, the fine touches which bring the painting to life: the mottled sun shining through the tree branches, the shadows the trees cast, the dot of the pupil in the eye of the cow to show what it’s looking at.
In creating a character, one has to start with some basic ideas about the person you’re going to pretend to be. As each question is answered, the artist develops layers of form, substance, and comprehension of the character.
Who am I?
This starts the process at a basic level. What’s your character’s name? It’s always a surprise to me when a singer starts off by answering the question, “Well, she’s in love with Ferrando,” for example. This is not what you need to focus in on in the beginning; it is a detail that needs to be filled in later after you understand who you are as a person. An artist can paint the shadow first and then figure out from there where the tree is going to be, but it is the long way around. Start with your character’s name. It’s going to tell your imagination a great deal right from the beginning, because Susanna is most assuredly not the Countess, and Juliette is definitely not Zerbinetta. It’s necessary to focus in on the name of the character, because it’s going to set ideas off in your head immediately.
How old am I?
It’s amazing how the age of a person tends to govern their behavior. If you’re playing someone younger than yourself, you can remember what you were like at that age. If the character’s age approximates yours, you’re going to have a better understanding of the character’s history as a person, as you have been stomping around the planet for as long as the character has. If you are playing someone you think of as older than yourself, like Marcellina in Figaro, say, or Magnifico in Cenerentola, then you’re going to have an understanding, based on your own experience, of what older people tend to be like. Age is a very important characteristic to consider in your character.
Where am I?
Obviously, if your character is living in Nagasaki, Japan, around 1900, the character’s experience is going to be different than a character living in Spain, around 1600. People have pretty much acted as people do since the dawn of recorded history. Nevertheless, a Japanese teen-aged girl is going to have different things going on in her life than a Spanish, aristocratic, Catholic, twenty-five-year-old male old born three hundred years before her. Be specific, and then figure out what that means. In Mozart’s Figaro and Cosi, the characters are contemporaries of George Washington, which is exciting to contemplate and should bring them into much sharper focus for you. What was going on in the world in the era in which your character lives becomes a fascinating thing to explore, and incidentally, very much shaped the librettist’s and the composer’s ideas for the story.
What is my station in life?
This is another way to focus on the specifics of the person you are going to represent, even in an aria. That you are a 15-year-old geisha means very specific things for your worldview, which are vastly different than being a 30-year-old doctor who takes care of a 70-year-old Don Pasquale. People will tell me that their character is a princess, and yet stammer and knit their brows when I ask what that means. Usually I’m told that it means the character is royal, which is also meaningless as a concept to most of us. Then I ask, “Is Queen Elizabeth of England royal? And what difference is there between her life and yours?” Realizing that the person your are pretending to be onstage or in an aria is vastly different from you, while still being understandable as a human being, is one of the first building blocks of establishing your identity in a role.
Zerlina is a peasant girl. What does that involve? What does she eat, where does she sleep, and what does she do for a living? Can she read or write? That makes her different from Fiordiligi, who is a wealthy young girl from Naples, who doesn’t seem to do anything for a living and has servants to take care of her. It’s astonishing to think about how obvious this all is, how accessible it is for the singer. The secret of acting technique is found in real human behavior, and not something which needs to be thought of as outside of our experience.
Whom are you talking to? And why?
People tell me that it’s easier for them to be “in character” when they’re onstage doing a role than singing an aria in recital, and that it’s even more difficult to create a character when singing an aria in an audition. Yet wherever you present your aria, it is still important to focus on the character you are representing. Many arias in opera are actually addressed to someone else, and knowing to whom your character is talking has a direct impact on the way you sing the words. How you relate to the person you’re talking (i.e. singing) to has an effect on how you wish to be understood. Malatesta, for example, has very different feelings for Pasquale than he does for Norina. How your character feels about or relates to the person to whom he’s speaking is an essential concept in building a role.
Many arias are monologues, or thoughts and feelings expressed out loud to oneself. This is different than talking to someone else, but amounts to the same thing, with one difference. When you’re talking to yourself, you’re trying to get your feelings into some recognizable form that you can understand. This idea of monologue (or soliloquy, which is essentially what many operatic arias are) was actually developed in the Elizabethan theater by Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Ben Johnson. The audience knew that the characters were talking to themselves, and that they were privy to the character’s thoughts through the theatrical device of monologue or soliloquy.
Singers say, “But I never know where to look; I’m so aware of being looked at, looked over, assessed, judged. I don’t know what to focus on.” Focus on what you’re trying to convey, as if you were talking to that person, when the aria is directly addressed to someone. Who is that other person? What’s your relationship to that person? Is Lucia talking to Alisa during “Regnava nel silenzio?” Yes, most assuredly. Perhaps at some point she gets lost in her thoughts, but she’d have to be schizophrenic from the outset to be unaware that she really is explaining her thoughts and feelings to Alisa. How Lucia relates to Alisa then will determine how she speaks to her. But then, to whom is Nemorino talking during “Una furtiva lagrima”? Himself, obviously, but why? What is he doing, except trying to understand that he saw a tear fall from Adina’s eye, and what it means to him?
If you’re directly addressing someone in an aria, as Zerlina does to Masetto when singing “Batti” or “Vedrai,” or Sieglinde to Siegmund when singing “Du bist der Lenz,” you need to have a very clear idea in your mind of whom you’re singing to, and why, and what you want the other person to understand. If you’re singing an aria sung to yourself out loud, you are trying to clarify your thoughts and feelings to yourself.
How are you saying what you’re saying? What are you trying to convey?
Understand that it isn’t what you say but how you say it. A simple expression of a few words, such as “Get out of here!” can be said a variety of different ways, depending on what you want to convey. How would you say “Get out of here!” to someone you’re furious with for denting your car? Take the same four words and say them to someone who tells you that you’ve won the lottery. Now take “Get out of here!” and say them to your small child while you’re talking on the phone. Your emotion will guide your voice.
So, what does Belcore mean when he says, “Come Paride vezzoso porse il pomo alla più bella?” Translating the words is essential, true, but now look at the music. What meaning do Donizetti’s notes convey? The composer has put words to music, and the music can tell you what emotions the character is feeling. What is your response to just the musical line? Take the melody of some aria you know. Sing it on “ah,” without any words, just vocalizing. What does the music alone make you feel, on an instinctive level? What was the composer trying to convey, emotionally, when he wrote these notes to these words?
The melody is the composer’s decision as to how he believes the words are meant. Your work is not creative, but rather it is interpretive. Interpreting what the composer meant when he created the music to the words is your full time preoccupation, and you should never assume that the composer wrote anything less than precisely what he intended the character to be feeling.
Staying Focused
When you’ve got a clear focus on your character, you can pretend to be that person in any situation, whether it’s in an inept production, or singing an aria at 10 a.m. in a drafty studio with an out-of-tune piano played by an accompanist with an obvious hangover to a bunch of people who haven’t looked at you since you walked in the door. You maintain your composure and perform at your best, because you have discovered your personal artistry.
