During the first years of our summer program, we performed at L’istituto di Santa Margherita di Savoia per I non vedenti, a home for indigent blind women. The property contained a spectacular courtyard with perfect acoustics. The women who lived there, many of whom had been there since birth, adored the opera. They were present for all rehearsals and were our honored guests during performances.
One of them, whom I will always remember, knew every opera by heart. She would always sit in the front row and protest vociferously, striking her cane on the floor, anytime a singer made a mistake, especially in the recitative. Later, she would come to me and say, “Louisa, how is it that Susanna in the third act sang “. . . .” instead of “. . . . ” To her, the mistake was a personal affront, and often to assuage her I would sing the particular section to demonstrate that we knew what we were doing.
An extreme reaction from an audience member? Perhaps, but it is not as rare as you might think. Performing in Italian for an Italian audience has many challenges, and one is that the audience demands that serious attention be paid to the original score and libretto—the correct notes, the correct diction, the correct meaning, and the correct emotion. For the serious singer, whether you perform in Italy or in the United States, this is important to keep in mind as you approach memorizing and delivering the recitative.
Too many times during performances from professional companies in the United States, I have been disappointed and distracted by less than perfect diction and by the fact that it was obvious that the singers on stage did not always understand what they were singing about.
Da Ponte’s libretti, for instance, are full of practical jokes that Italian audiences know and react to, but not if the singer does not understand them. In America, only a few members of the audience have this understanding, but the entire performance can still be compromised.
When we hold auditions for such roles as Zerlina, Despina, or Susanna, we have scores of young singers who sing all the arias pertaining to the roles beautifully. But I am interested in more than the arias. I also want to hear a page of secco recitative. That will tell me at once if the singer will be able to create a character, if she has the diction required to pull off such a difficult assignment, and if she really understands what she is singing about. I can also tell if there is a chance that this singer is teachable, if she will be willing to go through the difficult process of taking suggestions and accept being truly “coached” into the role.
The difficulty with Bel Canto libretti, especially those written by Da Ponte and in Rossini’s later operas, is that they do not mean what they appear to mean when literally translated. They are full of innuendoes and double entendres that often cause even the native speaker to stop and think: “Now, what exactly is meant by this?”
Dropping a double consonant, forgetting to roll an initial or final “r” does not seem very important to a singer who doesn’t understand the language. But it can destroy the dramatic impact of an entire phrase, an entire scene, even the whole opera. The same is true, of course, in English. If you don’t deliver the correct pronunciation and meaning of the words you are singing, you don’t do justice to the music.
How should you go about preparing a role such as Susanna, which has such a huge amount of recitatives? Start early—at least a year ahead of the time you would perform it. In the old Italian tradition, singers used to prepare a number of roles that were appropriate for their particular voices years before they ever had the opportunity to sing them. They called that mettere la parte in gola, “make it comfortable for the throat,” make it a second nature, and, of course, memorize it.
If you have learned the language, you are much ahead of the game, and you can do much of the initial work by yourself. If you do not know the language, you must get together with a coach or a voice teacher who does. From the very beginning, the diction must be impeccable: crisp consonants, and pure, resonant, bright vowels.
All the rules of good diction have to be respected by speaking the text before singing it. Speak the text as if you were an actor, understand the natural cantilena of the language, not as an American, but as a native would. Then when you sing it, it will sound natural and convincing. Your coach and voice teacher can help you insert the appropriate appoggiaturas in the right spots and help you with timing. Not all phrases are sung at the same speed, with the same urgency, or drama. Find the natural stresses in the speech rhythms: do not be trapped by the meter, use color, contrasts, special effects, and discard the rests when appropriate. If you know exactly what you are singing about, these suggestions will make sense.
Above all, if you want to sing in Italian, invest time in Italy. Listen to how people speak, go to Italian opera houses and hear Italian singers sing the same roles you are working on, listen to CDs after you have worked on the role. Observe how people use their hands and their bodies and, most of all, their facial expressions when they speak.
Many of the roles in Mozart operas recreate characters from the commedia dell’arte. If you sing like an Italian, but gesture like an American, you have not done your work. Invest time learning the language in which you will be singing. It will open doors for you that you would never have dreamed of before, of understanding the music and feeling perfectly at ease with the style because it was written and meant to be sung in that language.
I often show singers a segment from a video of a production of Natale in Casa Cupiello (Christmas with the Cupiello Family) by the great Eduardo de Filippo, a Neapolitan actor and author and a direct inheritor of the tradition of the commedia. De Filippo’s entire company are masters of the commedia tradition as well as Italian body language and gesture.
Likewise, Dario Fo in his Mistero Buffo, a series of medieval mysteries in which he impersonates a giullare (jester) playing several characters in the same play, demonstrates masterfully the same tradition. Both videos are produced by Einaudi and are available in Italy in bookstores.
Understanding the language, pronouncing it correctly, penetrating the culture from which the character has originated, taking great care to respect the particular epoch in which the work has been written , knowing all there is to know, musically and dramatically—not only of your part, but of everyone else’s—is where you need to be when you start the first rehearsal of an opera. The scope of this effort is communication. It is what every artist is hoping to achieve and the only means by which to move an audience.
