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Last night was a first for me. I never thought sitting in the audience was going to become harder work than being on the stage. The closing concert was an introduction to a nervous condition at least some parents must experience while attending their children’s dance recitals, piano recitals and school plays. There I was trying to sit still while my Master Class students did that singing thing in front of a bunch of Opera loving Italians. A cold sweat would have been better. I got overheated. When I had to wipe my brow dry, I knew I needed to calm down.
Yesterday morning, with all those singers, my work had already finished. They all allowed me to push and shove them toward the best artistic results I could envision for them, and all the twitching in the world that I might do in my seat was not going to help any of them in any way. In fact, I could have made a spectacle of myself already, without intending it. It wasn’t until after the program came to the inevitable finish-line that I had the freedom to think back over just how well everyone had done.
There are lots and lots of arguments about what is needed to save the economic viability of the performing arts, and I have my own angle, but what is needed by each and every singer is the approval of an appreciative audience to confirm that the artist’s efforts had the intended effect. Who cares that a teacher might be increasing the humidity of the room by sweating every detail? The members of the audience shouldn’t, and don’t care that the artists are taking great big risks by following the advice of a sweat drenched teacher. They are there to enjoy something that this nation may be justified to claim as their invention. Italy was certainly integral to bringing Opera to maturity, and, back in my day, I assumed that if I could make Italians applaud my singing, I was doing something right..… You know, that singing thing.
Well, the attending Opera lovers affirmed all the singers’ efforts with one of the artists singled out for particular attention. He gathered into his singing almost everything I had thrown at him over the desperately few days we worked together, finished his second aria to receive enthusiastic applause and bravos. He graciously bowed and proceeded to exit the room, but before he could make good his escape, a voice, not mine, was heard from the audience: BIS! For the non-Italian non Opera devotee that means: “Play it again Sam”, or let us hear that thing again. The artist hesitated in mid stride and turned his head to look back over his shoulder. I’ve never seen a happier smile. It was almost as big as mine.
Those moments of triumph are exactly what artists need for inspiration to ever more risk taking in this art form suffering from apathy, mediocrity and let’s just play it safe singing. The organic gift cannot be improved, but the gift must be put to the best use possible. When that is done, the gift itself becomes less important. After all, great painters aren’t considered great artists because they used the best quality materials. The best performing artists are often not the interpreters in possession of the best instruments. Violinists might have to wait a long time after they are recognized as great artists before they can afford a Stradivarius. Singers can never buy a new instrument.
Read MoreWhat next?
I will be at a concert tonight. It will be populated by some variously talented and variously prepared young singers hoping to make a mark in an art form that is having some growing pains. This concert represents a small milestone in my efforts to do my part to help that art form grow.
I am always surprised when faced with evidence that life can be really synchronous. I subscribed to Greg Sandow’s blogs some time ago, and today I opened his latest blog, http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2014/09/what-we-should-do.html, after my first cup of coffee in my little hotel.
It has taken Greg a bit of time to get there, but he is now on my page. Give the audience a reason to return and you will have the best reason to keep your doors open. That is if you have a theater.
If I had more time I would have more to write. I just got back from the last class in this Torino series, and I will have to rush to be on time for this evening’s event.
Don’t worry, I’ll be back.
Read MoreWhy am I here?
I made it to Torino and am hard at work with eight singers and enjoying the company of three auditing onlookers whom I hope will receive something useful from our work.
The final concert is coming tomorrow, Saturday 20, 2014 at 6:00 pm, and I think I should explain to everyone what I think it’s all about. My name isn’t Alfi, but I do have an answer.
When the youngsters, I’m trying to help, face the public we have invited to come to the Circolo della Stampa di Torino to hear our little concert, they will fulfill the spirit and substance of what it’s all about: No matter how hard we may work together during this Master Class, in the end, it is what happens in the performance that counts.
I am here to do everything I can to help these young people make that performance as close to perfection as possible. What do I intend to see happen? Well, let me try to explain myself by listing my employers. I know I am not an authorized employee of anyone on my list, but I feel the same responsibility as if I had contracts with all three.
- The Singers:
Everyone seeking to be a singer by profession is eligible for employer status. For example, this website is for you, if you are trying to find your way to that small spotlight center stage where you will have to stand and deliver. My being in Torino is part of my effort to walk the walk. After all, this website sure is a lot of talking the talk.
- The Great Creator
My most important employer is the most creative person I know: My God. Now, I know me saying I believe in God and His creative power may seem to many of you to be an aside. It is, however, central to everything. Singers have voices because God forms them while the singer is in the womb, not because of a chance digestive event during the singer’s gestation. Not for any other reason than God’s gift. So I am happy to say that I am working for God to see that as many as possible of his gifts of voice to singers receive loving care, and that He may enjoy the product of those gifts as my singing students engage in their creative work. By the way, I also believe that we are creative creatures because God is creative.
- The Audience
Unlike the theaters of the world, I do not forget that “elemental employer”, the audience. I believe that without other peoples’ ears there is no performance. It is always just a rehearsal, or worse; a hobby. I am working for the people still warming the seats. Singers are remarkably hard to convince of the peculiar relationship an artist has with his fellow human beings. Anyone wishing to be a professional using his or her voice for a creative purpose has to understand that the voice is for communicating and as such a communication must take place, and it must be with an audience. Eventually, we’ve got to sell a sufficient number of tickets for participating in that communication to justify the professional level fees for services that theatres are finding harder and harder to pay these days. I stand as ambassador from the ticket buying public, and do my best to direct each gifted singer toward an interesting and satisfying conversation with my employer who continues to buy tickets and hopes to be entertained.
The theater directors of the world seem to forget the audience, and I believe the crisis in the performing arts has its majority explanation in that forgetfulness. It is perhaps the largest problem for a singer as well. Forget your audience, and it will forget you….
Oh! Let’s not forget all those audience regulars who have decided to stop buying tickets. I have no idea how to get them back into the seats, but I know why many of them decided to stop keeping those seats warm.
Singers who only fear their audience are shoulder to shoulder with the theatres of our day, and together they are the ones who can bring about the future feared by everyone who loves the performing arts.
We sing for an audience because that’s what professionals do. You can’t leave God out of the equation. He can certainly listen in while we’re at it, and, by the way, He can even hear and enjoy the voice of someone who only possesses enough courage to break out in song in the shower. That individual would not be my ideal student no matter how beautiful the voice. I don’t argue with God, but a great voice is often just not enough to make it in the professions.
Read MoreThe Problem is the Product
So let’s get down to basics. Is there a problem? Yes. What is the problem? Apparently we are suffering shrinkage of opportunities for singers and musicians to make a living. The arts, as a jobs program, is getting very weak in the knees, and a search for leg braces seems to be getting under way.
I think the search for leg braces is destined for failure. Those who are in the know about the problem seem to be trying to figure out how to market “The Arts”… that is, arts organizations’ need to deal with funding short falls and diminishing audience attendance. Almost everything I see being discussed in public about the action needed is off point. Arts organizations are being advised to find new ways to dress up the concert hall and design events relevant to an audience which seems willing to spend money, but not on tickets to “The Arts”.
Another big problem is a discussion today among deep pocket donors, which is bubbling into public view here and there. It places those who support “The Arts” in a difficult defensive position. I can imagine it would be very hard to argue the survival of “Classical Music” as being as important as alleviating some of the suffering of the starving among us while sipping Champagne in opulent surroundings. I wouldn’t think it possible to survive making such a case in many soup kitchen lines that are set up across our own still relatively prosperous country. My opinion on what these 1% ters ought to do with their bank accounts aside, I do believe the problem for the 1%ter is much the same as for the ticket buyer.
If you are selling a product that does not outshine your competition, then your result is going to be less impressive than your competitions’. I have seen some grudging admission that “The Arts” are really part of the entertainment industry, even if turning a profit seems to keep almost everyone else in the industry afloat. I see “The Arts”, “The Press” and just about any other form of communication as entertainment when they are not essential to a person’s survival. I have a friend that has a police scanner for entertainment. Lawyers may think of scanners as tools, but my friend has a toy. Tracking communication among emergency service personal is serious business, especially if you are going to chase the ambulance your scanner catches being sent out to gather victims of a traffic accident. It’s all about billing, about money, about survival.
Life is not “a box of chocolate”
No one can guarantee anyone anything, and the entertainment industry can only offer you opportunity. It can only offer an empty box that you must fill with what you have to offer in order to attract an audience. Artists might like to be able to define the product they are producing in terms of cultural values, but there is only one system of valuation that makes any difference at all. The price someone will pay.
If you are seeking to feed yourself and your family in the entertainment industry, you need to view the crisis, if you believe in it, from the point of view of anyone seeking employment. My first visits to the Guidance Counselors’ offices at Peru Central School, most likely during the time I was first getting to know my Renata, were dedicated to searching through employment categories in the catalogues strategically placed in the little waiting room outside the counselors’ offices. I trolled those catalogues in order to overcome my ignorance about the job market. I wanted to study something that could be my magic carpet to ride out of the life style to which my extended family had become accustomed.
I didn’t find my ultimate choice in those catalogues. I dedicated myself to the art and craft of singing without really knowing how risky a choice it was. I found out, when I applied for unemployment benefits just after leaving my military service with the Navy. I didn’t know what to write in one of the blanks on the application form I was filling out. The big book of job titles in that office gave me the approved wording to insert in the appropriate blank on the application form that I successfully filled out. It was: “classical singer”. Forget the fact that I was an unemployed “classical singer”. I was happy to be classified as one.
Needless to say: I found work and my little magic carpet revved up and carried me to many parts of the world I never dreamed to be able to visit. Oh! And yes. My life style never resembled the comfortable hard-working lower middle class life style of my dad, which now seems to be disappearing. You may not have noticed, but there is a crisis there as well.
Back to the product: be aware that there is only one honest way to make a living. Deliver value for the fee you collect. My dad bought himself his second new truck (I bought his first new one for him.) with money he earned by proving his labor valuable enough to become an employee rather than a jobs program participant. He was long past youth, but still full of energy. He loved the job he landed after the fur farm, where he worked most of his life, died, and his new job funded his life to the end of it. Artists and Arts Management personnel have to prove themselves just like my dad did and just like I did.
People will buy tickets, subscribe to and donate to whatever inspires them. If you want to make a success as a performer, you must entertain. If you want to make a success of an organization that presents the efforts of performers, you have to know what will entertain.
Last week-end I found an example of just the sort of entertainment I believe to be the cure for the “crisis”, if you believe there is one.
The Allant Trio at Hill and Hollow.
Read MoreConcert Tonight
Tonight at E. Glenn Giltz Auditorium in Hawkins Hall the Master Class participants with whom I have been working will be giving a concert. It is a free concert that will begin, August 16, 2014, at 7:30 pm. Sorry that our organizers thought to put a price on the tickets and had some in the media report this decision. I’m sorry because some of you may think any price too high to pay to hear some young aspiring artists attempt to entertain you. Well, the real reason the tickets are free is because making this a pay to get in event may violate US law. The singers will entertain you enough to make your trip to Hawkins Hall worth every drop of gasoline/diesel or electricity your individual conveyance utilizes to get you there. The trip has been worth it for me. I gladly fill my tank and show up each day to help these youngsters grow toward becoming great artists. I can tell you that these singers are also good enough to make you forget you paid for one or two of the tickets, if the organizers had actually put a price on them.
For those of you who may pause to consider your electric vehicle which you forgot to plug in last night, go out and plug it in now. All you need is enough charge to get to Hawkins Hall. Our little university is almost as up to date as Kansas City. The parking lot adjacent to the hall has an electric vehicle charging station for two where you can acquire enough power to get back home, or even to a nice restaurant like Anthony’s after the show. Sorry, I think our event is the only free offering in Plattsburgh tonight, so I wouldn’t want anyone to infer that my favorite restaurant is going to team up with us under the FREE label. OH! By the way, if there are more than two music loving, absent-minded electric vehicle owners in my North Country, I will personally see to the transport needs of those who fail to find an open charging station.
It has been a pleasure and an honor to work with these youngsters, and it is going to be fun to share them with my fellow North Country citizens. Please come and applaud, if you are moved to do so, anytime you are moved to do so. I’ll be the first to join you, even if the moment we choose to applaud might annoy the strict concert etiquette traditionalist who might also show up.
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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???
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