Vacation Over!
Vacation over, I’m cooling my heals at Rome airport. Looking back at Montisi, that little hill town in the photo, reminds me how much I needed to clear my head and charge my batteries. Now I’m ready to do more in Sibiu.
Nice to have my computer so I can seek confirmation from Garcia’s text. His text and my proximity to my latest teaching activity get the old brain cells working.
Garcia keeps cheering me on as I read and remember the Rome Master class sessions. I spent gobs of time pushing singers to express the emotions and character traits of the person the singer was to impersonate. I was fortunate to have students with the technical preparation sufficient to the task and ready to accept the advice. The results were striking. For bright shining moments there were artists in front of me, not just technically proficient vocalists delivering the notes written by the composer and distinctly pronouncing the words of the librettist so that we could understand them. I saw and heard those distinctly proficient artists rip the dead words and music out of the printed score and put their own lives into them. According to my perception, the singers disappeared and the Opera Characters emerged.
In Part 2 on pages 138 -175, Garcia reminded me of how much more he wants me to teach these young people. The tenor is willing but time is short. Those 38 pages are so full I can’t begin to write about them in this blog, but I can stuff everything into Garcia’s Toolbox.
The new drawer is labeled: Expression.
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Missing Montisi
Two days to go and I am getting nostalgic already. Growing up in a little town in the far north of New York State has conditioned me to grow roots almost instantly. Do I want to leave Montisi? No! Do I want to go home? Yes!! Well, if I don’t want to leave Montisi, but I do want to go home what’s wrong with my head? Tenor excuse set aside; there is nothing wrong with my head. This little hill town has the feel of home already, and moving from here to another adventure in an unknown territory holds less temptation than a beeline to Plattsburgh.
I’ll be heading south to the Big City before I know the bus has left the station. I’ll also be excited at the prospect of discovering even more voices for which the Opera World has a voracious appetite. Yesterday I was happy to see my favorite conductor and his wife. Our conversation centered on our various views of the difficulties the World of Opera faces today, one being a dwindling pool of recognized masters of the Operatic Arts. Given my happy isolation from the day to day affairs of Operatic life, I was more listener than talker at lunch. The quality of the food might have contributed to my minimal participation, but when vocal issues came up I was in there dishing out words with alacrity equal to all three of my table partners. The best part of the day in Firenze was the revelation that my friend wants to write a book…….. Wow!!! I want to be the first to read it. I will certainly need help since my Italian is limited, but I will definitly find, pay for, kidnap or whatever will be necessary to get the help I need to read any book written by Bruno Campanella. He also promoted me to high status in our mutual admiration society by suggesting that we should create a school for singers and musicians of all stripes in the Art of Bell Canto. I smiled big smiles all day long. It doesn’t matter if he was making a serious suggestion or just having a little fun with hyperbole. It made my day.
The evening was something else. Sports have always been a participation issue for me. I loved playing ball. I never liked watching it. My Opera Nut friend, Silvia, does. We went to a small square in Montisi less than a football field away from her front door to participate in a dinner event with large screen view of the Euro Cup match between Italy and Germany. My dinner companions seemed to be half the population of Montisi until I was introduced to the burly man next to me who lives on an altogether different hill in Toscana. Montisi knows how to get the neighbors to come over. If you didn’t know about it already, Italy got the job done. Needless to say there was great celebration. Now I’m going to miss the Italy – Spain match dinner in Montisi. Anyone close enough to catch it, will not be disappointed. The food is good…. I did eat too much. The company is even better.
As I close the few days I have left to play contadino Italiano I begin to wonder if I might find a way to make teaching talented singers something I could do while playing contadino Italiano. Maybe I could kidnap Bruno, drag him south and make him help me teach singers how to get their audiences to applaud and yell bravo as much as the assembled crowd did last night in that little square in Montisi.
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Montisi
Half my work may now be done. Rome is to my south and Florence to my north. I am happily sautéing in Montisi. Rome was a good place to roast and Montisi seems a great place to simmer in or out of the sun. The best part of the place is the family Mannucci. That they will allow a deactivated tenor to claim sanctuary from the rest of the world in the warm embrace of their home here in the Tuscan Hills is a testament to how wonderful the best that Italy has to offer really is.
It is a great plus that Silvia, the Opera Nut of the family, actually liked my singing when I still did that sort of thing. Now we talk about the content of “Factory Made” in the special manner that Silvia has with the Italian language. The great hope, for Silvia and me, is that at some point the art and craft of singing will be picked up in a way that will bring back my desire to attend performances and her excitement at hearing interpretations that lift her spirits.
The work at Rome lifted my spirits and gave me a little more faith that hope is warranted. I was happy to find material. I smiled as if I were a sculptor with a blank check in Carrara. A very young tenor with a lovely sound, one coloratura soprano with rubies for high notes, one lyric soprano with an instrument of great strength, one living, breathing definition of visual beauty carrying a voice that seeks freedom from a tyranny of “Factory” teaching and a mezzo soprano just so close to prime time. All of these singers, every one seeking a path to success in the world of opera, need more than encouragement. I felt like a kid in a candy store at the end of our work, when these singers took to the little stage that had been the lesson venue to put on a little concert. They put my every doubt in the trash can, broke open the candy cases and handed me everything I wanted them to do with the tools I tried to stuff in their pockets.
I am still up in the air about what the next days will bring, but for sure I am happy with the “so far”.
I will have a lot more to say when I have my own line of access to the internet. For now, I am in great company and loath to dedicate much time to much more than having fun with the Mannuccis.
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Merry Christmas 2011
Merry Christmas to all. The day is here. We all cheer the snow that may not be here, especially those of us who view our computer screens in Miami or San Diego. Three cheers that the snow is up north somewhere! If we have it, I lend my voice to the cheering. I really love snow. It has become my vision of clean. In the North Country where space is ample and forest hides most everything, we Rock Eaters tend to pile up junk in our back yards among the non-functioning vehicles we are just not ready to send to the junk yard, the fishing shanties that need repair, the fishing boats that leak and the burning barrels that the State of New York used to let us use to keep the piles of junk a little shorter. When I was a little shaver those shanties, unmoving cars that should be pulling the leaky boats, burning barrels and junk piles just didn’t register on my thinker when I looked at them. It was the effect of the first Big Snow every year that made me take notice of all that stuff because the undulating blanket of snow just so beautifully took them out of sight. Now I can’t tell you when I began to think of our back yard as an unpleasant sight, but in a year I can’t name I did begin to suspect there might be a better way to decorate the dirt out back, but I never questioned my developing opinion that the yard, back and front, could never look better than when enough snow fell to redecorate everything. My word for that special beauty that only snow can give the eye is “clean”.
Clean is also a wonderful word to ponder at Christmas. It is exactly the goal each of us Christians wanted to attain, and it is one of the gifts that we are blessed to have from that Wonderful and Marvelous Savior whose birth is the reason this holiday is legally recognized by the State of New York….. You know, those guys and gals in Albany who stole our Rock Eater rights to pollute the air with our burning barrels whenever we want to, no matter who complains about it. At least they haven’t gotten around to Christmas….yet. Anyway, I always have clean in mind when I celebrate the birth of Jesus and even just a little bit of snow dresses up the day in a way no other decoration can achieve for this old man of song.
The word clean always bubbles to the top of my vocabulary as I try to coax voice students toward discovering the gift they have received. My studio is populated with students who suffer various vocal realities that seem, in my mind’s eye, to look a lot like my childhood back yard. Admittedly, the elements are completely different. What would a fishing shanty missing a sled blade have to do with a singers way of phonating? The fact is that the once useful items that populated that old back yard represent, for me, parallels with the ever useful vocal tools that each of my students employ in totally inappropriate ways. The more I am able to dissuade them from these practices the cleaner their voices become.
My Christmas message to all singers and those who wish they were singers is this. You already own a vocal instrument that was gifted to you at conception within your DNA. Except you be mute, you make a noise with it. If the noise your gift produces happens to be a beautiful sound then you have been given a rare gift. No voice teacher is going to give you that. A voice teacher can only guide you, and the best guidance is to do a metaphorical handshake with your gift. Everything your voice can do and will do for the rest of your life rests on the DNA coded structure that started forming when egg and sperm first met. Who do you think you have to thank for the exact configuration of that code donated 50/50 by your mom and dad? Not Professor Gotchaby Thethroat. Not me. Not mom and dad. Especially not yourself. Think of this Christmas as a great opportunity to celebrate the fact that the word “gifted“, if applicable to you, contains no reference to human agency. There is no room for even you to be proud.
I think you can work it out for yourself.
PS. If you’re a tenor, come back later and I will….. Better yet, use the “Please write” page.
Read MoreHow I started.
I could have been really good at the work I’m playing at in this photo. I kept my car, yes it is the one that has me in it’s jaws, happy for about 20 years. I sold it in 2003 and it may still be running around Plattsburgh for all I know.
Because I was blessed to meet the people I needed exactly when I needed them along the path of my life, I escaped having to get a real job like the one implied by that Photo Opportunity. These strategic arrivals in my life either gave me what I needed or I stole things from them just when the time was right. I admit that it is a bit of an exaggeration to say that I stole things. When a talented person had no intention of helping me, but I could recognize the tools that they were using to obtain their success, they could not avoid my theft, and I expect most of them didn’t notice. I remember many opportunities for larcenies and I’m grateful to these artists even more than their applauding audiences. I still appreciate them and know the reason for that appreciation. I am even more obliged to those who just handed me stuff. The big blessings came from them. If God keeps me here, among the living, long enough I might have opportunity to mention each and every one of them but for now I will list the really important people who just gave me what they had to offer just when I needed it.
It started with my dad Robert who always tolerated me and was always proud of me. I introduce him in Where I come from.
When I got to grade school I was scooped up by two teachers Joanne and Lynn Wilke at Peru Central School. 
They nurtured this little Rock Eater child destined to wear the lesser label Tenor. I loved it. I loved them, and Lynn is still being Lynn even today. A few years before I met the Wilkes, Lynn did a number on his back. The damage he did at Ausable Chasm caught up with him just in time to bring “Red” into my life. Lynn went into traction and I went into training.
Renata Carisio Booth, known to her students as “Red” because of her flaming red hair not to mention her personality, swept into Peru Central School like a wind that the north country had never seen before.
She was the first of her kind that I ever met. Note that Renata is the one in the turban and that she was a true Diva. The framed picture just behind her head is a snap of….. guess who? She had a profound effect on my future. The just in time character of our meeting is beyond compare. The future envisioned by this little Rock Eater quickly changed into something that made keeping my teeth much more important. So I quit trying to knock them out.
Not withstanding my efforts to eliminate from my smile those two front Buck Teeth on two occasions, they are still in there. Broken, but still serving. How can you claim Rock Eater status and not have strong chompers?
It was in Renata’s house a magnificent encounter took place that led me to eventually ask just the right question. My future wife took up taking lessons with Renata. She, for no reason apparent to this tenor, noticed me. That event led to a thread of pure Gold in the fabric of my personal life. Full disclosure will not be part of these pages, but some very personal history is essential to the story of Renata and Rocky. I’ll get back to that story another time.
The next super beneficial meeting to my future life as a tenor was in Washington, DC while I was dodging Vietnam in the U.S. Navy Band Sea Chanters. I entered a vocal competition in which I got noticed by two of the nicest talented people I ever met in the business: Evelyn Lear and Thomas Stewart.
These lovely people carried stories of me to New York City and mentioned me to their agent, Matthew Epstein, pictured with them here:
I got noticed by other people along the way before my wife Debbie, yes, the beautiful girl that Renata put in my path, and I moved to Yonkers but they will have to wait for another time. It was in those first days of learning the cheapest route from Yonkers to Manhattan and how to do auditions I got noticed by the next big influence in my career.
George London held a cattle call audition for the National Opera Institute at Juilliard School. At his side in the auditorium was one of my new advocates: Evelyn Lear. In good tenor fashion, I did not clearly explain to the pianist where to start the aria I was going to sing. He started in a measure I didn’t expect and egg spread across my face when I forgot to start singing. I stopped the pianist and explained there on the stage what I should have made clear back in the wings. George piped up from the auditorium: “Why don’t you lay out a board and play a few games of checkers while you’re at it?” My dreams of study money instantly vanished, but in short order we got going again this time with this tenor using his voice for singing. I believe Ms. Lear was a calming influence in that audition and my best evidence is that George gave me a grant from the NOI and my operatic debut in Washington, DC. He even threw in a few voice lessons.
This photo is from one of them. No question in my mind. Evelyn sitting next to George was just in time.
Matthew Epstein gave me an audition when I got to Yonkers. He said in a very nice way: “Don’t call me. I’ll call you, and by the way go out and buy a decent suit for auditions. When you look like you don’t need a job, you’re more likely to get one.” That advice is good for anyone. So I spent six months auditioning in my new suit, tie, shirt, shoes and socks….. I think I may have bought a watch too, who can remember these things?… Anyway, with a little more experience and a dapper appearance I sang an audition that Matthew just happened to attend. Was that just in time? Very few days passed before I got the call that I had been hoping for. Down I drove to Manhattan to sign a CAMI management contract with Matthew Epstein.
In those days that event was big enough to be called a good start.
Read MoreWhere I come from.
This is me! I also appear on the Welcome Page proudly posing in front of the family garden. This kid is still having fun even as an old man. These photos give you an idea of what it’s like up north of everybody else in New York State. Black and white photography can capture most of the character of the shiver weather, but mosquito slapping weather here in the north is full of green that escapes that chemical retina.
Back when I was little, we northerners used to be insulated from mass invasion on nearly every side but one. Canada is just a whistle stop or two north of us. Our history has been impacted by this reality for as long as we have had a history to note. Not that we were noticed. That is until the Cold War caused an economic boom in Plattsburgh. Wow I remember my dad putting me on the roof of his car to watch the HUGE earth moving machines creating a runway for B 47s and destroying the insular character of our forest hide away. In the fullness of time, true to form, the Feds lost interest in that Air Force Base and handed it over to local authorities to play with as they saw fit. The damage was already done and we are now no more isolated than any other part of the country on the Interstate Highway System. By the way we are noticed now. TV shows call our town a Hell Hole and the citizens here Rock Eaters. Also by the way, those TV shows who have us on their radar screens originate from New York City. We think of them as to the extreme south. Read my words to mean southerners.
The natural beauty of The North Country goes a long way to recommend this area to prospective citizens, and blessed we are in that department. I’m really happy about this because it was that natural beauty that inspired my wife’s father to settle his family here. Well that’s not the only reason I’m happy God blessed this part of the world with outstanding natural attributes, but it’s a good one.
I want to introduce my Dad:
He and the plastic animals behind him are no longer with us. My Dad died a few years back. I miss him a lot. He supported me in everything I did as a kid until he caught me stealing apples. He was a kind and generous man who didn’t have much, but was open handed none the less. He even provided a pool when his brothers and sisters would come by to visit. My Dad had only one child. That be me. (a little north country speak) The rest of his siblings who got married worked a little harder at populating the Earth. Come to think of it, I believe that even the unmarried ones had a go at this project, and who can say they didn’t surpass my Dad’s efforts?
These kids soaking with me in the canvas pool represent a very small percentage of the cousins I can claim as family. I lost count a long time ago. Tenor that I was to become I knew that front and center was the power position. There I am down center front in profile with the dark hair. Would you look at that hair. Things do change don’t they.
Those shinning simple days in the 50s gave me a rock solid opinion that life as a poor person was certainly blessed, BUT!!! How much fun we all had with near nothing and I had clear evidence that our parents were also well entertained. I acquired an ability to escape a personal predicament that seems to be a national torture in the USA today. Well I will admit that History did not start with my birth and this problem has been with us even longer than the USA has been around. I’ll get to that in the blogs that follow.
Did I mention I’m a tenor? I love tenor jokes. I also suffer from the deficiencies these jokes exploit to make you and me laugh. I’m going to leave the rest of my story to the many Blogs I hope to write as I overcome, little by little, the intrinsic laziness with which we tenors are branded.
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