Light and Airy
I mentioned in my last blog a video found on You Tube that features a singer holding a note as if she were showing off a superhuman ability. When a singer does an easy-peasy thing like singing a sustained tone and receives such approbation, I wonder about her competition. Does she have any? It is just plain funny.
No matter how long a singer holds a note, it will always be nothing more than a trick. I have already told a long note story: HERE. It was one of my tricks, and I have to say that I am not the only one in life who could do such things. I was present for just such a show off performance by another trickery expert.
Bruno Campanella
Once upon a time I was in Paris to do Arturo in “I Puritani”. I learned a ton of stuff in that production, suffered terribly and totally entertained myself all at the same time. Our conductor was my favorite, Bruno Campanella, who was a joy to work with and the number one part of my entertainment. My suffering came from a terrible flu that really put me down. I passed my tenor baton to my team mate Aldo Bertolo who sang my dress rehearsal and I think even my opening night. I suffered and recovered, got back to work on stage, and then June Anderson fell victim to the same flu that put my voice down for the count. She was forced to cancel one show and because her tag team partner, Michelle Lagrange, was doing synchronized sneezing from the same virus, the Salle Favart flew in Mariella Devia to take the strain of keeping the ticket holders happy. Bruno knew her, told me I would love her and in that prediction he was a perfect prophet. At the end or her aria she took her final high note on a walk into the wings. I have no idea how long she held the note, but it was long enough to make me smile and expect every decibel of explosive applause that resulted when she finally stopped singing or maybe she
Mariella Devia
just closed the door of her dressing room. Experts are hard to find, and she has continued to confirm that she is an expert high on a very restricted list.
One can be an expert in almost anything, The Petomane comes to mind. He became famous just down the street from the Salle Favart albeit in a previous century. I know about this particular performer from my wife’s family. Her Great Grandfather knew about and wrote about him because he was of the same generation and owned a string of Vaudeville theatres in the American west. It is sad that Debbie’s Great Grand Dad never had the chance to book The Petomane for a tour.
Getting back to notes long held, once upon a longer time ago than the Paris “I Puritani” with Mirella, but nowhere near as long ago as The Petomane’s explosive career, I was privileged to work with an expert bass-baritone who hails from just north of me in Quebec, Claude Corbeil. He is an expert stage personality with a richness of voice a tenor can only admire. One of the many fun incidents I have in my memory bank that include this great and flexible artist is wedged in among my many memories of doing “Il Barbiere di Siviglia”. We were cast together in Ottawa and an opportunity for this tenor to show off 
and have fun presented itself in a rehearsal. Because of circumstances beyond anyone’s control, Claude missed a few late staging rehearsals leading up to our Orchestral Stage rehearsals and no one seemed to have given him the word about how the staging had changed while he was away. I was already initiated into the great tradition of On Stage Pranks, and when we reached the “Buona sera, mio signore.” in the third act quintet, Claude was way on the other side of the stage from me. He was doing a great job of maintaining his Don Basilio character while pestering our Don Bartolo stage right. The newest staging called for Basilio to shake the hand of my Almaviva,,, sorry,,, at this point in the Opera, still my Lindoro doing Don Alonso, well you get the picture.
I’m supposed to sing “Buona sera” to him. Then he was to go shake Rosina’s hand as she sang her “Buona sera”, then Figaro’s hand during his rendition, and finally to Bartolo when Don Basilio himself has his turn to sing the melody. The four of us were equidistantly spaced across the stage with me far stage left. At first, I thought I’d wait for Claude to make his way across the stage before launching into the new section of the Quintet so that he would have a chance to do the stage movement required by the Director. The silence that ensued, as I waited, became pendulously pregnant, as our Don Bartolo seemed unwilling to inform Claude of the new traffic pattern. I began to feel the eyes of our conductor burning holes in the left side of my head as I watched
Claude do what he does so well. When a cat is in doubt, he grooms, but Claude improvises. At the moment the burning sensation of eyes upon me overcame my admiration of Claude’s unflappable stage presence, I was hit by malevolent inspiration. I took a deep breath, extended my right hand, for shaking, in the direction of stage right and launched into the first note of “Buona sera”. Now Claude is one to carry his character throughout anything, including disastrous on stage train wrecks. So I was confident he would figure out the situation and make his way over to my outstretched hand so that the melody could continue and our stage movements could return to the pattern that our traffic planner had invented. I made a bet that I could hold that note long enough for Claude to travel all the way across the stage before I ran out of air. As it turned out, even with Claude greeting a few people on his way across the stage while maintaining the character of his very memorable Basilio, I survived the wait. When our hands met, I still had enough air left over to carry on singing the first phrase of the Quintet while furiously shaking Claudes hand. To an outsider it would have seemed all part of the plan. I loved it. No idea what anyone else thought, but this improvised stage traffic did not actually get incorporated into the production. So…….
Claude is a model acting expert. I encountered many more experts and I may get around to unpacking a few more memories of super fun, silly, happy, fulfilling and warmly appreciated events that pepper my time line. I hope you like reading about them. I’m now over my thousand word limit. So I have to stop here.
I’ll be back.
Read MoreWho was Mario Salerno?
This blog’s for Debbie. (My wife.) The die was cast when I mentioned Mario Salerno in my previous blog. I don’t usually take requests, but I could not resist Debbie’s enthusiasm.
When I kick started my career at Washington Opera in 1976, I met Mario. I found him sitting at our rehearsal piano located about level with the surface of the Potomac River somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kennedy Center in our Nation’s Capital. Great building, lovely river and a familiar sight because I had sung many times just downstream from that great white titan for the arts in open air concerts behind Lincoln’s back at his memorial on the shore of the Potomac with the United States Navy Band. It was one of my goals to sing at the Kennedy Center, but I had no idea how my singing would be impacted when it happened.
George London scheduled a production of “L’Italiana in Algeri” for the early days of 1976 and populated it with some of the best talent I could ever hope to work with and steal from. I did steal a lot from one of them, Renato Capecchi, but Mario became a key figure in my musical life. I hope to tell you about Renato in a future blog.
What I know of Mario’s history was gleaned from tidbits of information that he let slip during our conversations. It would be a boring bit of info to know that he studied at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini in Florence, Italy if it were not for the fact that my voice teacher Renata Carisio Booth studied there too, and they were contemporaries. I was so disappointed that they did not remember one another from those school days, but, even so, I suspect that their teaching styles were so similar because those long ago school days had profound influences on them.
Before Mario found work along the Potomac, he had spent more than ten years at La Scala in Milano, Italy during the golden years of singing, and around fifteen years working for Swiss Radio in their classical music broadcasting program.
When I found him, I needed everything he had learned over his long musical life and he was ready to share. I loved the way he worked in studio. He was full of musical suggestions and was dedicated to improving or just varying an interpretation. He was challenging, meticulous and not easy to please.
Mario became my go to guy for help with repertoire and, after Washington, I made the trek to Milano one summer to work with him at his home. It was wonderful. He would hand me suggestion after suggestion for how to sing 4 measures at a time. Not that he had to hector me to sing the way he wanted, because Renata Booth had done the work necessary to prepare me technically to do everything he asked of me and, sometimes, after only one rendition of his suggested interpretation he would say good, now why don’t you try……… I found this work ethic addictive, and when I was invited to return to Wolf Trap in the young artists program, I suggested to Frank Rizzo that he bring Mario in to coach us youngsters. Frank knew how good Mario was, and I got my wish. The only problem with his method of working, that I loved so much, was that it inspired some of my colleagues at Wolf Trap to leave Mario’s studio with tears streaming down their cheeks. I didn’t know that many of my fellow Wolf Trap singers-in-training were accustomed to running all the way through arias before coaches would make any suggestions. The best comment I remember was from a wet faced soprano that couldn’t believe she had spent the better part of an hour working on 8 measures. If my tenor memory serves, I told her that she must be really good, because Mario had the habit of making me work on only 4 measures at a time!
Nothing was too small to address. While I was doing my best in Milano to sing Mario’s musical suggestions, he got frustrated with me doing recitative according to the composer’s notation. That is to say, me following the note values I had memorized. He decided I should study the recitative as spoken language, and he told me he wanted me to learn the rhythm that would be natural to the language. I was all for it, that is at first. He assigned this teaching task to his teenage daughter. I had my doubts that this young lady was going to be able to do anything for me, but we got started. She listened to me recite the recitatives before telling me “Non sembra Italiano.” (That’s not Italian.) During my month long sojourn her three word comment became less and less frequent. She was more than qualified for the job, and she got it done. Mario was pleased with the way I did my best to forget the note durations in those recitatives and rambled over the notes with the replacement rhythm associated with my recitations that had garnered an OK from his young daughter.
Mario and my voice teacher, Renata, may not have remembered each other from Conservatory time, but I think they remembered a lot of what was taught them while they were there. I wish I had asked Mario about his professors at Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini. Renata had spent time under Ottorino Respighi’s instruction way back then, and I wish I could say the same for Mario. What I can say is that they were consummate professionals who knew what making music was all about, the traditions and how to drill them into their students. They also taught, Renata by insistence and Mario by example, humility along with confidence in one’s abilities and understanding.
Mario was the natural next step in my preparation for the professional life. Renata dragged me out of the woods, pruned off some of my North Country bumpkin culture and put my voice in order. Mario showed me what I should try to do with my voice and my Renata inspired appreciation of sophistication. It was a long, interesting and fulfilling road with many more people stepping in at just the moment needed to point me along in the direction that my life took.
Along the way, Garcia was dropped in my lap… or on my head… Whichever seems more appropriate to your attitude concerning tenors. These formative influences were living introductions to Garcia. I think of them as:
Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part One: Renata Carisio Booth
Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part Two: Mario Salerno
(and daughter – sorry, I don’t have a picture of her).
White Christmas
Our Christmas tree is up in our living room again. We exchanged gifts, and we celebrated. I pray everyone has found reasons to celebrate this Christmas season, especially if the Birth of Christ isn’t one of them. His birth has no equal among my list of reasons to celebrate this Christmas and, come to think of it, this is true of every other Christmas I have enjoyed since I signed up to follow Him. Among this long list of other things to celebrate that enlivened our 2013 celebration of Christ’s Birthday is the marking of two years of existence for this blog. I am so happy to have the struggle of putting this little pile of pages together.
Ice Bronzed back yard at dawn.
I believe the reason I have come this far is the Birthday Baby our Christmas celebrations are all about. He has shown me value in things that, without His guidance, would have had little value to me. His promises He keeps and I rely on them. I believe that if you are reading these pages, and find something useful or even just some entertaining things on them, your discoveries validate a small part of my enlistment with Christ. For His part, and it is a very small sliver of what He has promised, every moment of being at a loss to know what to do for a student or lacking something to type into my little computer for this blog, He comes to my rescue. He always comes to my rescue.
The words I keep adding to these “RockwellBlake.com” pages I think of as little blessings. My blessings, that is. You reading this blog I also count among my blessings. Thanks for coming. If you keep reading, then I have my confirmation that these pages are worth writing.
Celebrations are usually full of interesting tidbits of entertainment. This year we have the best twisted weather.
Global Warming!
No doubt about it. It’s a first for me. The snow that came down all pretty and powdery just a little while ago is now “bronzed” in ice on our roof and in our back yard. Oh yes, we cannot forget the trees. They were not left out of the coating program. For me it is another reminder of just how interesting creation is. When Christ was born, shoes were not for babies and too simple to deserve electroplating . Besides, electroplating didn’t get invented until the 19th Century and didn’t get used on shoes until the 20th Century, but what we have on our roof, backyard and trees sure makes me think that Christ’s Father can remind us in many ways of His Pride and Joy. After all, insurance companies are always talking about the Power of Christ’s Father with the words: “Acts of God”. Why not fulfill my dreams of a “White Christmas” by freezing one into an H2O “bronzed” snow sculpture?
Better than Bronze
If our temperatures stay low enough, the ice will keep, our Christmas season will be white for quite a while, and we could slide across the ice directly into the New Year.
Part of our traditional way to celebrate is to view some of our favorite movies that use Christmas as their central theme. “Holiday Inn” always inspired me to reach for the Kleenex in previous viewings, but, this time I found myself focusing on the singing so much that I was distracted from the emotional flow of the play. Bing Crosby and all his friends have lessons to teach, and I studied so hard that I did everything but take notes….. Tenors don’t take notes.
The Little Ausable River
On the other hand, “White Christmas” came through for me. There is nothing like sniffles and nose blowing to confirm that such a work of art has had the intended effect. Debbie and I, each Christmas time, dust off these old classics as a reminder of what once was seen as really valuable, even by Hollywood. We still have “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street” to visit again this year. I have my big box of Kleenex at the ready.
Up Close Ice at Dawn
Please accept my gratitude for coming to read what I have to say. Two years ago, I didn’t expect anyone to be interested. Wonders really never cease. My prayers are with you that you have blessings to celebrate this “Holiday Season”. Come back, please, and often so that your visits will add to the great number of blessings I have available to help with any attack of insomnia that I may suffer in the New Year coming. I pray that we all sleep well, when we want to, in 2014, and that we all find ourselves enjoying ever more blessings. Bing Crosby will remind me to count them next Christmas.
How to walk on water.
Telephone – Internet – Interview
Just a quick note to let everyone have a link to an article that came out today at www.liricamente.it.
I want to thank Mrs. Gloria Bellini for writing so nicely about me.
Mrs. Bellini and I had fun talking while I was still in my Rome Hotel room. The attached photo is a good example of the fun singers can have, on or off the stage. That’s me in white hair. Guess who is with me?
Read MoreRemembering A Little Nothing
Once upon a time there were two tenors auditioning for a Major Midwest Orchestra. These tenors were not competitors because they did not have similar voices. They were, and still are friendly, in fact able to share a rising star manager whose office had organized the audition in which these two guys were participating.
These tenors, being tenors, were certainly aware of one another. But more than there being another tenor on the scene had little probability of penetrating their concentration on the job at hand. Selling! They were there to sell themselves to the Major Midwest Orchestra. These two were so different in character that the project of selling was like one tenor selling a Rolls Royce and the other tenor selling a Renegade. They will both get the job done, but not the same way.
These tenors were well familiar with the ambiance in which they would make their pitch for a contract at that Major Midwest Orchestra. They had arrived via the normal entrance, back door or stage door, to be nice, on West 65th Street in NYC. One tenor made his way directly to the active center of organization, off stage right, where the chronological audition list was in the hands of the person responsible for shoving all the singers onto the stage one at a time. The other tenor made a quick appearance and quickly departed after he discovered his estimated wait time before his pitch could begin. The tenor still on hand found a chair, almost the only chair available, and sat down in a strategic location. He had an unobstructed view of the piano and of the singer who had been shoved onto the stage of Avery Fisher Hall to audition. Given the fact that the singer auditioning at the time was not a tenor, the seated tenor soon forgot who it was that was making a pitch for a contract…. You know, with that Major Midwest Orchestra. He even forgot which Major Midwest Orchestra was the reason for the audition because he did not get a contract from this Major… sorry. I expect the other tenor, who was diligently warming up his Rolls Royce (RR) voice, has forgotten the entire affair, but the Renegade salesman never forgot.
In the fullness of time the warmed up RR tenor reappeared and proceeded to pace the rather small L shaped hall way that served as waiting area. Auditioning continued on the stage, the seated tenor continued to gather fodder for forgetfulness from the activities in the Hall and the warmed up RR tenor kept legging his way past the seated tenor as he measured the length of that L shaped hall way.
As time began to weigh heavily upon those still waiting, the pacing RR tenor seemed to speed up. Suddenly he stopped in front of the seated tenor and exclaimed: “Rocky, will you stop sitting there like that!? You’re making me nervous.” Yes, I was sitting there, but what I did at that moment I cannot remember. Memory is so selective.
Anyway, time past, singers finished singing, other singers were shepherded onto the stage and finally the RR tenor got his turn. I found myself watching the RR tenor put those very active legs to good use. Out onto the stage he went and he sang gloriously. Then I smiled and understood the challenge.
As often happens, the order of appearance of disparate acts/skits/performance artists can be a tremendous disadvantage to the act that follows. There is sage advice that still floats around in the theatre. Never follow a Kids Act or Animal Act. As soon as the RR tenor approached the end of the aria he was so magnificently singing, I was told to get ready to stand and deliver. When Neil Shicoff finished his aria, he set his sights on the door, stage right where I was waiting for my turn. I wish I could remember if/and/or what I might have said to him as he left the stage, but I do remember that his voice seemed to me to continue to ringing in the theatre as he passed me on his way to the stairway and 65th Street. Onto the stage I went to meet the challenge that Neil had left floating in the auditorium for me to face.
I don’t remember what I sang or how I sang, but I do remember the vision of the two individuals in the center of the auditorium. The one we were singing for and the other one, our agent, Matthew Epstein.
I guess I was heavily influenced by listening to Neil sing his heart out, because when Matthew got hold of me after the audition he asked me: “Why did you sing so loud? You sang louder than Neil!!” I will never forget that audition because of the features so far explained, but I have to say that I never quite believed what Matthew said about my singing that day.
The last and, at the time, most important feature to this story was that no contracts ever came to anyone as a result of these auditions. It turned out that the person I remember seeing seated next to Matthew Epstein in the auditorium had no authority to offer contracts from that Major Midwest Orchestra. We singers turned out to be a free afternoon entertainment. As far as I know that guy who sat with Matthew may never have worked for that Major Midwest Orchestra.
Life is full of satisfactions that cannot be anticipated, and that audition is more valuable to me now for the pleasure it has given me in memory, than anything a contract could have delivered as a consequence of it.
Read MoreMerry Christmas 2012
Snow on the ground, lights in the tree, fruit cake soaking up the Bourbon, Champagne on the chill, family to arrive in the morning and only a few gifts left to wrap. That’s what I call a great prelude to Christmas, and God has allowed me to arrive at this very reality. We celebrate Christ Jesus, our Savior Born.
Let’s not get bogged down about the actual point in our time line when Mary gave birth to Jesus. Let’s avoid quibbling about the reality of His Existence. Let’s even evade justifying why we put up such a fuss on 25 December every year. I know why I do, and you are free to find your own reasons.
One of mine is a very small thing in the greater scheme of life and history. Writing a blog, and that blog only being about vocal things, makes my thing shrink even smaller. I am still going to jump up and down… only a few times because of my advanced years. Those few jumps will be for joy that a year has come full circle from the birth of this little blog. One year ago I would not have guessed that my subscribers would be so numerous. Some time ago the large number of update announcements caused my email server to block them all. I never knew about email per hour limits. Now that I do, everyone who signed up, (thanks for doing so) should get a heads up about this Christmas blog. I’ll do one jump, at least, for that.
The year was a great time trip. It was interesting writing, corresponding, teaching and learning. That learning thing keeps me humble and young at heart. No small thing for a tenor. Anyway, I have learned that I have so much to say and so little talent for saying it. I keep learning that fact every time I face my computer screen wanting to put my thoughts in rational order, and, even after coming to some grudging contentment with the results, my wife, Debbie, has the best editing talent for finding weaknesses in my texts. I need her in many ways. Being my net for this high wire act is only a small sample.
The year even had a trip to Europe that I blogged about. Travel is a great education, and I am happy to say that my expectation to learn things was well fulfilled. Those things may not all be positive, but one, that good and possibly great voices are not extinct, was a welcome revelation. That is worth at least one lift of the Champagne glass.
Thanks for following my writing efforts.
I want to be useful. If I can be useful to you, I will call it a blessing. Don’t get me wrong. It would be a blessing for me.
PS. It is now Twenty four hours later than when I started this blog. Six hours have passed since Christmas Day began in Plattsburgh. I got the last gifts wrapped, a lot of the little bit of snow that decorated yesterday morning is gone, items chilling and soaking are still undisturbed and family is still going to arrive…. Unlike me they may be on time. I let Midnight pass without posting this blog which is only explainable. Not excusable. But….
God knows my heart, and knew that I had to get to bed on Christmas Eve and get those gifts wrapped and this blog done early on His Birthday. I fell asleep trying to count my blessings…. I’m afraid I only got through the top of my list. Christ, Debbie, Dot… well I drifted off and can’t remember any of the other visions my dreams brought me. Life is good and everything else hangs on those top three.
Read More