Mezzo-soprano Gloria Lane may be most famous for her work as Carmen. But what is possibly her most-remembered performance of Bizet’s heroine was thanks to tenor David Poleri. Singing Don José in that evening’s performance with New York City Opera, Poleri walked off the stage in the middle of their final duet.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, what do I do now?’” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2005. “I looked at the conductor, and he was busy looking at the score, and I decided, ‘Well, I’ve got some high notes to sing, so damned if I’m going to get off the stage.’”
Lane sang both parts and stabbed herself with an imaginary knife that night, which led to raves for the singer. “I have a feeling when I die, they’ll tell that story,” she said.
Whether it’s as deliberate as a walk-off or as unexpected as a set piece breaking (remember the famous incident of Puccini’s original Tosca singing “Vissi d’arte” from the floor when the chaise longue collapsed), life always comes into a live performance. Part of the glory of live theater, it can also leave singers scared out of their wits.
“It happens when a prop starts to roll towards the pit,” says tenor Ryan MacPherson. “Swords fly; furniture breaks. One of the worst things about Così is dealing with the mustaches. You have so many quick-changes and you end up with half a caterpillar hanging off your nose.”
Improvisation classes have become popular with corporate offices, high school students, and prison inmates. And, even in what some consider to be one of the most rigid art forms, improv has begun to take hold on opera. We are now in an age where some works have been performed for over 400 years. Many old-guard audience members are so used to La bohème or Le nozze di Figaro that they could probably stage a “traditional” production in their sleep. And if a singer doesn’t approach a work with perspective and adventurousness, the piece can quickly lope from a twenty-first-century art form to a nineteenth-century museum piece.
“One of the things that’s really attractive about improv is that it’s happening now,” explains Armando Diaz, a founding member of Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (New York and Los Angeles), a co-founder of Magnet Theater (New York), and a 20-year improv vet.
“Obviously, people are with us seeing something created in front of them. It’s an interactive relationship—you really pay attention and hang onto every moment. The discoveries are really exciting. I think that makes it very accessible to a wide range of people. They’re seeing themselves up there.
“And plus, it’s a $5 show, so it’s hard to go wrong.”
While there’s not much that can be done about the ticket price, there is a lot that singers can do to give the audience the sense of an interactive relationship—one that would increase the accessibility of what many consider to be an inaccessible form of music.
Best known to most singers as cadenzas and ornamentation, particularly in da capo arias, improv extends well beyond the music. “When you say ‘improv,’ already you’re not just talking about notes. That might be the last thing that classical musicians might even think about,” says soprano Melissa Fogarty. “It is important to allow oneself to be prepared for anything that might go on onstage: a prop not being there or somebody falling down or a missed entrance.
“If we are rigid and expect things to be a certain way every night, we’re going to be in trouble—and that doesn’t have anything to do with singing.”
Improvisation is based on the notion of “Yes, and . . .” MacPherson, who has training in theater as well as opera, recounts the first rule of improv that he—and most people—learn: “Never say no. It’s like when you watch Whose Line Is It Anyway? You never see someone on the show say, ‘Hey, Wayne Brady! I like your haircut!’ And hear Brady say, ‘No.’ That would be it; the show would be done.”
No matter how ridiculous a statement in an improv exercise is, the scene partner’s duty is to say “Yes, and . . . ,” affirming the previous statement and adding something else. Every exercise, every game, every scene is built on this simple idea—an idea that can very easily carry over into any art form to successful results.
“You realize how much you say ‘no’ to things,” says Diaz. “You realize how easy it is to be stiff, closed off from people. When you start to say ‘yes’ to things, it really frees you up.”
Freeing yourself up as a singer is a skill that can carry you from practice room to audition to rehearsal room to stage. Theaters like Magnet and Upright Citizens Brigade offer general classes at modest fees to the public, and there is a slew of variations including movement and viewpoints—a class that Fogarty took to help with her singing and performance.
“What this ended up doing for me outside of the class especially helped in auditions which, as we all know, are absolute hell. You go into a room, you’re not in costume, and you don’t have anybody else with you.
“However, thanks to this class, I was able to focus, see something interesting in the room that I could put my focus on, or be motivated by something that was happening at the auditioner’s table and bringing that into my performance rather than just standing and singing.”
In coaching sessions or voice lessons, don’t be afraid to play around with your music (indeed, the idea of “play” was echoed by every person I spoke with for this article). Whether it’s a Handel aria or a Schubert Lied, there’s no singularly perfect way to perform it—the best way to perform it is in the best way you can, knowing what you know and having the background you have. As such, it may take you a few days or weeks to find your own perfect performance—and even then, you should never be able to do it in the exact same way two consecutive nights.
“Don’t just do what’s on the page,” says baritone Stephen Salters. “You have to reinvent it, you have to re-create it. Perform a role, perform an aria, perform a recit 10 times in a row and they’re all different.”
Indeed, even in a piece itself, singers with a strong sense of improv and of being in the moment will be in a different place than they were 10 seconds prior. And 10 seconds later, they’ll be in yet another place. Singers like Maria Callas were able to champion this method in a time when most divas and divos preferred the method of standing and singing—and singing the same way in each performance, regardless of what happened onstage.
Rehearsals are also an important place to explore your work and to bond with your cast mates. Often productions and concerts come together in a whirlwind of sing-throughs, stagings, techs, and performances. As quickly as they happen, they’re done.
Doubtlessly, there is more wiggle-room in new productions. In a recent Yale Institute for Music Theatre workshop of Christopher Cerrone’s Invisible Cities, Salters and his fellow singers used much of the time as improvisation to help Cerrone’s composition process.
“We basically went through the piece the way it was written and, after a couple of days of that, he had three scenes out of a proposed nine or ten that were done. We tried to help him along, individually and collectively, with our expertise. However, we weren’t really in his brain yet, so [director Robin Guarino] suggested, ‘Let’s do some improv-ing.’”
Improv-ing turned out to be improving for the piece.
“We wanted to give the composer a better idea of how singers worked and functioned, and we needed to give him context. He basically had a Cadillac before him for two days: eight singers, two pianists, a director, a conductor, and a dramaturg at his disposal. And he didn’t necessarily know how to deal with that.
“A composer is someone who’s writing and obviously has things in his mind, but it was fascinating to see how his mind opened as he realized, ‘Oh! You guys can do that!’”
Such projects may seem like once-in-a-lifetime opportunities; however, there is room for singers to bring a similar exploration to standard rep—even in a revival.
“Jonathan Miller is here this summer,” says MacPherson who, when interviewed, was singing Alfredo in Glimmerglass Opera’s La traviata. Though a new production, Miller had directed Traviata in 1989, and while he had ideas as to how the production would play out, he allowed for some flexibility. “He’s letting it flow, and a lot of the staging comes naturally out of what we’re singing and what we’re feeling. At that point, it’s very exciting. Sometimes it works; other times you have to stop.”
Even in revivals without the original director on hand, there is still a framework singers can be creative within, whether it’s the finessing of a vocal line or the use of a prop.
Or, something less expected can happen in production—revival or not—either deliberately (in the case of Gloria Lane’s Carmen) or accidentally. In 2008’s Giulio Cesare at Glimmerglass, soprano Lyuba Petrova was presented with a peculiar challenge: in her scene leading into “Da tempeste,” a soldier from the previous scene was still on what should have been a bare stage.
“I really was worried, because I didn’t know if he didn’t feel well or maybe he fainted (the schedule at that point was really intense and all the boys in the ensemble were basically working 24/7). But then my scene was coming up and the orchestra was playing and I had to continue.
“It was not possible to have someone onstage, so I knew I had to take someone offstage before that aria. The music was somewhat sad and tragic, so I figured I should do something at this moment. I came up to him and tried to gently shake him while singing, and then I saw him open his eyes and realized he was onstage a little longer than he should have been and he exited.”
Petrova had some training in improv at the Moscow Conservatory, and it served her well in “Cesare”—better than she had expected.
“I heard from a friend of mine that there was someone in the audience that particular night. It was his first time at Glimmerglass, and he was saying something like ‘I wish I’d come more often. It was a beautiful production. I especially loved that moment where Cleopatra caressed that soldier.’”
Similarly this past summer, Joyce DiDonato made headlines when she broke her fibula onstage during a performance of Il barbiere di Siviglia at Covent Garden. Ever the trooper, DiDonato not only continued the performance in which she injured herself, she continued the run of the show—first in a wheelchair, then on crutches.
“That very first night [in a wheelchair] every single, solitary thing was improvised by the entire cast,” the American mezzo wrote in her blog, Yankee Diva. “I grew in confidence and made the decision that there was no point in trying to hide the fact that Rosina was on wheels. I simply had to run with it, so to speak. And within the very first phrases of that famous aria, I felt immediately how trapped Rosina actually is.”
Far from a solo performance, DiDonato and the cast exchanged “yes” after “yes.” For example, there is one scene in which Rosina, believing herself to be betrayed, normally trashes the set—including kicking in a footlight. Understanding its necessity to the staging, soprano Jennifer Rhys-Davies (playing Berta) destroyed the set in a show of sisterhood, following DiDonato’s onstage directions as Rosina.
A solid improv education, however, is second to a solid grasp of your song or role.
“The number one thing, no matter what, is to know your music forwards and backwards without depending on anyone else,” says MacPherson. “If someone drops a line, you can’t be dependent on that to find your next pitch. Improv skills are a benefit to the singer, because you’re ready to be thrown a curve ball. Your brain is able to react in some creative way to make it work—so long as you know the music.”
And once that part is done, play on.
