1000 Words on Chickens, Eggs, Opera and Singers
The question is about the order of things, like: “Which came first, the Chicken or the Egg?”
The answer is dependent upon what you assume to be true. It is a grand scale dividing line that separates people of faith. For the person of the Christian faith the assumption that His Scriptures are telling the truth gives rise to answering that the chicken was created before it could lay that first egg. A person who has faith in another god will be much harder pressed for an answer. Wikipedia sort of rests my case.
The “HOT STUFF” of which I wrote on 8 March gives me ammunition for a much smaller argument. It’s about what is going on with “Opera” these days. Which came first; “Opera” or the “Opera Singer”?
Let me put this question in perspective. I have always felt that the craft of singing and the performance art in which I participated was not much more important to Life on Earth than flower arrangements might be to a soldier in a war zone. So this question, as applied to “Opera” “Opera Singer”, is not as important as “Chicken” “Egg”. The soldier needs to be fed breakfast: “Egg” and then for dinner: Roast “Chicken”… If you’re a Southern boy: Fried “Chicken”. If one part of the equation is missing the soldier may eventually starve and not be able to win the war. If both parts of the “Opera” “Opera Singer” or “Flowers” “Flowers in Vase” dichotomy are absent the soldier can still be fed and fight battles. Life will go on. The war for survival can still be won. My interest in the “Opera” “Opera Singer” question is critical to all Opera Singer types, but seems to be carelessly disregarded by most members of what has become an “Opera” conservancy.
Opera News deserves applause for giving Matthew Epstein a chance to explain the tug of war in which he engaged at Chicago Lyric Opera. He became disengaged by the loss of his grip on the rope in Chicago, but, happily, Matthew relocated to NYC to take a new position at CAMI where he can continue to influence the fate of “Opera”. The Opera News article shows us that Matthew Epstein and William Mason have strong opinions about the future of “Opera”, and, unfortunately, they do not agree.
Lets let Matthew start the argument:
“Look, there’s a dichotomy between the old-line New York and Chicago subscribers and the younger audience that goes to BAM and some of the smaller Chicago theaters. There must be a way to satisfy both groups, but it is a mistake to do only what keeps our rapidly aging big-money subscribers happy when the future is in people who aren’t yet at that point. Maybe it’s a younger audience. Maybe it’s a more last-minute-ticket-buying audience. Maybe it can’t or doesn’t want to purchase a full subscription a year in advance. But it is an audience – and a growing audience, and an audience that is going to be tremendously important. And we can’t eliminate from our seasons the very works that may bring in this new audience.”
Matthew introduces the premise that his way “may” be the way to keep “Opera” alive. Bill Mason tugs in the opposite direction with:
“The creative decisions and wishes of a music director and/or artistic director can only be realized if there is the money to pay for them. Financial integrity is no less important than artistic integrity. If your ticket-buying public doesn’t like what you’re presenting most of the time, they will stop buying tickets and stop contributing. This is not to say that Lyric will cease presenting new opera or new and possibly controversial productions. But balance is the key.”
These guys arguments are interesting, and can be a source of syllabus for University types, but that Egg equivalent (Opera Singer) is kind of ignored until Matthew starts talking about the opera singers who have always been his bread and butter:
“The future of opera in America depends on the realization that stars won’t do the trick anymore. There are any number of excellent singers out there, but very few real stars left who will always sell out a house – and that number is diminishing all the time. The future lies in ensemble-oriented productions – well-directed, well-designed and well-conducted productions of interesting repertory, fully rehearsed, and cast with the finest singers available for their parts. And if the stars won’t commit the time and energy required to perfect such a production, you engage other singers.”
Matthew Epstein seems to suggest that the link between “Opera” and “Opera Singer” is really getting frail, and the “which came first” question irrelevant. “Chicken” is dependent on “Egg” for species survival, but Matthew seems to say that “Opera” cannot depend on “Opera Singer” to sell the seats. Why not?
Matthew’s explanation of his vision for the future is unique. It is the first public argument over the future of Opera I have heard or read that included any mention of opera singers. It’s sad that a great agent to the “Stars” only mentions singers in context of his loss of faith in them.
Matthew, from his Worldwide Director’s chair at CAMI’s vocal division, might have suggested ways to increase the number of “Opera Stars”, if he thinks they are needed, and why their number is dwindling, anyway. No. He suggests abandoning those few remaining “Stars”, if found uncooperative, to pursue the perfecting of production values.
So, let’s summate.
Matthew Epstein believes:
The “Opera Singer” isn’t worth an “Egg”. Opera singers, if we follow Matthew’s published logic, are interchangeable necessities that can detract from the genius new Operas and Opera productions that Matthew suggests as key to keeping Opera Houses healthy.
Bill Mason believes:
If he gives the public what it wants, then the public should keep coming to his theater, and contributing to his fund-raising campaigns.
Do opera singers really matter???
Read MoreHOT STUFF!!
The Book is open, but only just. I took a stab at updating one of my vanity pages a few days ago and decided to google Matthew Epstein for another innumerable time looking for a link to embed with his name. What I found is a Gold Mine.
Tim Page titled his lunch report “The Book of Matthew”. Tim’s scan of a very few pages in the book that is Matthew’s mind should have given him a better title, like: “The Title Page of the Book of Matthew”. That quibble aside, his article opens a small window on the arguments taking place in the inner circles of the Opera World.
Matthew looks great in the photo that Johannes Ifkovits took back in 2006. If the out of focus space behind Matthew in the photo is his Ansonia apartment, I fancy that at least one of the plants soaking up sun in the background to be a Blake donation to his decor. I love that sunny apartment, and I expect Matthew, a man of good taste, (He signed me up as an artist, didn’t he?) to hold onto it as long as his grip will allow. The “strong right arm” Tim quotes him putting on offer to artists should be matched on his left side, if his personal trainer is worth his/her salt. And, if he has been wiser than most tenors about his personal finances, then his rent will never be more than he can afford. A bit of tenor trivia… I remember Matthew telling me that his space at the Ansonia is a fraction of a larger apartment that belonged to Enrico Caruso.
Matthew’s health report that Tim includes in his “book” article is good news indeed. Once upon a time Matthew shared the news of his HIV positive report with Debbie and me at a restaurant on Manhattan. He told us that this news was fresh out of his doctor’s office which he had just visited that afternoon. He swore Debbie and me to secrecy, and we did our best to be supportive familial stand-ins and felt honored to be promoted to such intimate standing at table with him. It was only a few days later that his news was being offered to us again and again, always with the demand to keep it secret. No, Matthew didn’t forget and tell us again or again. Now that Opera News has made it public, I guess we can talk about it too.
There is a great big difference between personal and public information, and I respect the strictest interpretation of that division, but I wish Matthew would treat the world to a larger view of what he could call the public content of his “Book”. It would be wonderful if he cast even a little of what he knows and thinks into the communication universe in unfiltered form. The Tim Page article in Opera News is a nice teaser worth printing on the inside of a dust cover to a real book entitled “The Mind of Matthew” or on the landing page of a blog sight: http://www.MatthewEpstien.com or how about http://www.TheBookofMatthewEpstien.com.
Come on Matthew!! Tell us more! Forget Opera News. You’re too big for such small pages.
Matthew Epstein a couple of years ago.
Replacement Pedagogy
I’ve been chewing on a bit of Ha, Ha trivia I received in recent light conversation (Remember, I’m not so young, so “recent” is a relative term given my 63 years of hanging about). I have a friend, well plugged into the World of Opera, who described for me an unbelievable proposal made by a gNATS big wig. I’ll keep my source anonymous because being called a friend by a tenor can be harmful to one’s professional life in some circles. I think I will use the name “Jack” for this Opera Operative.
Jack attended a major gNATS/Singer Employer confab this century. It was also attended by a soprano I worked with back in the day. This soprano was a joy, because she had it all. Good voice, especially good personality and intelligent mind. Let’s use “Jill” to refer to her. I bet she is a card carrying gNATS member who may not like having her name dropped by a tenor taking pot shots at The National Association of Teachers of Singing.
The President of gNATS stood up and spoke…. Tenor moment…. It could have been the President Elect or the Past President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, yah, there are four of them, or even the Secretary/Treasurer given my tenor memory, but it was someone BIG in the hierarchy. So let’s label this gNATS bigwig “Harry”.
Anyway, now that the players are all described, and named, the play can begin. Harry got up and essentially declared gNATS a consulting business ready to help the non-teachers in the crowd. It is logical to assume that a professional of high standing in gNATS may hold in low esteem the abilities of people who actually get their hands dirty putting together entertainments based on the employment of vocal talent. I believe the membership could support Harry believing that employers need a lot of help to discern good singers, and gNATS membership could applaud being offered as the staff of Harry’s consultancy. However what Harry offered elicited no approval from Jill.
Jack told me that Jill lost control of her jaw at the moment it became clear that Harry was declaring his faith in technology. Harry let all those non-teacher attendees know that gNATS was ready to point out future stars for the Arts Industry by processing submitted recordings with Voice Analysis Software. All those tiresome, leave the office, travel across the county or down to the auditorium, rent a hall if you don’t own one, organize pianists and spread the word about auditions could be, like, so yesterday. Harry was suggesting that Arts Organization Management stop wasting time, and let gNATS’s computers lead the way to the new Renata Tebaldi, George London, Maria Callas etc.. Jill’s jaw dropped. Jack did not mention applause.
We have seen an early version of the techno helper (Click Here) that Harry seems to regard as a mature technology. Just because they don’t use pen and paper anymore doesn’t really mean that the present “advanced” state of the technology is any better at replacing “Ears“. Silly is as silly does. I wish gNATS’s Consulting every success among the stuck on stupid, but what about the rest of us?
I believe that Jill’s jaw dropped with surprise because of the outright silliness of the proposal. It is one thing to play with computer toys and even create University departments to house them. It is another thing entirely to try to sell the idea that a computer could replace the discernment of casting directors in Opera houses.
If I were a gNATS member, and dependent on teaching voice as a means of paying the mortgage, the rent, for food on my table and keeping the tax man happy, I would feel very uncomfortable with a high official in my trade association suggesting a mechanical or electronic replacement for auditioners. By un-silly extension one need only travel a little to arrive at Harry telling Universities that the same techno- service could replace voice teachers. Last I heard, the standard work load of a Music School voice teacher was a one half hour lesson once a week for each student. If one can replace a few of those sessions with “Voice Lab” under the tutelage of a technician then the staff at the voice department could shrink a lot. Where will all those gNATS members, replaced by Computerized Voice Coaching, go to earn the money necessary to pay their dues? Oh! I forgot. Maybe teaching advanced courses in Vocal Analysis (oops, not at MIT,,,, yet).
By pushing the above silly logic a lot farther down the road, a future “Harry” might suggest that gNATS could populate Opera auditorium seats with the future tech voice terminals that our present “Harry” might expect to see available. They could be programed to applaud the singers who had received training from their sister terminals at major Universities. Given ticket sales trends around the world, there should be plenty of seats available by the time those Voice Appreciation Appliances become objects of admiration of future “Harrys” at gNATS.
I’ve waited a while since I heard about Harry promoting his Opera Star Recognition Software. I just wanted enough time to pass so that I could stop seeing RED when I thought about it, and for the real name of my insider friend to become hard to discover. No one should suffer for talking with a tenor, or even singing with one.
More links for believers:
http://www.nemesysco.com/technology-lvavoiceanalysis.html
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/fft.html?gclid=COGnud_p7rwCFdJ9OgodymsA7A
White Christmas Extended
Remember the Water Walk in White Christmas? That white ice is still mostly there. We just need a little snow to refresh the attractiveness of that walkable water, and our Frozen North would again look pristine. Some other northerners up here wish for Spring while I pray for decorative snow, but one wise citizen of these here hills proposed we should be grateful. While a fellow Plattsburghite and I were blocking an isle at Sam’s Club exchanging pleasantries that included opinions on the weather, my interlocutor proposed that we should be thankful for Global Warming. “Can you imagine how cold it would be without it?” Siberia might come to mind.
Frozen Strandberg
Just a few days ago we had sonic events that disturbed the peace and tranquility of the evening. These booms that brought a few of us curious northerners out into the dark with flashlight or oil lamp in hand were reported as cryo – something events,,, “seisms”,, blamed on moisture, some of which is visible as white stuff scattered about us, and freezing cold that insists on penetrating the soil. We had little mini earth quakes because the ground is freezing under our feet. I guess Global Warming, manmade as it is assumed be, has some self-help blessings most of us just never considered, like saving us Rock Eaters from the permafrost suffered by Siberia, but I’m wondering if the thaw will be accompanied by the same sort of unsettling seismic activity in Plattsburgh and in Toronto, Canada. If we do, I expect someone will be thanking or blaming Global Warming for it just like the freezing that brought it.
OK, I’m back from the edge of politics and ready to talk about the important things of life. The snow may still be with us, but our Christmas tree is down, and in storage, so we have more room in the…… Wait… I said important things, didn’t I? OK! OK!! Let’s regroup. How about a question? Like: What should follow “Lesson One.001”?
Dividing lessons with such minute decimals would seem ridiculous but for the problem of keeping within my own blog size limitation. The word count necessary to cover everything I want to say may be inestimable, but I count on my word processor to warn me when I’m going overboard in a blog. My wife, Debbie, is good at it too, but Microsoft Word just keeps adding up my words for me in the lower left corner of my screen as I type my thoughts. Rules, rules, rules. If I make them, like: 1000 words per blog, shouldn’t I follow them?
Label the rest of this blog “Lesson One.001-A” because it’s about the vowel “A”. So here goes. I’ve got five hundred and fifty one words to go. Wait, I just used eleven of them. Ooops there goes another seven… OK! I’ll get to the point.
The “A” vowel is the best vowel. It is the central station of vocal color. The full character/personality/beauty of any vocal instrument is best heard in that vowel. It is true for everyone and not just certain voices. When that vowel is just the best for the voice at hand then we can advance to the rest of them.
So what is the “best”? The best is always a hyphenated best: Personal-Best. Each instrument has a personality. Something really brought home to me when Bruno Price presented a violin blind tasting party after Soovin Kim played a whole bunch of Paganini
for LCCMF at the home of the Vermont Youth Orchestra in Burlington, VT. Mr. Price came packing a trunk load of violins. Jessica Lee and Nelson Lee played each of these instruments for Soovin’s Paganini audience. It was great to hear the differences among the violins and compare the results that two different expert players could get with these precious violins. I was totally blown away. Unlike humans, these instruments couldn’t be bothered to try to sound like the
one that the majority of the audience picked as having the best sound, the Strad. Singers, however, face a vocal world today that invites bad choices even at this “.001-A” early stage of training. Tenors will try, or be advised to try to emulate the “A” vowel of Pavarotti, for example, when to do so is to distort the instrument with which the tenor is gifted. Some of the non Strad violins I heard in Burlington might be “improved”, somehow, with chisel, sandpaper and varnish to bring them closer to the Strad, but such work would destroy the personality of each and every one of them. Among the lesser violins played for us was a southern Italian number that truly fascinated my ears. I won’t get into the why or how of it here, but, because that Neapolitan grabbed my mind, the whole affair refuses to leave the premises.
In the day, nothing has changed, violin makers did the best job they could to fulfill their ideal. The collection that we Paganini appreciators heard in Burlington gave evidence that mans’ hands are capable of wonderful things, but every craftsman producing a Strad, even if it were desired, is not Historicity. Those violins all sounded different, and refused to change character even under the influence of the pros playing them.
In the day, a lot has changed, voices were appreciated for the individual character that each displayed. No parallel here, right? I heard within the differences among those violins the best examples of what pedagogues are told by Garcia to discern in voices. The beauty of Pavarotti’s “A” vowel may have been our Strad of the day, but trying to copy it would be just as bad as dismantling those non-Strad violins, gratefully heard in Burlington, just to push their individual sounds toward the sound that the lone Strad had in the group.
28 words left.
An “A” of beauty that a vocal instrument can produce has a personality unique to itself. Promote it! Not Pavarotti, or Strad, but the beauty in vocal difference!
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Lesson One.001
My mind’s eye view of Garcia’s lessons, which I mentioned in “Lesson One“, started out with visions of this great maestro telling new students about the famous exploits of his father, the glory of the singing of his sisters, the fun he must have had, surrounded by his family in the first Season of Italian Opera ever presented in New York City where he made his Operatic Debut as Figaro in the Barber of Seville, the trial by fire of his debut in Naples where he was unable to prove himself a professional of star quality, and the new, if short lived, freedom from music he discovered when he was able to present his bad reviews of that debut to his daddy. Any ordinary maestro di canto would fit nicely into these images, but, the better I knew the story of Garcia and his father, the more I saw him as a serious professional unlikely to engage in such superficial banter. I now have an idea how he would have sought to guide his newest students toward perfecting the beauty that he recognized in the voices of each of them.
In “Lesson One” I quote Garcia telling us that teachers must deal with many “faults” endemic to untrained voices, and one could be forgiven for misconstruing the negative spin Garcia gives to: “tremulous, nasal, guttural, veiled, harsh, schrill and the “lack of power, range, steadiness, elasticity, or mellowness.” It might seem obvious to some that Garcia was giving us a list of affects that the trained voice must never display, and if one were to fail to read Garcia’s second book, then those so convinced might never find a reason to doubt their conviction. It is in that second book that Garcia describes some of these “faults” as interpretive tools. Yes, they diminish the beauty of the singer’s voice, but they were essential to the interpretive artist of Garcia’s day.
In that second book Garcia gives advice for interpretation that relies on the recitation of words separated from melody, and with this advice he makes a full circle return to using some of the very affects he has told us we will discover in the untrained voice. First, he advises that these vocal “faults” should be eliminated, but then, he wants the singer to reintroduce them as expressive tools after the singer is able to successfully avoid them. When strong emotion is not wanted then the singer should avoid those several faults which may have tainted the singer’s voice at the start of training. But Garcia is most emphatic that the singer be free to put them back into the voice when needed on the stage. More than free to use them, the singer must use them when he wants to impart the correct emotional effects of various degrees of personal disaster or delight which one finds written into the greatest music and even some of the modest music a singer might be called upon to interpret.
So what does the above full circle have to do with Lesson One.001? It has to do with how I believe Garcia sought to “discover and develop, among all the qualities of tone which the student’s voice presents, that one which combines to the highest degree all the desirable conditions.”
My daydreams of Garcia’s first lessons are full of his advice intended to carve away the “faults” presented by the student’s voice, just like Michelangelo carved away marble at “fault” for hiding his David from his eyes. What did Garcia want to chip off the voice? His sketch of things to carve off is quoted above. But why do the listed “faults” haunt and obscure the “germ” of beauty in the voices of the singers that Garcia allowed to enter his studio? Where do the faults on his list come from? Vocal faults are all traceable: some to speech patterns, some to pathologies and some to insufficiencies. Garcia was careful to tell us the qualifications necessary in a student, and if he followed his own advice, pathologies and insufficiencies would not have crossed his studio’s threshold. The student’s speech pattern is certainly another matter. The work of purifying the vocal sound, eliminating offensive accretions on even the first vowel “A” makes me think of “My Fair Lady”. The highly entertaining frustration of the elocution master in this musical stands as one of the best examples of what a Student – Teacher relationship should not be. The process I believe Garcia used for instruction was collaborative, not Warlike. Unlike Professor Higgins of the musical, Garcia did not want to make those speech pattern “faults” disappear forever, and so would seek to have the student voluntarily give them up, not avoid them from fear of reprisal.
Garcia Jr. tells us to listen to all the tone/color qualities that the student’s voice presents and guide the singer to promote those positive qualities the voice already presents while guiding the singer away from those tone/color qualities that are detrimental to the “beauty of the voice”. That “beauty” is what Garcia Sr. claims to be the most powerful tool a singer has when, seeking to “command” the attention of an audience.
Garcia Jr. never gets closer to discussing the subject of personal color qualities than the quote in “Lesson One“. I wrote about the distance he maintained from this discussion in “Why Garcia” and “Factory Made”. He does not suggest the use of Clear Timbre or Dark Timbre, and neither does he say that Chest Voice, Falsetto or Head Voice are relevant issues in this voyage of discovery. His advice is that the natural/untrained voice displays all the “qualities of tone” that we are to seek to promote. They are specific and endemic to each voice, present because of the structure of each individual instrument, and, in the case of these qualities being beautiful, they must be nurtured with the greatest of care. Not covered with Dark or Clear timbres.
This lesson is about treating the student with great care. We must understand that the beautiful voice is a rare item, and deserving of the time and effort to purify the striking qualities that it alone possesses. No teacher can create such a voice. Any teacher can destroy it.
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