George London<\/a> scheduled a production of \u201cL\u2019Italiana in Algeri\u201d 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.\u00a0 \u00a0I did steal a lot from one of them, Renato Capecchi<\/a>, but Mario became a key figure in my musical life. \u00a0I hope to tell you about Renato in a future blog.<\/p>\n What I know of Mario\u2019s history was gleaned from tidbits of information that he let slip during our conversations.\u00a0 It would be a boring bit of info to know that he studied at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini<\/a> in Florence, Italy if it were not for the fact that my voice teacher Renata Carisio Booth studied there too, and they were contemporaries.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Before Mario found work along the Potomac, he had spent more than ten years at La Scala<\/a> in Milano, Italy during the golden years of singing, and around fifteen years working for Swiss Radio<\/a> in their classical music broadcasting program.<\/p>\n When I found him, I needed everything he had learned over his long musical life and he was ready to share. \u00a0I loved the way he worked in studio.\u00a0 He was full of musical suggestions and was dedicated to improving or just varying an interpretation.\u00a0 He was challenging, meticulous and not easy to please.<\/p>\n Mario became my go to guy for help with repertoire and, after Washington, I made the trek to Milano<\/a> one summer to work with him at his home.\u00a0 It was wonderful.\u00a0 He would hand me suggestion after suggestion for how to sing 4 measures at a time.\u00a0 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\u2019t you try\u2026\u2026\u2026\u00a0 I found this work ethic addictive, and when I was invited to return to Wolf Trap<\/a> in the young artists program, I suggested to Frank Rizzo that he bring Mario in to coach us youngsters.\u00a0 Frank knew how good Mario was, and I got my wish.\u00a0 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\u2019s studio with tears streaming down their cheeks.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 The best comment I remember was from a wet faced soprano that couldn\u2019t believe she had spent the better part of an hour working on 8 measures. \u00a0If 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!<\/p>\n Nothing was too small to address.\u00a0 While I was doing my best in Milano to sing Mario\u2019s musical suggestions, he got frustrated with me doing recitative according to the composer\u2019s notation.\u00a0 That is to say, me following the note values I had memorized.\u00a0\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I was all for it, that is at first.\u00a0 He assigned this teaching task to his teenage daughter.\u00a0 I had my doubts that this young lady was going to be able to do anything for me, but we got started.\u00a0 She listened to me recite the recitatives before telling me \u201cNon sembra Italiano.\u201d (That\u2019s not Italian.)\u00a0 During my month long sojourn her three word comment became less and less frequent.\u00a0 She was more than qualified for the job, and she got it done.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n 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.\u00a0 I wish I had asked Mario about his professors at Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini.\u00a0 Renata had spent time under Ottorino Respighi\u2019s <\/a>instruction way back then, and I wish I could say the same for Mario. \u00a0What 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.\u00a0 They also taught, Renata by insistence and Mario by example, humility along with confidence in one\u2019s abilities and understanding.<\/p>\n Mario was the natural next step in my preparation for the professional life.\u00a0 Renata dragged me out of the woods, pruned off some of my North Country bumpkin culture and put my voice in order.\u00a0 \u00a0Mario showed me what I should try to do with my voice and my Renata inspired appreciation of sophistication.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Along the way, Garcia was dropped in my lap\u2026 or on my head\u2026 Whichever seems more appropriate to your attitude concerning tenors.\u00a0 These formative influences were living introductions to Garcia.\u00a0 I think of them as:<\/p>\n Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part One: Renata Carisio Booth<\/p>\n Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part Two: Mario Salerno<\/p>\n (and daughter –\u00a0sorry, I don’t have a picture of her).<\/p>\n![\"Renata](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Renata-Booth.jpg?resize=180%2C240&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
![\"Mario](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/Mario-Salerno.jpg?resize=530%2C339&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"