“A lot of the students have gotten the message that the song is as much about the text as the music. But sometimes they interpret the text by itself, not realizing that the composer has interpreted it in another way.” – British accompanist Roger Vignoles
As our industry marches forward there will be a much greater demand on you being the complete package if you want to get hired. An operatic performer must have both a solid vocal and acting technique, a very good understanding and pronunciation of languages, know social protocol, show you are a great colleague and team player, and have working business skills and tools. And because so much of this is not included in most academic programs or degrees, it will be up to you to ferret out the best in your area to train and equip you adequately for the increasing challenges of the profession. When you get a job and rehearsals start, often the same issue arises, you think only of the voice, the voice, and the voice! The voice should be the vehicle and not the goal. Performing is about creating and telling a story as you take your audience on a journey, and not solely about vocal technique.
Here’s what I suggest, if you are still in University, why not explore the possibility of going to the Drama Dept. and see if you could audit or sign up for an acting class for a year or two or three. Likewise, go the School of Business and find out if there is a business course specifically for the arts and sign up. Find someone on campus who is a foreign exchange student from a country whose language you want to practice and spend time speaking with them in that language. Instead of getting stuck in You Tube listening to great singers, spend your time researching and digging up on line the background information about the composers and librettists whose work you are singing. Understand how the text and music work together and help shape the emotions of a line of music. Find the world time line for the period your piece was written in, plus the time line for when that particular opera is actually taking place. Visit museums of art and study how people dressed which would dictate how they moved. What about the class situation of your character in contrast to the rest of the characters in your particular piece. When you put this all in place before you go to your first rehearsal, you can remain flexible and curious and able to become part of the solution and not the problem.
It’s time to stop expecting that all you have to do to get into our industry is finish a degree and you will be hired. You have to be responsible for demanding the kind of education you know is needed to prepare you successfully for this ever changing and challenging career. Rehearsal times are much shorter so don’t sign a contract to do an opera if you don’t have the time, energy or money to go totally prepared on all fronts. This kind of rigorous pre-preparation might just get you asked back for another season.
Don’t do last minute wedging in of the rest of your necessary tools and skills. What I’m talking about here has to be as well developed as the vocal aspects of what you are focusing on. You can’t rely on inspiration or winging it. All facets of performance need to be first studied then made routine and habitual so you have the freedom to inhabit the character and perform.
As Daniel Helfgot, author of “The Third Line: the Opera Performer as Interpreter”, says, “If a singer doesn’t create, said singer cannot expect a miracle, that the director will solve the task in three or four weeks of rehearsals. If a singer sings beautiful sounds, said singer is ready for a good voice lesson, but not for a performance.”
David Ostwald, author of “Acting for Singers”, says, “In the four-hundred-year-old controversy about whether opera is primarily a musical or a dramatic form, Acting for Singers sides with the dramatic. It assumes, with the Renaissance masters who developed opera as a re-creation of Greek tragedy, that opera is about telling a story by combining singing and acting. Like Monteverdi, Gluck, Mozart, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Britten and Menotti, it envisions opera as a theater form in which singing, orchestral music, acting, text, and spectacle are inextricably interwoven.”
So, I hope it is obvious and beyond any doubt, that acquiring the skills and tools you need to become great at what you do, performing, is up to you and you alone. You know what I think, let me hear what you have to say. Avanti. Carol
