The da capo aria present in all Renaissance and Baroque operas presents significant dramatic challenges for the singer. Since the story unfolds in the recitative and the arias are mostly about emoting, text is often sparse and repetitive. Combine that with the return of the A section, which adds even more repetition, and keeping a da capo aria emotionally charged and dramatically fresh can keep a singer up at night.
To get some perspective on this dilemma, I interviewed four experts in the early music arena for their take on how they keep it interesting.
Yulia Van Doren, soprano
Russian-American soprano Yulia Van Doren is the only singer to win top prizes in all four North American Bach vocal competitions and has performed with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Tanglewood Music Festival, and Vancouver Early Music Festival. Van Doren will record her debut solo disc with the American Bach Soloists in the spring of 2011.
Van Doren: It can be difficult to find a way to express the immediacy of a Baroque aria. What little text you’re given to work with is rather archaic, and it usually repeats over and over again. I had a masterclass with Peter Sellars where he talked about this very issue: what do you do with a da capo aria (Handel arias, for instance)? He strongly emphasized that arias are all about emotion; they are moments of emotional reflection or expression.
When the text repeats, it’s an emotional statement, and you have to find a dramatic reason that you/the character needs to make this statement again. We do this in our natural speaking patterns. When you’re trying to make a point in an argument, or express your love to someone, you often repeat the same words, the same ideas multiple times. So the da capo is not a chance to show off your clever ornamentation skills—it’s a super-charged emotional outburst, something that you need to convey so immediately that it bursts out of you a second time.
I have a two-step process for bringing the emotion of a Bach aria to life:
1: Respect the music.
In the music of a master like Bach, the message of the text is illustrated in a way that goes to a depth far beyond words. So you have to respect the music first and foremost. Familiarize yourself with the language of the music, the musical techniques that Bach uses that express the emotions of the text. Sing almost any Bach aria without words—“Jauchzet Gott,” for instance. The joy radiates through the notes! I think this is why so many good Bach singers started out as instrumentalists, because they’re used to bringing alive the emotion of music purely through the musical language.
2: Establish a personalized emotional connection with the text.
A Bach aria is usually an expression of religious devotion, often a religious ecstasy, of the type that very few of us have a personal experience with. So, we have to find our own ways of connecting to those emotions of love, desire, devotion, etc. Since so many of Bach’s soprano arias are expressions of a deeply felt, almost romantic, love of Christ, I often put myself in the mindset of a Mary Magdalene type of character, and for me that immediately establishes a vivid emotional connection with the text.
Gilbert Blin, stage director
French-born Gilbert Blin has worked on many European stagings and made his American debut in the 2001 production of Lully’s Thésée with the Boston Early Music Festival, where he has been Stage Director in Residence since 2008. Other recent productions include Lully’s Psyché, Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Charpentier’s Actéon, and Handel’s Acis and Galatea.
Blin: I never feel that repeated text when staging Baroque operas is a problem. It all depends, firstly, on the dramatic situation the characters are in and, secondly, on the quality of the poetry itself—the strength of the emotions or ideas the words bring forward.
At first glance, da capo arias in Vivaldi or Handel always appear straight forward with their ABA structure, but these composers make so many differences in their musical treatment that the music provides, most of the time, the keys to the way we should read the text.
The repeated text can be of two natures: sentimental or intellectual. For the “feelings” category, the situation and the music often give indications about the relation the character has with them: if he is enjoying them, despising them, afraid of them, etc. When the feeling is found, the repeated text can help to go to the next level of “passion.” This is very true for Handel.
For ideas, the point is to find a reason, in terms of action or psychology, why the character “feels the need” to repeat the text. It can be to convince someone, including himself, or to increase the level of questioning featured the first time. That is how, for example, I treat the repeated words in the choruses of Lully and Charpentier.
The tempos are also primal, as they put the singer in a certain energy starting point, on which the repeated text should be developing. Also, as we know, these tempos, with few exceptions noted by composers, can’t change through the arias. But that doesn’t mean the music of the second A section can’t change. Ornamentations, cadenzas, and variations in the melody can take a part in elaborating a renewed musical texture. From my point of view, as a stage director, this is the most exciting time because it is a moment when the singer is in the front line as both a musician and as an actor.
The repeated text, although appearing the same, because of the treatment by the vocalist will cover different affects. The nature of the repeat can act as a development for the story. Repeated text should always appear from an added, but not necessarily different, perspective—either as a magnification of the characterization of the first text or a deepening of the emotion portrayed.
Often I find some help in the B section, while working on composers like Vivaldi or Handel. The B section is often an extra point, a key comment on what has been declared in the first A.
The answer can sometimes come from the blocking as well. If the repeated text acts like an amplification of the feeling, amplification of movement in space often works well. But the opposite can also be true. I have staged arias where the da capos were treated in perfect immobility of the body, so the eyes of the audience could concentrate on the face and upper gestures of the singers. With this you also get a densification of the emotion. I used this technique in my production of Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and the music benefited from it greatly.
Kathryn Mueller, soprano
Praised for her “pure sound” and “glorious high notes” (Atlanta Journal Constitution, Arizona Daily Star), soprano Kathryn Mueller has performed most recently with Seraphic Fire, the Oregon Bach Festival, Santa Fe Pro Musica, the Firebird Chamber Orchestra, and period ensemble Capella Guanajuatensis in Querétaro
and Guanajuato, Mexico. For more info, see
www.kathrynmueller.com.
Mueller: Just as when preparing an art song, I create a character and a subtext so that I have a reason to sing the aria. Also as in art song singing, when text repeats I make different choices of articulation, dynamics, vocal color, amount of vibrato (I especially like using different vocal colors—it’s freeing that Baroque music doesn’t have to be perfect bel canto singing all the time), and whether to ornament or not.
That being said, the amount of variation I choose depends on the group I’m performing with and the audience. Musical ideals were different in the Baroque period, and music was often intended to have one affect (or emotion) for an entire section. That’s when I draw on my characterization to keep my singing from getting stale and static. Even though I may be portraying one affect through the whole A section of a da capo aria, I have dramatic motivation and different shades of that affect.
Brent Wissick, early music specialist and performer
Brent Wissick is the Zachary Taylor Smith Distinguished Term Professor in the Department of Music at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he has taught cello, viola da gamba, and chamber music since 1982. A member of Ensemble Chanterelle and principal cellist of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, he is also a frequent guest with the American Bach Soloists, Folger Consort, Boston Early Music Festival, Concert Royal, Dallas Bach Society, Vancouver Early Music Festival, and Collegio di Musica Sacra in Poland.
Wissick: It’s useful to remember that the recitatives in Baroque music are there to advance the plot, while the aria is usually a reflection of the character’s thoughts and response. Even within that single “affect” there are numerous things a fine singer and a good team of accompanists can do with those repetitions of text.
After all, the poet wrote a text with a conventional number of syllables considered appropriate for vocal music in that language, but the composer could choose how many times to repeat some of those words to emphasize them (or, in some cases, provide good vowels for vocal display). But when singer and instruments actually respond to each other to manipulate strong and weak (or long and short) syllables, as well as dissonant and consonant harmonies and different key colors or varied phrase lengths, the repetitions can become fascinating. It’s boring only if you don’t know what to do with the difference between, say, D major and B minor, or if you sing (and accompany) an appoggiatura with the same color as its resolution.
And it is very important for all the instrumentalists as well as the singers to know the text and its meanings. I think that’s an important part of the early music scene. The instrumentalists who specialize in early music don’t just treat vocal music as a gig. They are part of the interpretation and usually feel they are part of a collaboration. The singers usually know the names of their orchestra members. How many big-time divas can say they know the name of anyone in the pit besides the conductor?
