So I’m back on home ground. I have many reasons to celebrate and want to dedicate this blog to a few of them.
There are so many friends who welcome me home, and a few of them decorate this blog. Everyone passing through my North Country at this time of year is offered a wonderful costume show by my friends and their family members.
It is a short display of glory before they go to bed for the winter. This fleeting beauty is just one of the many local natural adornments that surround me and enrich my life. Happy to show them off, I often remark that this North Country of mine is really God’s country.
Those eight days away from friends and family that I dedicated to playing Johnny Appleseed with Garcia’s wisdom also enriched my life. Unlike the local arboreal color parade, I can’t show you anything without permission, but I can tell the story of three lovely gifts that make me smile every time they come to mind.
When a singer asks for my help, I try to imagine the best possible
future that could be attained by the help seeker. If I can see an accomplished artist as a possible future for the singer, I set to work, using everything I can bring to the task, toward helping the singer to develop into the artist that I can foresee in the future. I am no more able to guarantee an outcome than anyone else, and like every time period in History, ours is interestingly in flux. Who can know of outcomes not yet established?????…… Well,, I do have an answer to that question, but it needs a website of its own.
On the day she arrived, a mezzo soprano, whom I met in a previous Master Class in Rome, planted her feet on the platform and sang two arias on which we had collaborated since our first meeting in Rome. Her performances earned rousing applause. Her singing displayed all the Garcia technique I had introduced to her and her interpretation included every detail of the art I wanted her to master. I asked her where she had
learned to sing those two arias so well and she smiled a big smile and pointed directly at me while mouthing the word “you”. On top of this bang up job of tossing back at me everything I had thrown at her in her lessons, she tossed off NEW things.
The skill and understanding of a great craftsperson is sufficient for delivering everything someone might ask you to do as a singer, but the label “artist” should only be applied to singers who come up with their own successful mix of messages and effects. Paola Cacciatori delivered on all counts this time, and I have great hopes that she will move from “Budding Artist” to “Accomplished Artist” quickly.
My second celebratory Torino story has another gifted soprano at its center. I also met her in that Rome Master Class where I first encountered Ms. Cacciatori.
She came to Torino wanting to prepare arias on which we had never collaborated. She also surprised me and made me smile a lot by taking every Garcia suggestion I tossed at her and turning it to good use. She grabbed every artistic detail and concept I passed on to her as well, garnering good results in her performance. Claudia Alvarez Calderon yanked one of my “Great Crafts Person” labels out of my hand and applied to herself as I applauded her for letting me see our collaboration bear fruit in studio and on stage. This, however, is not the end of the Calderon portion of my Torino story.
I have every hope that Opera is going to survive the present crisis that faces the Arts generally, and it is with that hope that I write these blogs, give voice lessons and run the travel industry gauntlet to play “Johnny Garcia-seed”. Ms. Calderon asked me to endorse her as a teacher of singing. It is with great joy that I do so. When she asked, I told her she was going to have to earn my endorsement, and she earned it both in the studio and on the Master Concert Stage. She knows more than she can yet put into practice as a singer, and what she knows is mountains more than the average voice teacher I keep hearing about in the lamentations of many modern voice students. My endorsement of her as knowledgeable in the craft of singing is of small value. She will have to earn the label “Great Teacher of Singing” by transferring what she knows to others so that they can eventually appropriate the label “Great Crafts Person” for themselves. It is my prayer that Garcia’s banner will be taken up by many students of singing, and, when appropriate, they would take on the mantel of “Johnny or Joanna Garcia-seed”.
If Ms. Calderon finds some students for Garcia’s teachings, I will be waiting to hear some good results.
My third reason to party is a young man. We share a common…. Well, I would say uncommon friend. Alessandro Mormile has been telling me about Pietro Di Bianco for a long time. Sr. Mormile finally brought us together for the Torino Master Class. Pietro has exactly what Garcia tells us to look for. His gift is so exceptional that even the Opera World of today recognizes he has something. I can see for Pietro a future artistic life equal to the lives of the greatest singing artists the World of Opera has ever enjoyed. I hope he will allow me to help him become the artist I know his voice can enable him to become.
With that off my chest, I am back to my homework, which is no less important to my project to see the Operatic Stage populated with exciting singers.
With giving lessons, Garcia translation to do and Christmas coming………. Etc. I expect to be silent until 2016.