Dear Editor:
As a young baritone currently in the first year of my master’s studies, I cannot express how helpful, enlightening, and encouraging this magazine is! It’s the confirmation of knowing there are a million people who support what you do and who are wanting to help you. I appreciate the articles dealing with how to get a career started. (Fortunately, I’m still postponing the dreaded walk into the “real world.”) I would, however, like to see some articles that deal a lot more with the psychological aspects of being a singer.
Not to generalize…[but] we all seem to have a unique gene within us. As a young singer living in the new millennium [and] within the world of popular culture, it can be extremely difficult to close your eyes and take yourself back into a different period of time when the classical style of music was more cherished than it is now. I think this is a huge task for a young singer of my generation to take on. Unfortunately, not all of us are growing up with Mozart, Schubert, Wolf, Debussy, and Mahler.
It would be interesting to see an article or…some research about this, and [about] how young singers can find a balance to stay within their current time, yet remain focused, out of debt, and maintain a healthy social life. Once again, thanks for such a wonderful publication!
Sincerely,
Justin M. Randolph
Bowling Green, Ohio
Justin M. Randolph is a baritone and is currently pursuing a M.M. in vocal performance from Bowling Green State University. As a young baritone Mr. Randolph has over 10 roles in his repertoire including The Count from Le nozze di Figaro, Bob from The Old Maid and the Thief, The Count from Il matrimonio segreto, and Falke from Die Fledermaus among others. He has studied voice with Andreas Poulimenos, Jane Schoonmaker-Rodgers, and is currently studying with David Okerlund. Mr. Randolph has been coached by Eastman School of Music’s Russell Miller, former Toledo Opera coach Kevin Bylsma, world renowed composer Richard Hundley, and San Francisco Opera’s Adelle Eslinger. He was the 2000 recipient of the Arion Foundation Award for Excellence in Musical Achievement, and a finalist of the 2003 Great Lakes NATS competition. In Spring 2005 he will be singing in a Thomas Pasatieri one act titled La Divina.
www.justinrandolph.com
Answered by Susan Gregory
Dear Justin:
Universal emotions of love, hate, fear and anger can serve as guides for contemporary young singers trying to grasp the heart of any song or operatic scene from yesteryear. We can look past historical styles of music and language to the essence of the emotional message. We can identify which of the four basic human emotions—think of them as primary colors—the character or the poet is expressing.
In identifying the primary emotion of the song or scene, we can recall experiences from our own lives when we have felt the same emotion. Remembering that, we can translate the feeling of our emotional experience into our singing experience now. The remembered situation need not be the same as the story we are singing about—only the emotional tone need correspond.
Sometimes we cannot recall or identify emotions we have felt in the past. This may take some self-exploration, or some professional assistance. As expressive artists, we need to be able to access our emotions, name them, and allow them to flow through the music we sing, without our being overwhelmed by them. Becoming emotionally intelligent in this way requires a learning process, which includes brightening self-awareness and loosening strictures that may be preventing us from accessing our emotions.
In working on operatic roles or art songs, we don’t need to let historical style become a smoke screen. The four basic human emotions—love, hate, fear, and anger—have been the same throughout human history, and are at the artistic heart of the matter. Singers are always expressing one or another of these four basic emotions in a song. All the many other emotions we can name are tonal variations on these four; they are subheadings, if you will. I encourage you to oversimplify, to recall emotion in experiences from your own life and to use memory of it in the songs you sing. This brings the song alive, no matter how unfamiliar its historical aesthetic.
The ability to do this does not come automatically. It takes mental-emotional practice, just as learning to sing takes practice. It’s a kind of training in mental focus and emotional access, which includes focus on recall and imagining. Singing artists need rich mental-emotional lives, which they can work to develop during their years of training. Imagining, remembering, and feeling are precognitive brain functions that get stronger with stimulation and practice. Developing these skills is part of what we undertake to become excellent professional singers.
Becoming professionals is what people go to graduate school to achieve. It is a kind of immersion into a new world, a world with requirements for personal growth and skills development that take effort and guts. The work is intense and includes a commitment to excellence, which professionals in every field of endeavor undertake.
A graduate education requires that we depart from our familiar ways of living and stretch ourselves to develop competencies that join us to the tradition of accomplishment in our field. In classical singing, this includes the commitment to explore the uncharted waters of our mental-emotional lives, so that we can fulfill our professional role in society—which, in my view, is that of helping audiences know and feel the elemental truths of human existence.
Becoming a singing professional—and here I refer to attaining a panoply of skills on a highly developed level—causes us to embark upon a journey that other members of our family may not have taken. This is called “individuating.” When we individuate from our families, the process often is painful for everyone involved—and sometimes, to reduce the pain, we may do less than we need to do to complete our transition to professionalism.
There’s no getting around it, successfully taking advantage of the opportunity a graduate education affords requires a vast amount of effort—effort to conquer the unfamiliar, to build a ground of knowledge on which to stand, to deepen an array of skills, and to seek mental-emotional expansion so as to fulfill the expressive requirements of the art. This process is not always comfortable. You may suffer growing pains. Yet your time in graduate school provides a precious opportunity for self-defining and developing your potential.
Carpe diem!
Respectfully,
Susan Gregory
Susan Gregory is a Gestalt therapist in private practice in New York City. Ms. Gregory has been a soloist with the New York City Opera and a recital artist in the United States and Europe.
Answered by Ann Baltz
Dear Justin:
Your question is very insightful. I am certain you are not the only one who struggles with integrating historical music and characters into your contemporary life. The classical style you mention was the contemporary music of its time, and the operas of those times often were written about contemporary subjects. The music of most of the operas performed today is “foreign” to our contemporary ears, unless we have grown up in an environment where classical music was prevalent. However, your life also shares many similarities with the operatic or classical genre.
Opera is about people relating to people. It involves emotions that remain true throughout time: love, anger, jealousy, sympathy, etc. We all experience those feelings today in our own lives, and I encourage you to call upon your imagination and your own instinctual responses to a dramatic situation, even though you are portraying someone who lived hundreds of years ago.
For example, in the Count’s aria from Le nozze di Figaro, he ranges from shock at overhearing that Figaro has won a very important decision, to fear that that he will lose control to his servants, to confidence once he has devised a plan to regain his control. To find a parallel in your own life, you can imagine that you (a graduate student) overhear an undergraduate singer telling another undergraduate that he has just been cast in the role you thought you had won. Hearing that, you might feel the same shock the Count did at that similar moment. You might also feel afraid that the other singer would get all of the leading baritone roles from now on. And you would probably devise a plan, as the Count does, to correct the situation, so that you felt confident you would continue as the “baritone of choice” at your school.
This is but one example of how you can begin to merge your own life with that of your character. Here are some additional suggestions to help you begin bridging the perceived gap:
• Challenge yourself to listen to classical music in general, or vocal music specifically, every day. Wake up to a classical radio station, or listen to it in your car. If you can begin to incorporate classical composers into your everyday life, they will begin to sound familiar to you.
• Ask your pianist to play just the accompaniment of one of your songs or arias. Close your eyes and listen to it without singing, as if it were a separate piece. As you listen, do the following:
– Determine the mood.
– Notice patterns in the accompaniment, and when they change.
– Notice the modality shifts between major and minor.
– Listen for solo lines in the accompaniment.
– Notice when those solo lines double your melody.
– Listen for how the composer may have used “word painting” in the accompaniment.
Once you have studied the accompaniment in this way, sing the piece through with your pianist and listen to your vocal line in the context of the total piece.
• Use what you have learned in music theory to analyze your songs and arias. You will begin to see the compositional patterns of each composer and begin to build an aural “composer’s vocabulary” that will help you learn other pieces much more quickly. For example, Mozart shifts into new harmonic centers when textual thoughts change, Donizetti maintains one harmony over several bars underneath an ornamented vocal line, and Puccini uses many augmented chords. Once you begin to recognize these styles and patterns, it will make it much easier to learn any other piece by those composers. I also encourage you to seek out a theory professor to augment your own analyses.
• Be curious about your repertoire beyond the music.
• Visit used bookstores to look for novels on which an opera is based (such as Scenes de la vie de Bohème, by Henri Murger; Le Marriage de Figaro, by Beaumarchais; Carmen, by Prosper Mérimée; and Manon Lescaut, by Abbe Prevost).
• Read poetry written at the same time as the text of your repertoire to get a feel for the style of writing. Is it flowery, metaphorical, or direct?
• Visit a museum or look at art books at the library to examine the art that inspired the music in your repertoire. (For example, paintings by Antoine Watteau inspired the text for Mandoline, set by Fauré and Debussy.)
• Enroll in a language course, or at the very least, listen to language tapes, to get a sense of the flow of a language, and learn the meaning of the words you sing. This will make you better able to express the meaning of your text beyond the correct pronunciation. So many singers simply learn the IPA, and then memorize the words as a string of sounds, rather than as words that have meaning to the people who speak that language. You are communicating emotions and feelings, and you will be much more successful and unique if you express those words and music not only through your intellect, but through the fibers of your soul.
• Attend theatrical performances to observe how actors make “music” with lines without actually singing. Listen for inflection and pitch, for where they pause, when they speed up or slow down a line, how they “color” a line to give a certain meaning. Composers write all of that into your vocal lines.
• Attend live performances of operas or concerts, or at least listen to recordings by many singers who sing your repertoire.
• Physicalize your songs and arias. Too many singers practice their repertoire only in a “recital” stance. I encourage you to move around the room as you sing in your practice sessions. Spontaneously choreograph a modern dance to the music; stage your songs and arias, complete with furniture and props. Your body and mind will move beyond the act of singing and come together to bring a “complete person” into the performance.
• Read about what life was like during the time an opera is set. The multi-volume set A History of Private Life1 is an excellent resource for habits, customs and behavior throughout history. For example, you can research what it was like to have tuberculosis during the time period of La traviata.
By immersing yourself in the music, poetry, art, daily rituals and culture of the time, you will begin to bridge the gap between your contemporary life and the lives of those you portray on stage. You do not need to give up who you are now, but rather bring your own reactions and instincts to the stage as a foundation on which to build a character. Too many singers simply “play act” onstage and miss the opportunity to portray visceral, passionate people in extraordinary situations.
Opera is an all-consuming art form—it is the most complicated of all the art forms and requires an enormous dedication to excel. If you are truly committed to becoming a classical singer, to succeed you will need to make some sacrifices. You do not need to give up your social life, nor stop listening to the music you’ve grown up with. But you can benefit greatly from adding other aspects of your art to your life. And it should be fun!
It is a beautiful thing you have chosen to do—to share your music with others. Your voice is the most personal of all instruments, and it takes great courage to stand in front of an audience and open yourself up through words and music. But the rewards are incredible and will last a lifetime. Enjoy the journey!
Ann Baltz, founder and Artistic Director of OperaWorks, is recognized nationally as a leader in alternative and innovative opera training. She teaches workshops in Performance Techniques and Operatic Improvisation, and Career Planning for conservatories and universities throughout the U.S. She has served as Music Director for Wesley Balk’s Opera Institute, Director of Apprentice Programs for Orlando Opera and Opera Pacific. Ms. Baltz has served as Assistant Conductor for companies including Wolf Trap Opera, Merola Opera Program, Western Opera Theater, Orlando Opera, Portland Opera and Opera Pacific. She is currently on the opera faculty at California State University at Northridge, and she maintains coaching and teaching studios in Los Angeles and New York.
1 Paul Veyne, ed., A History of Private Life, vol. 1: From Pagan Rome to Byzanitum; vol 2: Revelations of the Medieval World; vol. 3: Passions of the Renaissance; vol. 4: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War; vol. 5: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times, (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987)
