For classically trained singers, the world of musical theatre may seem a natural complement to opera—or completely foreign terrain. The fact that we refer to the shift from classical repertoire to musical theatre as “crossing over” portends significant change or challenge, akin to the journey from death to the great beyond. In fact, on the campus of Indiana University, the Theatre Department (and home to musical theatre) is literally across the Jordan River from the School of Music. But Sylvia McNair, who is on faculty at the Jacobs School of Music at IU, is happy to report that many students regularly make the trek.
For insight into this journey, I spoke with McNair, who has successfully “crossed over” herself after a 20-year opera career, and who will present a masterclass at the 2010 CS Convention. I also spoke with Craig Carnelia, best known as a Broadway composer and lyricist, who also sings and regularly coaches Broadway singer/actors. Carnelia will also present a masterclass, and both crossover experts will join in on a special “crossover” panel for the Audition Feedback Experience.
Listen
How should a classical singer begin to approach this musical theatre world? Carnelia advises, “Listen. Listen to the literature, starting with Rodgers and Hammerstein and going all the way up to the fine shows that are playing now, which would include Wicked, Next to Normal, and In the Heights. Listen to all of Sondheim.”
McNair suggests you glean inspiration from other crossover artists like Julie Andrews, George Hearn, Rod Gilfry and, of course, Audra McDonald and Kristin Chenoweth—all of whom studied opera before becoming successful in musical theatre.
Find a Guide
“If a student wants to study both opera and musical theatre,” McNair advises, “that student has to find a teacher who is good at both, and that takes some hunting. That really takes some very careful observation of the teacher’s style and the teacher’s history.”
Of course, there will always be specialists who choose to work exclusively in one genre or the other. But McNair wants people to know that there are many “hybrids,” like herself, who live and teach in both worlds. “I was fortunate enough to study with Eileen Ferrell, and she was a person who could sing a Wagner opera at the Metropolitan Opera on Thursday night and on Friday night, step in with a jazz trio across the street and do a set with them. I studied pop and jazz standards with her, and she was the one who taught me about microphone technique. She was the one who opened up all these great American standards, opened up the world to me. And I did a lot of concerts under her guidance.
“I run a class here at [Indiana University] called Performance Workshop. . . . One semester I do a musical theatre production, and the next semester we do opera scenes. I am trying to establish myself on a faculty as a person who keeps a very open heart and a very open mind to all styles of singing.”
Relax a Little
McNair fondly remembers working with Robert Shaw, “whose recordings would have pop standards right along side of selections from the B Minor Mass. One of the things that he always said to me, very gently, was ‘Don’t pooosh’—meaning don’t over-sing, don’t over-enunciate, don’t over-work it.”
This is something that comes up a lot as she works with singers. “You have to lighten up on the vocal production, and you definitely have to lighten up on the enunciation. I think, for classically trained people, it’s very easy to over-sing a microphone. You have to learn ways to lean back. You have to learn ways to soften your pronunciation and slightly soften your vocal production, because the microphone will do the heavy lifting for you.
“When I sing music from the Great American Songbook, I quite honestly don’t think so much about ‘singing’ as I think about speaking on pitch. I think for classically trained singers, they think too much about vocal allure and vocal production and big pear-shaped sounds and sling-shotting the words to the back of the auditorium. When you do musical theatre rep, you shouldn’t be thinking so much about sound and tone production as about speaking on pitch and telling a great story.”
Pursue an Action (While Singing)
Carnelia’s classes are rooted in the art of acting while singing—particularly, in acting for musical theatre. “Very often the classical singer will be trying to adapt to musical theatre by changing the way he or she sings,” Carnelia explains, “and indeed that may be called for to some degree. But, more likely, if that singer is simply changing how he or she approaches the material from an acting standpoint, the voice will simply change because, so often, that singer has been approaching the material as a singer first and an actor second. . . . In musical theatre, both skills are of equal importance.
“It’s not so much adapting the voice as becoming an actor,” he continues. “It makes no sense for a singer to be singing a song to display the sound of their singing voice. As an inadvertent by-product of the action they’re taking, and having done all this wonderful music preparation, that wonderful singing voice does get displayed. But if the display of that voice is what they’re attempting to do, it will not be as rich. It will not be as beautiful. And the person will not be as fully lit up and alive as they would be if they were engaged in some true action. . . . One is not simply singing to make sound, one is singing to accomplish something, to do something. ‘I’m singing this to tell this person that I’m leaving.’ ‘I’m singing this to try to get this person to stay.’”
Trust Your Technique as a Means, Not an End
This is not to say that good vocal technique should be jettisoned. It just can’t be what the performer is thinking about while performing. Technique is a tool that we use in our craft—something we concentrate on in the practice room—so that we can trust it will serve us when we are focusing on other things during a performance. Football players may do a lot of sit-ups in their practice regimen, but that’s not what fans want to see them do on the field.
As Carnelia puts it, “The learning of the song and the learning of how to make the sounds and where to breathe isn’t necessarily what you’re going to be doing when you’re on the stage. It is work you did to prepare for what you’re going to do on the stage, just as ironing the clothes for the rehearsal is what you’re going to do to prepare for the rehearsal. It’s work you do before you get there. If you’ve trained properly, the vowels will get made by your mouth. If you’re thinking about those vowels, what you’re actually doing is . . . luxuriating in a technique rather than showing up. And if you do that, you’re basically thinking about yourself.
“I don’t mean you are necessarily self-centered,” he continues, “but I do mean you have simply transported yourself from the vocal room to now having a costume on with lights on you and you’re in front of an audience. You’re basically doing the same kind of work in front of people. And if you’re doing something that’s like acting, the something that you’re doing that is like acting is putting some faces on it, because that’s all you can do when what you’re thinking about is making sound.”
McNair sums it up this way: “Just make sure you sing in a healthy way. Sing in tune with clear words, and then you can do any style of singing.” She refers to Barbara Cook as a resource on further discussion about singing various styles.
Embrace Diversity
Carnelia points out that there is already a great variety of musical styles being performed on Broadway, and offers In the Heights as an example. “Lin-Manuel’s score goes all the way from [rap] to what could probably be described as Latin street opera with the grandmother’s song. It’s such an interesting score. Just as an example of what’s out there—it’s pretty amazing, what’s being written today.”
McNair learned a great deal in her collaborations with André Previn “who has written some of the most beautiful pop standards—and then, of course, is very much a core classical music guy with his conducting and his piano playing and his composing. We would do concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic where I would do Mozart arias on the first half, do Mahler’s Fourth Symphony on the second half, and then three days later we would do a Harold Arlen program in a small recital hall in Vienna.”
Her current one-woman cabaret is entitled “Subject to Change.” “I have changed from being an opera singer to doing this other stuff, and so I talk about [that], frankly, life is change. It just is. And I think the sooner we can all figure out how to adapt and deal with change, the better off we are. So that’s sort of my own little life’s philosophy behind the title of the show.
“One of the songs that I often sing in my shows is ‘Don’t Fence Me In,’” McNair goes on, “and talk about being an autobiographical phrase. Don’t fence me in! I need to be free to sing anything and everything.” Case in point: she has just participated in her first rock-and-roll album!
Sing Good Music Well
“You know the old Duke Ellington quote, ‘There are only two kinds of music: good music and bad music,’” McNair says. Shaw and Previn were examples of that for her. “It was just music for them,” she says. “It wasn’t an issue of ‘crossing over.’ It was all music and it was all great music. As long as we’re doing good music, I don’t know why these boxes must exist. You know, the opera box, the musical theatre box, the jazz box. Music is music, and great music needs to be sung well, and I just wish we could get rid of the boxes!”
In addition to the musical aspect, Carnelia advises, “Always, always choose good writing”—which he defines as “lyrics that can be acted, lyrics that are revealing of the character rather than simply declarative of the character”—“and writing that appeals to you personally.” Some of the recent Broadway shows that he feels contain good roles for classical singers include Phantom of the Opera, In the Heights (“Grandmother’s Song”), A Little Night Music, Grey Gardens, Wicked, and Finian’s Rainbow. Other possibilities are Light in the Piazza, Secret Garden, Guys and Dolls, Sweeney Todd, and Wonderful Town, just to name a few.
Follow Your Heart (On Stage and Off)
Carnelia feels that, when performing a song, “A personal investment in what one is saying is of great importance, which is ‘What does this mean to me, personally? How do I connect to this?’ So if you’ve chosen the song yourself, pretty much it didn’t happen by accident. There’s a reason you were drawn to it. It probably wasn’t the high note. It probably was something it was saying.”
But what if the song was chosen for you? “One can find a reason,” says Carnelia. “One can find a way in which it intersects with one’s own interest, one’s own passion, one’s own life. But beyond that, there are acting techniques. We prepare for each scene we’re about to play by getting ourselves in a place that is emotionally charged with where we have come from, with what has just happened—so that the thing we are about to do in the song is the next thing you would want to do in response to this experience that’s occurred or this feeling that’s running through you. And then, in the song itself, one is singing to accomplish something.”
When McNair is choosing material for a cabaret, she says she will sing only songs that she truly loves. This also played into her decision to make the departure from opera. “I had to follow my heart,” she says. “Really, it was time to say, ‘I need to do something different with the remaining years of my singing life.’”
Go to It!
“There are plenty of ways to cross over and plenty of opportunity to do that, and fear is a huge thing for stopping people,” Carnelia says. But fear not! Some Broadway shows, like Phantom of the Opera (now in its 24th year), actually favor classical singers when they’re auditioning.
So if your interest has been piqued, take advantage of the opportunity to work with these two passionate teachers and “crossover” specialists at the 2010 CS Convention in New York!
