{"id":4300,"date":"2017-02-23T12:42:58","date_gmt":"2017-02-23T16:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rockwellblake.com\/blog\/?p=4300"},"modified":"2017-02-23T12:52:24","modified_gmt":"2017-02-23T16:52:24","slug":"vigata-vagrancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/2017\/02\/23\/vigata-vagrancy\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigata vagrancy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Debbie, my wife, and I have streamed the last of a series of films that we found available on the internet that were produced for the RAI<\/a>. We fell in love with being carried away to a real town with a fantasy name: Vigata<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What has this to do with singing? Actually nothing, but after we finished all the Montalbano magic carpets to Sicily available on MHz<\/a> we decided to watch a \u201cbonus\u201d interview video added to the long list of episodes that carried us one more time back to Italy. We landed in a conversation with the author of the Montalbano books: Andrea Camilleri. This person is almost as interesting and engaging as the stories he wrote. The point of why I want to talk about this microscopically important facet of our lives in retirement is that Camilleri tells Teresa Mannino<\/a> in that interview a few things that everyone in THE ARTS should know. Some old people really do know things that the young need to hear. Since I don\u2019t ask you to pay for these blogs, I\u2019m not going to ask you to pay the freight to stream the interview.<\/p>\n

First:\u00a0 Art is not \u201cWork\u201d.<\/p>\n

ROME, ITALY – FEBRUARY 20: Andrea Camilleri attends ‘La Scomparsa Di Pato’ photocall at Alfredo Restaurant on February 20, 2012 in Rome, Italy. (Photo by Ernesto Ruscio\/Getty Images)<\/p><\/div>\n

In an official You Tube clip:<\/p>\n

Camilleri says he had fun writing his stories.<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll include the captions they inserted on MHz:<\/p>\n

Teresa: The one (book or story) you enjoyed writing the most?<\/p>\n

Camilleri: No, I always enjoy writing.<\/p>\n

Camilleri: If my writing should degenerate into work, I won\u2019t write anymore. I don\u2019t understand those people who say, \u201cSuch exhausting work! God, how tiring it is to write!\u201d Relax! It\u2019s certainly less tiring than unloading crates at the central market. Even though I sometimes do get tired, but without exaggerating. I\u2019ve always said that my ideal is the lady on the trapeze.<\/p>\n

Teresa: The lady on the trapeze?<\/p>\n

Camilleri: Yes, at the circus. She looks beautiful, always smiling, right? She does a triple somersault the whole time smiling, lightly\u2026 And she doesn\u2019t show the immense fatigue of the training. Because if she did, she would ruin your enjoyment as a spectator. It\u2019s the same for me. I want to be a trapeze artist. I don\u2019t want to convey the hard work in my writing. And so, I enjoy myself here. Understand? It isn\u2019t work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

About fifteen minutes into the interview Camilleri discusses his manner of instruction for young actors. He has a lovely way of linguistically complicating a very simple principle. Great joy bubbled up in my heart as I listened to this grand \u201cmaestro\u201d of the imaginative arts delineate what I believe to be true.<\/p>\n

This is a link to a pirate YouTube that is good only for the fact that it is free: You Tube<\/a> \u00a0The RAI must have pulled the full interview off its servers. The links in the first You Tube clip do not connect to anything. Money may make the world go round, but I try to make my ideas free.<\/p>\n

Camilleri: Attention. An actor has a complex personality, and you must play, not with imposition, because with imposition at the most, you\u2019ll end up a bad copy of yourself. You must be astute. You say \u201cA\u201d with someone so that \u201cB\u201d follows. I don\u2019t think I ever was a teacher. Maybe an advisor. I came from a very severe school\u2026. Horace\u2019s. It\u2019s a totally different way of considering didactics. But I was very severe, very attentive in the selection. But once they became students, I tried to understand, at most, what road they were taking<\/span>. And on that road, I tried to clarify the doubts that could arise, and pave the way in reaching a result that would mirror their personality<\/span> while it was being created.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Camilleri was well loved by his acting students, and for good reason. He says that he was very selective in choosing students, but more importantly he says he was concerned to guide the artists under his instructions to use the individual gifts they had to develop their interpretations reflecting that which was already part of their own personalities. It is easy for me to understand that Camilleri was seeking to find the core of the talent with which each actor was gifted. Garcia counted this as the first job of a singing teacher.<\/p>\n

Garcia wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cOften one needs an experienced judgement (sic) to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses<\/span>.\u00a0\u00a0 Generally, these qualities are only in the rudimentary state, or well veiled by numerous faults from which it is necessary to free them.\u00a0\u00a0 The essential point is to first establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them<\/span> by patient and orderly studies.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The phrases \u201cwhat road they were taking<\/span>\u201d + \u201creaching a result that would mirror their personality<\/span>\u201d and \u201crecognize in the voice of the student the germ of the qualities<\/span>\u201d + \u00a0\u201cfirst establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them<\/span>\u201d may seem to you to be completely different ideas. To me they are really the same idea. Garcia\u2019s text directs the teacher to look for and discover the true nature of the vocal gift in each student before doing any technical development of the voice. Camilleri guided each of his students to develop characters for the stage that reflected the various facets of their own personality. I would say that Camilleri wanted each individual actor to use the natural personality gifts they possessed to enlighten the impersonation of any character they were working on. Garcia directs our attention toward vocal gifts, Camilleri points at complicated personality gifts. So what\u2019s the difference? Different parts of the human organism. Camilleri certainly didn\u2019t exclude the vocal gift from his attention, but it is only one small complication.<\/p>\n

In that first link<\/a>, Camilleri tells us all about one of my 10 commandments for an artist. He called his ideal a trapezista<\/a>. An artist must present a sense of satisfaction and enjoyment while doing the work. An agent once told me that he wished I could make my singing seem difficult when I did auditions, but I refused to take that advice. I expect he knew what he was talking about, but my focus was not on pleasing him or the \u201cGate Keepers\u201d to whom he wanted to sell me. I wanted to impersonate the tapezista that Camilleri was talking about. I wanted to sing the most difficult music and keep on smiling as if it were nothing. So should you. It is sad that \u201cGate Keepers\u201d would seem to have a hard time recognizing difficult music without the interpreter ruining the composers intended message by communicating the stress under which the music places the artist. That would not be an artist in my book. More like a used car salesman<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Debbie, my wife, and I have streamed the last of a series of films that we found available on the internet that were produced for the RAI. We fell in love with being carried away to a real town with a fantasy name: Vigata. What has this to do with singing? Actually nothing, but after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,53,51,50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-garcia","category-singing","category-teaching"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/dsc_0066.jpg?fit=2144%2C1424&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kj1l-17m","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4300"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4307,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4300\/revisions\/4307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}