Conductor William Fred Scott enjoyed a distinguished 20-year career as principal conductor with Atlanta Opera. CS caught up with him last spring at a time when he was settling into a new phase in his career. No longer part of the Atlanta Opera, he remains an active player in the business as head of the Opera Department at Brenau University, where he provides students with a unique perspective of opera ranging from opera as a profession to opera as a sacred artistic experience.
Were you raised in a musical environment?
I grew up in Thomasville, Ga. and we had at least four good classical concerts a year. The remarkable pianist Gina Bachauer came frequently. I heard Van Cliburn in 1961. Arthur Rubinstein actually played there the night I was born. I played the organ in church and loved choral music, but I wasn’t exposed to opera until I went to Georgetown University.
Not having the talent to become a concert pianist, I decided to become a career diplomat. Unfortunately, I had no idea how that worked. I figured [that] once you got the degree you became ambassador to France. What could be simpler?
At any rate, upon arriving at Georgetown, I heard that Paul Hume, musical editor of the Washington Post, also conducted the Georgetown Glee Club. I went to him and mentioned that I was a pianist in case he had a need for one. As luck would have it, he did. After two years of playing the piano for him, Paul saw that I had the makings of a conductor. He took it upon himself to teach me everything I needed to know about music, and I became an extra member of the Hume family.
The list of artists who frequented the Hume home after concerts was just fantastic: Gérard Souzay, Eugene Normandy, George Szell, Leonard Bernstein, Walter Legge, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf—they all came regularly.
Remarkable that all of these artists would be close to a critic.
[Laughs.] Well, they loved him because he knew what he was talking about. Paul played the organ and the piano, wrote music, conducted the choir, had published two books, taught college, and had an English degree from the University of Chicago. He was nothing like the music critics we have today, but that’s another topic altogether.
After my graduation, I was approached by Wolftrap’s head of the music staff with a peculiar proposition. Sarah Caldwell was staging Prokofiev’s War and Peace and had just fired her fifth pianist. Would I be interested to come and play? I didn’t know Sarah Caldwell or War and Peace, yet I didn’t have the good sense to decline and found myself sight-reading the score during those sessions.
Ms. Caldwell took an interest in me, and I became her pianist and chorus master for seven years. In June 1975, we were performing Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Beverly Sills and Tatyana Troyanos, but Sarah was rushed to the hospital with broken ribs, and I found myself in the orchestra pit. All of the sudden I was an opera conductor!
What brought you back to Atlanta?
We invited Robert Shaw to conduct Berlioz’s Damnation of Faust. I came to Atlanta to prepare the chorus to his specification, and we established a wonderful working relationship—so much so that in 1981, he offered me a position as associate conductor at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, which I was happy to accept. I thought it would be wise to learn more symphonic repertoire. Three years later, I accepted an offer from the Atlanta Opera to become their artistic advisor, and when Mr. Shaw decided to retire I turned my full attention to the Atlanta Opera as artistic director, a post that I held until 2005.
Atlanta doesn’t boast many appropriate venues for opera. At one point, the company held performances at the 4,600-seat Civic Center. Did you adjust anything for the singers when performing in such large venues?
The problem is the sensitivity of the conductor and the size of the orchestra, rather than the size of the venue. Larger orchestras can play quieter than smaller orchestras, simply because the instruments in the larger orchestra can play as quietly as they like and the sound has a wonderful, plush cushion. Every instrument is slightly out of tune with their neighbor, so more instruments will have more fuzzy edges of sound between them. Smaller orchestras with fewer instruments produce screechy sounds, and the individual players become obvious. Under this same principle, eight players can’t be as loud as 16 because you don’t get the same amplitude of sound. If you have a good-size orchestra that really plays in tune, you’d be amazed how easy it is to sing over it.
What about the idea that lighter voices can sing bigger repertoire in smaller houses?
If you don’t have the voice to sing Pinkerton, don’t be lured into accepting the engagement because it’s taking place in a small house. That is just as much damage to your voice as singing in large venues. Puccini’s wall of sound will still be the same, and in a smaller hall with a screechy orchestra, anything that goes wrong will be quite transparent.
I conducted “Bohème” and [La] fille du régiment all over New England with the Opera Company of Boston touring group, in venues with no real orchestra pit and 35 players. Under these conditions, the orchestra was harder to balance, edgier, and harder to sing over than when we had 70 players in the pit in the opera house in Boston. And you’d be surprised how noisy that Donizetti score is! It has one of the shrillest, noisiest orchestrations.
Most Bel Canto composers have the base harmonies doubled by three trombones and a tuba. So the adorable light soprano who accepts an engagement for L’elisir d’amore because it’s in a small venue will get to the big ensembles and the orchestra will wipe her out.
This is why I think that it’s important for singers to study roles with a conductor or with singers that have performed them. I have great respect for coaches, but for the most part they don’t coach from their knowledge of the orchestral score. They coach from the piano with the singer in a workroom. Learn roles with someone who has been in the trenches, because that person is going to be able to tell you better.
So coaching may not be as relevant as some think?
I don’t want to denigrate the job that many great coaches do. Many are not only great pianists but are amazing linguists. That said, there is a lot of coach fraud going on. People may be taking your money to tell you that Gemma Bellincioni used to hold this note a little longer than everyone else. Well, who cares!
In the old days there were no coaches, and singers learned roles with the conductors. Today, the best coach will say: “These are the idioms of this language.” “This is the performance tradition,” etc. The coach has the honest set of ears, and it’s incredibly important to have that input.
What sort of program do you offer to young singers at the International Opera Center at Brenau University?
The Opera Center at Brenau has a public face, a private face, and an educational thrust. The public face consists of bringing professional singers to present recitals and stay and teach masterclasses with the students. Kit Reuter-Foss, Brenda Harris, Bradley Howard, Aimee Willis, Kurt Ollmann, and Jeff Morrissey have so far done it. These recitalists are not only friends of mine, but they also have credentials that include the Metropolitan Opera and various leading European houses, so they’re bona fide stars. There is a public component that is combined with the educational phase in the form of a springtime performance, which gives students a chance to work with professionals. Finally, there’s the private aspect of the opera center, which is all educationally focused.
I’m fascinated with the educational component: It is constantly in a state of revision in our efforts to include opera as part of its focus. We have invented this opera certificate program, which is similar to a post-graduate program or a performance certificate. The real attraction for students is that if you come to Brenau and you graduate with a four-year degree, you get the fifth year for free. That fifth year performance certificate essentially prepares you for your next step, be it graduate school or a professional career. The singer is required to take theater electives, and a full-scale language course, in addition to getting very individual coaching, diction, grammar, and an opera seminar with me.
It’s an old-fashioned, medieval sort of master-student relationship. These students spend most of their time with me, and I don’t mean this to sound immodest. We have the resources, the time, and the flexibility to focus a great deal of time on one-on-one training. As the program builds, we will get more conductors, pianists, coaches, and singers that have worked in opera companies to come to teach. Theoretically, if you do this for a year, you will be better prepared to get into grad school than if you had jumped into a big conservatory from a music program that only had 18 majors.
This gives students, particularly in the Southeast, the option not to move to New York City or Indiana University just yet.
That’s right, and you may not want to. If you just got out of school, you may discover that you can’t go rehearse in Paris just yet. You might just need some place quiet where you can really work on your French skills. And so this is a great place to be, especially in this region.
Taking into account your current involvement with young American students, would you say there is an American method of training, or “sound”?
Yes, in a way. I have worked with a lot of American singers and generally, they know their technique very well. They know what I call pronunciation, but are less proficient in their ability to converse and think in that language. If their ears were as trained as their minds, they would understand the nuances of a language and their pronunciation would turn into expressivity.
We are absolute sticklers about IPA, which is great in the sense that it reminds you what the generally accepted pronunciation is. But the closed “e” of a soprano in Paris is entirely different from the closed “e” from a singer in Marseille. Listen to native singers; you may discover that all of them butcher their language as far as the rules are concerned. I fear that in our training of American singers, we have kept personality out of the voice in favor of good pronunciation and good rhythm. Now, you should definitely have those things, but I’m not sure that we’re not making a blander singer who is well prepared.
Would we know how to deal with a Leonard Warren or Rosa Ponselle if they were to come along? They had this unbelievable sound but didn’t really read music. They took their teachers up to some cabin in upstate New York and spent their summers learning new roles. I fear that our conservatories wouldn’t know how to handle those kinds of voices right now. I imagine that some of the burden rests with opera producers and whether they would be willing to accept voices as striking as say, Callas.
Or Olivero.
I conducted Tosca with Magda Olivero in 1978 in Boston when we opened our new theater. It was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life. This was a voice that was fluttery in its vibrato, not well produced, and the register changes were very obvious. And yet, she was that character. You couldn’t take your eyes or your ears away from her. Nowadays, I see Toscas and I forget who they were by the time I get home. They have no vocal personality whatsoever. I have no idea what has caused this, and I don’t really know where it’s going.
What annoys you about young singers today?
A lack of intellectual curiosity. Don’t wait until you’re told to learn an aria to begin your process of study. You should already know certain things that you would like to sing. This goes hand in hand with being prepared. It doesn’t cost any more money to be well prepared. Yet, singers are woefully unprepared in their languages, and it is vital to learn them if you want to be part of this business.
I’m also concerned with this sense of entitlement I see everywhere: “I enrolled in this school for a week, so you owe me a job.” Young singers combine their sense
of entitlement with a lack of awareness about where they fit into the picture. This comes about because they haven’t really listened to anybody else sing, which is the result of a lack of intellectual curiosity. And not having a gigantic record collection is not even a good excuse anymore. If you’re learning the last scene of Faust, you can log unto YouTube and see Kraus, Alagna, and everybody from 50 years ago to one year ago. Click, click, click. You don’t have to spend money on CDs anymore.
Don’t you think the whole “click-away” concept is making people complacent?
If your entire life is a click of the Internet, then that’s not good enough. For me, this art form is a deep spiritual calling. I love coaching singers and getting them to understand why Gounod does this or Verdi does that. Playing the piano, conducting the orchestra—along with literature, good food, good paintings, and good friends—that’s how my soul gets fed. And that’s something else to think about: To be good onstage, you must have a lot of life around you. So great singers have seen great paintings. The singer engaged to sing Don Ottavio should study the paintings of Velasquez to see how people stood in that time period.
You, individually, have to stand for something higher, and that may be harder than ever now because it’s so easy to be complacent. Just look at Broadway. The days of Ethel Merman are gone and everything can be fixed electronically. Why does anyone need to learn how to sing? It may be easy to take that easiest road out, but I think there is more at stake than that.
The calling of opera is too great. The calling of life is too great.
