Gypsy for Garcia
When the going gets tough the tough get going.
I never liked that motto much, but it rings in my head these days. I guess I didn’t like it because I did a lot of going in my life, but had no illusions about being a tough guy. Besides, tough was not applicable to most of the goings on through which I lived, but….. We are in tough times now. I am older now, but no tougher by any measure I can apply to myself, but I will answer the call to get going.
I’m planning to return to Italy in just under two months. My friends are working hard on a vocal education initiative based on the teaching ability of this untough tenor. Please click on the poster to the right of this blog to get an idea of the new birth in the cultural life of La Toscana. I am so happy to know tough people in the Old World who are determined to keep singing, as we used to know it, alive and are willing to get going even when the going is tough indeed.
I am sure to be hearing a lot of voices new to me while I’m back in the birth place of Opera. I will get to hear students at Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Conservatorio Statale di Musica L. Cherubini in Florence before my friends in Montisi host the next Master Class featuring a tenor, Rockwell Blake, intent on teaching the stuff I keep writing about in these blogs. These goings on are part of my crusade to see things change. I know I am not tough or important enough to effectively push back the tide of darkness that I see and hear engulfing voices everywhere, but I stick my Garcia banner in the air anyway and in an untough manner wave it furiously in the hope that I may attract enlistments to my cause.
If the going turns less tough for Maestro Campanella, I may have the pleasure of working with him in Montisi, and the singers who come to Montisi may get some real wisdom from a real Bel Canto conductor. I caught him with a telephone call at his home recovering from a fall he took in Paris. Bruno used the arm that made my life on stage so much fun when he was conducting to save his head from a big bump on the boulevard. Now, with a dysfunctional head the arm isn’t much use to a conductor, but with a damaged “bachetta” wing it sure is hard to fly in his native environment. Even with this negative event still affecting his everyday life, Maestro Campanella showed his toughness and committed to participating in my crusade in Montisi, if his schedule and recuperating arm will allow. When I saw him last year he flattered me by telling me of his dream of founding a school of Bel Canto, and now I have to work really hard to reduce my Cheshire cat grin to avoid looking as crazy as I really am about working with Bruno….. Maestro Campanella. Sorry, it is so hard to maintain formality when speaking of such friends.
Please consider meeting me in Montisi. If you have already dedicated your life to singing and are crazy enough to believe a tenor could be helpful to you, then I’m your man. I’m not tough, but I am serious. I also happen to be honest. This often gets me into trouble, but I sleep really well because of it. The life of a singer can be wonderful. The life of a singer can be hell. I hope you will come to Montisi, either to let me help you travel down that wonderful avenue, or to allow me to divert you from traveling the toll road of frustration. You get the picture. Times are tough, the going is tough, my friends and I may not be tough, but we want to help. Come let us help you.
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Garcia Secrets
Long before Manuel Garcia walked the Earth for more than a century, most of the things he wrote about and taught were already integral to the singer’s art. In the preface of his big book he wonders about the history of “the art of singing” and more specifically the teachers of earlier times and what they might have revealed had they written more about the practices they followed. I’m so glad he told us of his curiosity, because I share that thirst to know how singing technique was built. Dr. Stark’s book, “The History of Bel Canto”, guides us through some of the literature to which Garcia alludes, and I am happy to have this pool of knowledge. Garcia knew about the teachers who predated him from the musical literature available also to us, but, unlike us, he also heard of them by the aural tradition which is lost to us today. Along with this pedagogical aural tradition advantage, Garcia had opportunity to converse with individuals who heard the voices trained by those old time teachers. The talkative elders of the musical and vocal arts could have described and compared those ancient voices they had heard in their youth, with the voices with which Garcia was familiar. I envy the opportunities Garcia’s point in history offered him. We can be sure that Manuel and his father knew what made each voice they heard special, and what each of these singers was doing with his or her voice in service to the composer and the public. I feel blessed that Garcia, Jr. wrote about these things sufficiently to defend his father’s and his “school” and am fascinated by and drawn, like a moth to a flame, to his insinuation that, like prior great teachers, he did not reveal all the secrets he had uncovered. I sometimes wonder if he withheld these bits of wisdom just to inspire in others the curiosity from which he tells us he suffered.
You can find in “Factory Made” the advice Garcia gives us about discovering a voice. He doesn’t tell us where to listen or what exactly to listen for, but the question Garcia wants to answer is the one every person who dreams of making a life in the vocal arts should ask:
Is my voice worthy of the huge investment of time and money necessary to develop the voice and artistry of a “distinguished artist”? That is to say, can you hope to enjoy a career capable of returning, at least, the original investment, and, even better, return that investment in multiples sufficient to provide for the continuous support of your life well into retirement?
Garcia tells us that it is up to the teacher. His opinion might have changed if he had survived another century. These days we seem to suffer from a teaching community with intent to offer universal access to the singing art. The call seems to be: “Come one, come all, we will teach you how to sing.” This may be OK for a well-rounded liberal arts education or even an adult music appreciation program, but it is no good if you want to start training for “Brunhilda” or even “Despina”. Garcia was not interested in teaching everyone vocal technique. The students he wanted in his studio were the exceptionally gifted voice students wanting to sing Mozart or Wagner Opera, not the diletantte or musically minded medical, dental, legal, psych, math, physics, chemical or physical education students hoping to be good enough to sing in a chorus. He gave us a list of attributes he required in a singing student. All the assets on his list are useful things to carry with you into the vocal life, but the number one component a singer must have is a voice good enough to warrant the effort to learn how to sing. That asset would seem to be the hardest to recognize, and the least important to the pedagogical profession today.
How do you discover this valuable asset? Where do you look? Chest Register in Chest Voice! Even though Garcia is correct to tell us that the Chest Register/Voice is difficult for some females to developed, from my experience every singing voice that had Chest Register/Voice working revealed the “germ” that Garcia talks about. It is in the Chest Register, in Chest Voice that the full bloom of individual color, native to the instrument with which you were born, gets displayed. If you want to know your voice, look there first.
OK. Now how do you look for that blooming beauty in yourself? I suggest you record/video yourself and use your own taste to decide if you measure up. This is no joke. You are on your own in this matter. There are many more delusional divas and divos in the world than rich ones, and usually the members of the majority find listening to their own voices very uncomfortable. Don’t be one of them. Whatever a teacher tells you to do, you must evaluate the results with your own ears by listening to or viewing your lessons. Keep your teacher honest. Ultimately, most teachers are going to put the responsibility on you anyway if you fail to become a star. If you become a star, the teacher will claim credit, even if none is due the teacher. If you are not interested in becoming a star, I am no less happy to have you reading my blog and hope I can keep you interested with stories from the Warblers’ War Zone.
The singing business is a risky business. So start living with risk now and develop that Chest Register of yours even if your teacher suggests you are asking for the Earth to swallow you up. Sing things that bring you down into the lower part of your voice and expect to find more power and brightness than you might think possible. Very few stars reach the firmament with their Chest Registers disorganized. The Chest Voice in the Chest Register is the foundation of the singer’s voice, and from this foundation one can start to build a unified vocal identity that may serve the singer in you and the Opera World as well.
We will move on to the rest of the vocal structure after this foundation argument sits and rests a few days.
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Deal of the Day
Now we are talking about a good deal. One of the reasons I started to do this blog was because I believe that singers should be responsible to protect their voices. This is one of the more useful among the members of the newest tool catagories for that self-preservation project and this price for this tool seems really good to me.
Click on this text to see the deal.
Every voice student should have something like this, and this one at this price, the one you found when you clicked, is like 1000 lessons for the price of one. That is if you live in NYC. Don’t you think you should be your own instructor, critic and best -friend. This little number is made to order for keeping your voice teacher honest.
If you can afford to take voice lessons, you can afford this or something like it.
If you find a better deal, please let me know.
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So Why Should Anyone Belt?
I’m back from Barcelona and now that I’ve washed that trip right out of my system, I can get back to the subject that was tickling my interest before I heard about a diva falling victim to sickness in the singing ranks. I hope that you enjoyed reading the articles I suggested to you in my last “Belt” blog before I flew the coop. If you missed them, click them, they are:
“The opera-izing of the American musical”
“Zambello brings personal touch to retooled Glimmerglass Festival”
If you have enough time to dawdle, you might consider meandering about the internet by clicking on the links in those articles and get an even bigger picture of the cultural state of affairs in the United States. You will also acquire an overview of the vocabulary and attitudes of some who are employed to dispense opinion on this small sliver of the “Arts and Entertainment” industry.
I know I may appear to be picking on Ms. Anne Midgette. I guess it’s unavoidable since, once upon a time, she called me on my cellphone to talk about the cultural industry in the environs of Washington, DC. I can be a real pain when asked to opine. If I have anything to say at all, I’m likely to run on at the mouth wandering way beyond the original subject which I will have forgotten before running out of air. This should be expected from a tenor who tends to forget librettists’ words. In this particular instance, with Ms. Midgette, my memory served at least for the short term, but what about the long term? Given what I remember now, she could have asked me how I made my morning coffee. Anyway, I have taken a shine to reading what she writes now and again, and when I discovered her discussion of Old Broadway Show revivals I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to mix some of my thoughts with her reporting.
Ms. Midgette did not write about “Belting” specifically, but her articles are about the natural habitat of that style of singing. Ms. Midgette seems to center her “Opera-izing” thoughts on the lynch pin word: “authenticity”. She doesn’t seem to believe Glimmerglass was wise to seek “authenticity” in “Annie Get Your Gun”. I don’t suggest she is wrong to complain, however, I do want to expand on her conclusions. When I asked her, she told me that she was at least aware of “Belting“, but I’m not certain she would agree with what I am about to write. I believe that the “authentic” component missing in “Annie Get Your Gun” at Glimmerglass in Cooperstown, NY and in “Oklahoma” at Arena Stage on Sixth Street in Washington, DC was “Belting”.
Now that “Highbrows” want to compromise and play with “Lowbrow” music, they have a big problem. They can’t find those “Lowbrow” “Belters” who can deliver those “Lowbrow” melodies the way Irving Berlin and other “Lowbrow” composers expected their melodies to be “Belted” into the theatre. The Opera Singer can’t be faulted for not having the authentic vocal style that a lot of “Lowbrow” music demands. The Opera Singer has always been taught to avoid “Belting”. I am not surprised that in her article Ms. Midgette wrote that two unamplified Opera Singers:
gave the impression of being less invested in, or less serious about, this musical than about opera, as if carelessness were a hallmark of the “lightness” of this particular style.
Excuse me, but, if you don’t “Belt” you “ain’t” serious about old “Lowbrow” music generally, and even less serious about those old Broadway Shows. Let’s get serious and say: All they really had to do is “Belt”.
Ms. Midgette asks a very valid question of Ms. Deborah Voigt after citing some of her impressive high notes:
“why does the rest of your singing seem so pale?”
The honest answer would be……… “I don’t Belt!”
Ms. Midgette suggests that “fetishizing authenticity is of questionable value” and I heartily agree. It is REAL authenticity that gets my juices flowing and my hand reaching for my wallet to pay for tickets. Whether the tickets are for the theater or for a museum, I want to have at least a fighting chance to hear or see authentic talent employed authentically. That’s why my preference these days is for botanical gardens. I haven’t found one of those places putting a single silk or plastic plant or flower on display, yet.
I was happy to read Ms. Midgette’s mention of Ethel Merman, but I really wish she hadn’t suggested that Ethel had formal vocal training. It would seem to contradict Ethel’s biography. There is no real barrier to Deborah Voigt undertaking the study of “Belting” so that she might sound more “Merman” like. Why didn’t she? Ms. Midgette seems to give us a good answer, albeit unintentionally, on page 2 of the other article she wrote about Glimmerglass and its new director Francesca Zambello:
Zambello also has great connections. “A lot of it is asking your friends,” she said. This summer, she’s lured singer friends into accepting Glimmerglass’s relatively modest fees……..
Asking an Opera Singer to make herself a viable reviver of Ethel Merman style is like asking a brain surgeon to go back to school to learn how to use his/her scalpel skills to prepare the raw material for “Steak au Poivre or Tartar”. Well,….. it’s not really like that, but you get the idea. When it comes to money the parallel does hold. At Glimmerglass Ms. Voigt was certainly paid less than her normal surgeon like salary to put her vocal talents at the service of “Lowbrow” music. If you put her in Brünnhilde’s costume, even I might actually come to listen, but Annie’s vocal demands just don’t fit the voice. If you ponder my assumption that the fee for Brünnhilde in NYC, Chicago, Dallas or San Francisco is likely to equal or exceed the cost to Glimmerglass for all singers on the stage in “Annie Get Your Gun”, you can get a glimpse into a singer’s material calculations and priority system.
A little further on Ms. Midgette tells us about her preferences. After the very short preamble: “It may be heretical”, she explains that the amplified performance of “Oklahoma” at the Arena Stage was a better artistic experience than the unamplified performance of “Annie Get Your Gun” at Glimmerglass. It is an aggressive paraphrase, I admit, but Ms. Midgette can always defend herself, if I’ve misrepresented her meaning. Neither cast at Glimmerglass nor Arena Stage can be expected to have any “Belting” instruction or experience in todays’ world. And to emphasize one last time: If you don’t “Belt” you ain’t authentic Old Broadway or even authentically old “Lowbrow”. So what’s the difference between those productions besides differing dancing abilities? Microphones!
The critics praise the youthful “Oklahoma” cast for good looks, high energy and great legs. I think this is a good, and likely complete, list of assets those up and coming stars of modern musical comedy bring to their production. No one seems to say much about them vocally. Perhaps it’s because none of them “Belt” or sing “Au Natural”. (“without a mike”.) Now that we have critics opining that building a “Field of Dreams” with lights and sophisticated amplification is a wonderful thing for “Lowbrow” Broadway revivals, could the Opera World be next to face some big changes?
Because many tools of the singing trade like Chest Voice, which is the foundation of Belting, are being ignored and even vilified, perhaps in the future we may find Ms. Midgette or her descendants writing similar articles about Opera. Amplifying the singing of “Lowbrow” music seems to be STANDARD practice, and now critically preferred. With practice on the “Lowbrow” stuff, the technical problems with amplification in the theatre will eventually get worked out. The opera singer hopefuls I heard just last month at Viñas only reinforced my conviction that the big opera houses are in trouble. All those young people are singing with a lot less volume than previous generations of opera singers. It seems to be an inevitable compromise. Opera Theatres will have to imitate the Arena Stage if this trend continues.
In the meantime, I will stand on my soap box and yell many things, one of which will be: Better to “Belt” and be rid of the mike. If the amp blows a fuse, one might be reminded of the fate of Millie Vanilli.
As for the photo of Rocky’s Pizza Place at the top of this blog. I snapped that photo just a few days ago while I was in Burlington, VT running errands with my two favorite ladies, Debbie, my wife, and Dot, Debbie’s Mom. Debbie spied the pizza emporium and asked me to take a photo while she and Dot did their thing. At first I was happy for the opportunity to add a ha-ha photo to our collection, but as I was snapping away it dawned on me that my blog was almost finished and the title asks a question. I realized I was taking a picture of the best answer ever. Those Millie Vanilli guys might now be kicking themselves and wondering why they didn’t do pizza and pasta instead of lip syncing. But as for anyone who quests for stardom and has Broadway as his/her target, even if you only want to know how to sing, take the risk and learn to “Belt”.
Read MoreBarcelona and Friends
A little over three weeks ago I received an email from my friend Miguel Lerin. He’s the fella in the photo caught in his natural habitat. He asked me to come to Barcelona to be part of the Judging panel for the big 50th anniversary “Concurs Francesc Viñas” in Barcelona, Spain. Mirella Freni, who should have been on that panel, came down with something serious enough to keep her from leaving home. Miguel asked me to come take the chair with her name on it, and I am confident that at least I did a great job of keeping it warm.
On my way back home, about 2 weeks ago, I started a blog that absorbed all of my meager writing abilities for the week that followed. One week ago, I decided to chuck it in the digital dust bin. The trip to Barcelona gave me artistic heart burn, and no amount of ranting was going to make it better.
Barcelona is a great city! The reports of dire economic conditions in Spain are not to be taken lightly, but to walk the streets of Barcelona is to see a city that shows no fear. In fact, I am not the only non-Spanish judge at the “Concurs Francesc Viñas” who was struck by the vibrancy of Barcelona. The cultural life in Barcelona that I saw was not wilting under economic sogginess either. The appreciation for Barcelona’s operatic heritage was on full display in the ceremonies and installations remembering Francesc Viñas and the great acts of love his descendants have dedicated to his name for the past 50 years.
The competition itself was most interesting. And therein lays the discontent that inspired me to beat my keyboard with a vengeance last week. I lost myself to my passionate opposition to modern trends in the opera business, and I slashed madly at those whom I see turning Opera into an art form for the eyes.
It was a dark week of ruminating rage after rubbing shoulders with Music Moguls made my vision color everything red. So what positive statements can I make about the experience? Number one: I got over it! Halleluiah!! Number two: I saw friends who helped get the red out of my eyes. Number three: I was able to help one of those friends. Number four: I heard lots of singers.
Now I’m HAPPY again, taking coffee with my wife in the morning, shoveling snow and teaching voice. Now that the red is gone, I can see the snow is white, and it’s about time to get serious and get on with the blog. Coffee with the wife has benefits for the hubby that may get overlooked by some tenors. In my case, Debbie hands me lots of information that she digs up from the internet. Just yesterday she shared a sad picture of Plattsburgh that she found painted in two articles posted by our local paper. When I read them I knew I had to use them. I also knew that Debbie deserves a salary adjustment.
First, I want to report the existence of great vocal instruments in the human population. I was introduced to a lot of them at Viñas. Second, I want to report that all the voices that passed through Viñas need to know Garcia. Third, I want to report the ignorance of the truth of Garcia in high places. The majority of my fellow judges contented themselves by eliminating the most interesting singing from the final. That interest was due to the least influence of “Factory” teaching on those singers. When those voices didn’t come back for the Semi Final, I had to do my best to rate the returning talent from least to most boring. Fourth, I want to announce that the world of Opera is in the same predicament as my local community.
In Barcelona I found a mix of individuals among whom there were more than a few who are as concerned as I am about the precarious position in which many Opera Houses can be found. Among the judges there was at least one who worried about the low ticket sales at the box office of the Metropolitan Opera. My Debbie found an article about that problem one morning and told me about it between sips of coffee. With confirmation that this newspaper article was telling the truth, I brought it up with the most important Opera person I met in Barcelona, Joan Francesc Marco. Since he was not one of my fellow judges, I consider myself fortunate to have been seated next to him at a luncheon. He had other concerns that took up the majority of our conversation, but the whole line of discussion started with my question: “Does the Liceu (his theatre) share the Met’s problem of ticket sales taking a downward turn.” Mr. Marco answered “Yes”.
I may be flattering myself to even have an opinion, tenor that I am, but it seems to me that an entertainment without a ticket purchasing audience is certainly going to go the way of cities and towns with populations who can no longer afford the administration of their municipalities.
Our local newspaper offered us two articles that are great examples of the difficulties that face the North Country. The first tells us about one among many problems that face anyone wanting to start a job creating business in the extreme north of New York State. The other article does a great job of praising the concerned elite of our community for their efforts to address the problems they recognize as creating demographic difficulties. That these articles showed up in the same edition was too rich to pass up. The local “wise people” of Plattsburgh think that if you build a theatre accessible by riding your bicycle along the Saranac River, education will improve, young families will flock north and the progeny of those folks will stick around to ride their bikes to the Strand Theatre. Really??!! I think they forget that these super fit, hypothetically well-educated, culturally sophisticated people need a community with an economy in which a career can be made.
The Musical Mogul would seem to have a similar dream. He seems to think that if the stage is outfitted with something truly innovative for sets and the staging of the cast is of the same innovative quality and the talent on the stage is nice to look at and clothed to maximize the visual effect, then the audience will be entertained and they will have copious income from the box office as confirmation that all is well with the World of Opera. Don’t look now. That is not happening. Innovation is everywhere to be seen. What these Moguls forget is that Opera is first an audible art form. The singing is the engine of audience interest. Bore them with the singing, and you will only have the visual portion of the entertainment to keep them interested. The singers who were favored by the majority of judges at Viñas bored me, and I have to credit those singers with the ability to do the same for any other normal entertainment consumer. I hate to be the bad guy messenger, but the average High Definition wide screen TV with standard cable service is better eye candy than most anything Opera Companies can afford to put on their stage. Opera without vocal entertainment is like Plattsburgh without a thriving economy. Ticket sales at the Opera box office could shrink as fast as the immigration of sophisticated families to Plattsburgh.
What bucks this shrinking trend and actually grows? TICKET PRICES AND TAXES. Now what are we to think of this? The art world sure looks like the smaller real world of Plattsburgh.
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