Vigata vagrancy

Debbie, my wife, and I have streamed the last of a series of films that we found available on the internet that were produced for the RAI. We fell in love with being carried away to a real town with a fantasy name: Vigata.

What has this to do with singing? Actually nothing, but after we finished all the Montalbano magic carpets to Sicily available on MHz we decided to watch a “bonus” interview video added to the long list of episodes that carried us one more time back to Italy. We landed in a conversation with the author of the Montalbano books: Andrea Camilleri. This person is almost as interesting and engaging as the stories he wrote. The point of why I want to talk about this microscopically important facet of our lives in retirement is that Camilleri tells Teresa Mannino in that interview a few things that everyone in THE ARTS should know. Some old people really do know things that the young need to hear. Since I don’t ask you to pay for these blogs, I’m not going to ask you to pay the freight to stream the interview.

First:  Art is not “Work”.

ROME, ITALY – FEBRUARY 20: Andrea Camilleri attends ‘La Scomparsa Di Pato’ photocall at Alfredo Restaurant on February 20, 2012 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Ernesto Ruscio/Getty Images)

In an official You Tube clip:

Camilleri says he had fun writing his stories.

I’ll include the captions they inserted on MHz:

Teresa: The one (book or story) you enjoyed writing the most?

Camilleri: No, I always enjoy writing.

Camilleri: If my writing should degenerate into work, I won’t write anymore. I don’t understand those people who say, “Such exhausting work! God, how tiring it is to write!” Relax! It’s certainly less tiring than unloading crates at the central market. Even though I sometimes do get tired, but without exaggerating. I’ve always said that my ideal is the lady on the trapeze.

Teresa: The lady on the trapeze?

Camilleri: Yes, at the circus. She looks beautiful, always smiling, right? She does a triple somersault the whole time smiling, lightly… And she doesn’t show the immense fatigue of the training. Because if she did, she would ruin your enjoyment as a spectator. It’s the same for me. I want to be a trapeze artist. I don’t want to convey the hard work in my writing. And so, I enjoy myself here. Understand? It isn’t work.

About fifteen minutes into the interview Camilleri discusses his manner of instruction for young actors. He has a lovely way of linguistically complicating a very simple principle. Great joy bubbled up in my heart as I listened to this grand “maestro” of the imaginative arts delineate what I believe to be true.

This is a link to a pirate YouTube that is good only for the fact that it is free: You Tube  The RAI must have pulled the full interview off its servers. The links in the first You Tube clip do not connect to anything. Money may make the world go round, but I try to make my ideas free.

Camilleri: Attention. An actor has a complex personality, and you must play, not with imposition, because with imposition at the most, you’ll end up a bad copy of yourself. You must be astute. You say “A” with someone so that “B” follows. I don’t think I ever was a teacher. Maybe an advisor. I came from a very severe school…. Horace’s. It’s a totally different way of considering didactics. But I was very severe, very attentive in the selection. But once they became students, I tried to understand, at most, what road they were taking. And on that road, I tried to clarify the doubts that could arise, and pave the way in reaching a result that would mirror their personality while it was being created.

Camilleri was well loved by his acting students, and for good reason. He says that he was very selective in choosing students, but more importantly he says he was concerned to guide the artists under his instructions to use the individual gifts they had to develop their interpretations reflecting that which was already part of their own personalities. It is easy for me to understand that Camilleri was seeking to find the core of the talent with which each actor was gifted. Garcia counted this as the first job of a singing teacher.

Garcia wrote:

“Often one needs an experienced judgement (sic) to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses.   Generally, these qualities are only in the rudimentary state, or well veiled by numerous faults from which it is necessary to free them.   The essential point is to first establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them by patient and orderly studies.”

The phrases “what road they were taking” + “reaching a result that would mirror their personality” and “recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the qualities” +  “first establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them” may seem to you to be completely different ideas. To me they are really the same idea. Garcia’s text directs the teacher to look for and discover the true nature of the vocal gift in each student before doing any technical development of the voice. Camilleri guided each of his students to develop characters for the stage that reflected the various facets of their own personality. I would say that Camilleri wanted each individual actor to use the natural personality gifts they possessed to enlighten the impersonation of any character they were working on. Garcia directs our attention toward vocal gifts, Camilleri points at complicated personality gifts. So what’s the difference? Different parts of the human organism. Camilleri certainly didn’t exclude the vocal gift from his attention, but it is only one small complication.

In that first link, Camilleri tells us all about one of my 10 commandments for an artist. He called his ideal a trapezista. An artist must present a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment while doing the work. An agent once told me that he wished I could make my singing seem difficult when I did auditions, but I refused to take that advice. I expect he knew what he was talking about, but my focus was not on pleasing him or the “Gate Keepers” to whom he wanted to sell me. I wanted to impersonate the tapezista that Camilleri was talking about. I wanted to sing the most difficult music and keep on smiling as if it were nothing. So should you. It is sad that “Gate Keepers” would seem to have a hard time recognizing difficult music without the interpreter ruining the composers intended message by communicating the stress under which the music places the artist. That would not be an artist in my book. More like a used car salesman.