So spoke Russian tenor Vladimir Rosing in 1924, one year after founding the opera department of the Eastman School of Music. His vision was to create a training ground for great American singers. And so it was done.
In the beginning, the opera department focused exclusively on performance. Unlike today’s program—which offers a heavy dose of academic instruction along with performance-oriented coursework—the curriculum included ballet, movement, “mental training for the development of powers of concentration”, acting and vocal interpretation. Everything was geared towards producing stage-ready opera singers.
Rosing’s ultimate goal was to found an opera company of singers trained in the United States with productions performed in English. Under the auspices of the Eastman School, he formed the Rochester American Opera Company in 1924. The success of the new company, which derived much of its talent from Eastman’s pool of vocal students, was immediate. Within a few years the company changed its name to American Opera Company and went national.
At this point, Eastman’s opera department underwent a transformation that formed the basis of its current program. It began to look more academic and less like an opera company. According to text from a 1999 exhibit on the early opera department at Eastman’s Sibley Library:
“While practical performance experience would continue to constitute a mainstay of departmental requirements, the curriculum would be broadened to correspond to the junior, senior, and postgraduate years of the voice department. In addition, intensive training would be given not only in subjects directly related to operatic singing and acting, but also in subjects ensuring the students’ musicianship.”
That was in 1927.
74 years later, Eastman continues to be one of the country’s premier training grounds for singers of all kinds. Listed as number four in the nation by U.S. News & World Report in 1997, the voice program has produced some big names in opera, including soprano Renée Fleming, baritone William Sharp and rising star John McVeigh.
It helps to have an illustrious history if you want to attract top students, especially today, when music schools are highly competitive and tuitions are staggering. A year of undergraduate study at Eastman runs almost $32,000 (students slightly less for graduates), including tuition, room, board and essentials. That’s more than the current median wage in the United States. Yet aspiring singers continue to pay it for the privilege of studying with some of the country’s top vocal instructors and the chance to perform at the beautiful Eastman Theatre before taking a chance in the “real world.”
With 100 to 120 voice students enrolled at any given time, Eastman’s relatively small voice and opera faculty is operating at full capacity. Seven teachers provide vital vocal instruction for anywhere from 15 to 25 students each semester, and there are only two coaches in the entire department. One might expect a better ratio considering the price of admission.
“You don’t get a lot of coaching time because their schedules are very tight,” says soprano Elizabeth McDonald, who graduated with a Masters in Music from the program in 2000. “I had an hour every other week. For what you pay, it’s not that good. And you can’t go out and pay someone else to coach you—it’s Rochester, not New York City. That’s an issue.”
Still, McDonald and other students we interviewed had nothing but praise for the voice teachers and coaches they’ve worked with. Says doctoral student Tami Petty, who has spent more than five years at Eastman and is embarking on a professional career, “It’s a stellar staff with an unbelievable desire to educate young performers and help them in their career paths. They all have a desire to give direction to their students.”
Erin Palmer, a senior in the Bachelor’s of Music program at Eastman, agrees. She has studied under renowned voice teacher Carol Weber since the beginning of her second year. “She has been everything from a mother to a doctor to a speech therapist, just everything,” says Erin of her teacher. “The thing that I like about her is how quickly she grasped my needs and could communicate them to me. We do not waste one moment of the lessons.”
More of the same from McDonald, who has performed with Canadian Opera Company recently and is in hot pursuit of new professional challenges. She studied with William McIver and feels her investment in Eastman was worth every penny. “He’s amazing, both as a technician and as a support, and I continue to study with him. The hour lesson every week was great, but I was also able to stop by and ask his advice. I wouldn’t be able to do the things I’m doing now if it wasn’t for what he’s taught me.”
The intimacy of small vocal programs like Eastman’s is often conducive to better relationships among students and faculty because everyone knows everyone. Still, it is rare to encounter an environment as thoroughly cooperative and amiable. ‘Nurturing’ is the word that seems to best describe the experience.
“The chemistry among faculty is terrific here,” says Benton Hess, senior vocal coach and musical director of Eastman Opera Theatre. Hess insists that though he has taught at many prestigious institutions, including Boston Conservatory of Music and Rutgers, none has been as personally fulfilling. “We are lucky. We have a faculty meeting every
Wednesday and we all look forward to it. And I think we have very healthy relationships with students: they’re at my door all the time. I hope they feel I’m accessible, and I know that Steven Daigle is.”
Daigle, who works alongside Benson as associate professor of opera and dramatic director of Eastman Opera Theatre, expresses similar loyalty to his co-workers. “The faculty here has a great working relationship. It’s not uncommon for a teacher to send a singer to another teacher because they understand that person’s specialty. That takes a lot of selflessness. It’s a wonderful thing for a student to know that all teachers are willing to give them the best experience.”
For most students, a ‘best’ experience would include plentiful performance opportunities, particularly in the productions at Eastman Opera Theatre (EOT)—the very heart of the opera department. EOT does three major productions each year, two fully staged and one smaller ‘black box’ in studio space.
The first work of the 2001-02 season was Conrad Susa’s Transformations, based on the dark poetry of Anne Sexton, which received excellent reviews in November 2001. The next production will be Stephen Sondheim’s Passion (February, 2002) in black box, followed by a fully staged rendition of Puccini’s La Bohème (April, 2002) at the Eastman Theatre.
Casting for EOT is done twice a year, once in spring for the fall production and once in fall for the remaining two works. Daigle describes the complex process of choosing and casting productions, “We always consider the voice pool we have among students when choosing productions. For example, we wouldn’t pick a title like La Bohème if we only had one Mimi. As for the decisions about casting, it’s important to us that everyone gets a chance. Benson and I try to think in terms of equality in casting.”
This honorable goal, however, does not pan out for every student. Getting cast is much tougher for sopranos because there are many more of them competing for every role in their voice type. McDonald, for example, found the casting process frustrating. “There are two tenors who get everything and meanwhile sopranos are fighting for roles,” she says, though she does not fault the program for this inequity. “Even though the performance was less than I would have liked, everyone has a chance, graduates and undergraduates, and that’s very positive.”
Tenor John McVeigh, who attended Eastman from 1988 to 1993, performed in many EOT productions despite his undergraduate status. “I was in an opera every semester in my junior and senior years doing lead roles because there simply were not a lot of tenors. And in my first year I was in Bohème, where I got great experience onstage and backstage. It certainly has helped in my professional career.”
Benson notes that though most of those cast in La Bohème this time around are graduate students, the two Rodolfos are an undergrad and a doctoral student. “If there’s someone who’s qualified, they can and do get cast,” he says. “In Transformations, we had two doctoral students, several graduates and several undergrads, including a sophomore. It’s great for everyone that way—the young ones can look up to the grads and learn from them and the grads get experience helping younger students.”
The idea of learning from your peers is popular at Eastman, and bitter rivalries like those encountered in comparable vocal programs are frowned upon. This became evident to Palmer very soon in her first year as an undergraduate, “When I first came I was absolutely in heaven. You walk down the halls and first-rate musicians are practicing everywhere. And you learn from them as well as from the teachers. Of course, there’s some rivalry, but those who maintain a negative attitude find out real fast that it doesn’t go over well.”
Doctoral student Tami Petty, who has been teaching at Colorado State University Fort Collins and performing in venues such as Chautauqua Opera, San Francisco Opera Center, San Francisco Ballet, and Bronx Opera, feels that Eastman equipped her well for life outside the conservatory. “I was there for five years and every class had a strong supportive feeling,” she explains. “There still is competition, but it’s positive and healthy. They teach you to be a good colleague.”
In the areas of student relations and quality instruction, Eastman is second to none. And though rival schools may offer a greater number of full-scale opera productions per year, the satisfaction rating among Eastman students is extraordinarily high. This may be because teachers respond to student concerns and the voice program continues to evolve.
According to Daigle, the department started a new curriculum five years ago geared toward providing more performance experience. At that time mainstage productions were the focus. Now, he says, students are being exposed to all different forms of performance, which contributes to their professional deportment and their acting abilities. In addition, the department is thinking of adding another mainstage production to ensure that all seniors get a chance at the juicier EOT roles.
Students Petty and Palmer both give Eastman high marks for performance opportunities. “In my junior year, I had a chance to play Flora in A Turn of the Screw,” says Palmer. “I’ve also done a lot of recitals, mine and other people’s, scenes and some competitions—it’s been a good, good experience.”
And by all accounts, EOT productions are first rate. “They were really fantastic,” recalls McVeigh. “I remember going to some of the ‘B’ houses in the smaller towns in Europe and thinking that our productions at Eastman were better. We had great singers and the production level was really good.”
Still, as with every voice program, there is room for improvement. Petty would like to see the addition of another recital because “we learn the most by experience.” And Palmer cites other areas where the program could stand to improve. “We don’t have a dance or movement class. And I would incorporate acting earlier on in the curriculum,” she says. “That should start in freshman year. A lot of people are just awkward on stage when they’re beginning.”
For McVeigh this is a serious drawback. “One of the major things that Eastman lacks is a dance program,” he says. “We were talking about it ten years ago when I was there. It’s important because so many singers don’t know how to use their bodies. There must be movement, and not just a two-week class for an opera workshop. I also think there should be a professional studies program, where you take multiple voice lessons per week and coachings and you are performing whatever you plan to do—opera, jazz, Broadway.”
Daigle and his colleagues know that their voice program isn’t perfect, and many of the issues students would like to see addressed have already been discussed in faculty policy meetings, including the addition of dance to the regular curriculum. “I’d also like to add an Artists Diploma program of some kind,” says Daigle. “Some students are specifically motivated to be performers and we’d like to accommodate them. This is already in the works.”
Other complaints from students who would like to see more performance-oriented curricula include too much emphasis on academic subject matter and too heavy a choral requirement.
Hess tends to disagree. “The fact that we’re affiliated with the University of Rochester means that the academic requirement is stringent,” he says. “This can be a bone of contention. My retort is that it never hurts to be overqualified.” As for the other issue, he admits that all voice students are required to take chorus, though some do get exemptions. And he sincerely believes that students learn a lot from it.
McVeigh, who has been performing steadily at prestigious houses such as Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera, Los Angeles Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago in recent years, agrees that the chorus experience has tremendous value. “I was in chorale and as much as I hated it, it taught me so much. You learn important skills like following a conductor, reading music quickly, working with different languages and, most importantly, being part of an ensemble. There are times when you do big ensemble pieces onstage, a perfect example being the last act of Otello.”
What Hess would like to see is more financial aid. “There’s never enough and it’s a bugaboo. We wish that some fabulously wealthy person would give a whole bunch of money and say it could all go to singers. What we have now is mainly talent-based financial aid, the amount of which is determined by the student’s initial audition. One good thing is that once they get here, they’re not stuck with the financial package that they got. They can re-audition and frequently end up getting more.”
The scarcity of financial aid means that only those with strong auditions or money can afford to attend Eastman, a fact that makes going there even more prestigious. But in the end, is it really worth it? That depends.
Despite the imperfections, students and graduates interviewed for this article wouldn’t trade their experiences at Eastman for anything, and each feels that the training they received has made them better singers and all around musicians. Not only that, they feel gratitude to the teachers who made their education memorable by providing a constructive environment in which to grow. But Eastman is not the only place, nor is it the easiest to access, where one could get such results.
Says Petty, “As highly as I recommend Eastman and its faculty, the most important thing for any singer is to find a teacher who works for you. Find a place where you’ll get performing opportunities, especially sopranos since they usually have the hardest time. And do as many different aspects of the craft as possible because it all contributes to your artistry as a singer.”
