"opera singers are not at all like normal musicians"

(Posted by Damien Elwood)

Last Friday’s vocal forum was a master class by Thomas Allen who is currently playing Gianni Schicchi in L.A. Opera’s production of Il Trittico. He was lively and intense, showing passion for his craft. I found him very enlightening and some of the things he said reinforced concepts I have come to believe about art and opera singers as artists.

I believe that all good art is specific and much of what Thomas Allen said last Friday reinforced that. He often talked about the need to have specific ideas, emotions, and concepts when singing. It’s not just a matter of understanding the origin and meaning of the text and presenting it with a precise performance of the music. The singer must also place her performance within a context specific to herself. She must bring to bear a catalogue of experience in which to frame the emotion of the moment. These are not general ideas of how the character should feel or act, but specific sense memories drawn from a catalogue of intentional recollections of experience both on stage and in life. This is something Ken teaches in his acting classes and insists his performers develop and use.

There is a lot of other attention to detail that goes into making art out of opera. Much of the work Brent does before he ever picks up the baton is to develop a detailed understanding of the music through research of style, tradition, and performance practice. This is passed on to the performers both though coaching and staging rehearsals, which Brent conducts religiously. Also, the specific orchestration of an opera impacts every phase of production and performance. Decisions on instrumentation and drawing the “pit map” can have an enormous impact on the success of the music and drama once we move into the theatre.

The other belief I have, which Thomas Allen reinforced for me, is that musicians are not at all like normal people, and opera singers are not at all like normal musicians. He told a story about being a student at the Royal College of Music and how different the musicians looked and behaved from other students he encountered. Here at USC the Thornton School, like many academic communities, has its own brand of student geeks. The hours a musician spends in often solitary practice can create a certain inward nature characterized by bloodshot eyes, pasty skin, and wearing all black in the middle of the day. But within this culture, opera singers stand out. Not only do they tend to dress a little more dramatically but, as I call it, they live life out loud. Opera singers can, and to my thinking should, live in an emotionally honest way. This is not always easy. Neither is it always pretty, particularly when dealing with young adults. But it can serve as a foundation for the curiosity that Thomas Allen insisted was essential to building an opera singer’s arsenal of weapons, weapons used to reach into the hearts of the audience and take them to the specific world the opera is portraying.

Next week Ken Cazan will make his first post for the year.

(Damien Elwood has been managing the USC Thornton Opera since 2004)