Acting vs. Voice

Obviously Opera is a form of drama. It requires all the parameters necessary for a dramatic production such as lighting, costumes, sets, staging, acting, etc. etc. But Opera has another parameter; Music. And in Opera, Music is the primary dramatic force. It conveys emotion, ideas, intellect, concept and internal meaning that is not as readily available with any other performance parameter. Consequently, anything that deals with the music in an Opera must be given primary consideration. It is for that reason that once a production is finally staged, the stage director is no longer in charge; the production is now completely in the hands of the conductor. Opera is the only theatre art form in which a musician has the final say.Singers act with their voices. How they sing, how they declaim, how they color the text, how they time their enunciation, etc. etc. all become the essence of how we, as observers, perceive their character and, more importantly, their value within the production. We even evaluate their singing ability more by how they have convinced us of their characters quality than how they create their tone.And if, a most glorious if, they also can move well on stage and can use their whole bodies as instruments of the theatre craft we are overwhelmed with the raw essence of their characters emotional experience.The late Wesley Balk, one of the greatest teachers of the singer-actor, would often develop exercises for his students that required them to explore extremes of acting ideas for a given scene. Only after having experienced such extremes was it possible for most singers to find a middle ground that had immediacy because it was physically informed by the extremes of the acting exercise.

But, What Is Great Opera Acting?

First let me say that yes, opera is theater, and theatre demands acting.But what, after all is great operatic acting? Histrionics?? Hand gestures?Flashing eyes? Sashaying in your gown all around the stage?? Laying on your back and dangling your hair into the orchestra pit????I would say that 95% of great opera acting in done IN THE VOICE.? If you sat in the top balcony of the Old MET, as many of you did.? There really wasn't much difference in what you could see in a Tosca by Milanov or Albanese or Callas for that matter. What gripped you emotionally and caught you up in the drama of the moment was the passion and intensity of the singing.? Without that there was no drama at all.?This is why we can watch some noted actresses of today at the MET and marvel in the theatre at their whirling and twirling and laughing aloud in Mad Scenes and then return home and turn on the radio a week later and hear the same cast and wonder what became of the drama. In fact we are more likely to note the vocal flaws on the radio that are often covered over by the whirling, twirling, and laughing we witness on the stage.?Everyone is sooooooooooooo fond of pointing out Maria Callas these days as the epitome of great operatic acting, and yet if you watch her videos she often hardly moves a muscle.? But her voice is imbued with white hot intensity.?So, Indeed!? I am all for great acting on the opera stage.? In fact I need it to be satisfied with the performance.But flashing eyes, dangling hair into the pit, whirling, twirling, and laughing aloud are merely empty gestures when the chromatic scales are fudged, the trills are faked, the Eb flat, and the inner vocal intensity vacant.?

Acting vs. Voice

He asks two questions I want to answer - Why do we opera loyalist havesuch large audio collections?- because of technology (and associated costs). The boffins figured outa long time ago how to put audio onto recording media; the majority ofposters on Opera-L I guess are of an age where audio records werecommonplace(probably Vinyl 33s; being slightly younger than average, myformative experiences were from 78s - which often played at 76 or82...blame my late father). Audio reproduction has always been ahead ofaudio-visual - videos became commonplace in homes just before CDplayers. DVDs have only really become mainstream in the past five yearsor so. At all stages of technology, audio has been at least a decadeahead of audio-visual (my estimate, anyway). If, somehow, the earlyGramophones had been audio-visual, our grandparents would not havesettled for audio only. Even now, on the whole, CDs are cheaper thanDVDs. Downloading from the internet is less time consuming, less greedyof hard disc space, less exhaustive of RAM for audio only than foraudio-visual (as an Operashare addict, I find an audio only opera is 3or 4 files, a video often more than 20. A CD can be burned whenmulti-tasking; a DVD has to be left to cook overnight or when I am outof the house).The other question:- Why do we prefer the live experience over a DVD?Shared Communal Experience. The need to be part of a crowd. A dozen orso years ago, a colleague explained to me that within a decade no onewould go out, because we would all have such fantastic technology athome there would be no need to go out. During the 1998 World Cup he wentand watched a football match on a Big Screen in a central London park.How I taunted him: it was on terrestrial TV, he could have watched it athome with all his home comforts. His answer - surrounded by Nigerians inthe Park (it was a Nigeria match), he could get loads of atmosphere thathis Nigerian wife and Nigerian children were sadly incapable ofproviding at home! It was an event! He would have also have got a betterview in his own living room. But he had to be among what he suddenly anduncharacteristically termed 'his people'. I won /that/ argument! (Heconceded defeat!)As a BTW, much as I am looking forward to live performances coming up,and looking forward to dressing up, and chatting with friends, andgetting all excited, and eating out in a restaurant, and hearing my menlive, I spend a lot more time watching DVDs in solitude at home dressedin my pyjamas armed only with a box of chocolates and a cup of tea, andwith the ability to rewind on my remote. Plus I don't have to face aless-than-pleasant journey back, in the land of reality. Differentexperiences. IMO, the satisfaction per pound (or dollar or Euro) spentis comparable.

Acting vs. Voice

That Opera (a theatrical work born of, and/or bound by, music) is a theatrical art form is surely not debatable. This means that the opera is usually going to be a story, delivered by human beings, who will communicate vocally by singing and animation, instead of the usual employment of speech and animation. I am always amused by this debate, because nobody ever says "I went to the ballet last night, lousy acting, but boy could they dance." Legitimate theatre (as it is called) is no more real than is the ballet or the opera, Sarah Bernhardt did not leap from the Castel Sant'Angelo to her death, any more than Zinka Milanov did, but then again, neither did she sing Visi D'Arte as Madame Milanov certainly did, but she did manage (mystery to me) to captivate the whole of Europe and America with her (so called) magnificent acting. The ability to sell a song is not exclusive to opera singers, just listen some time to Eartha Kitt or Frank Sinatra, or Burl Ives, and if you want to be torn into tiny shreds of weeping emotional pulp, then listen to the most magnificent of all voices that ever cried out with feeling; listen to Mahalia Jackson. Listen some time to Paul Robeson's Carnegie hall recital, he was 60 (or more) years old, and his voice had not been heard in concert halls around the US for some time, due to a flaw in the democratic machinery of the time, and emotion was high in the old house. He sings (at one point) "I am climbing Jacob's ladder," when he gets to the verse "We are climbing higher and higher," he invites the audience to join in the singing, his great voice breaks from song for just a second or so, and in what sounds little more than a whisper, yet shakes the heart of a stone, he utters two words, "Join Me" at that precise moment, the whole of Carnegie Hall sings out, Paul Robeson's great "deep bells" ringing with them, "WE are Climbing Higher and Higher, we're soldiers in this fight." Drama is, singing is, acting is?????? As the Hindus feel about life, so one must understand theatre and drama, acting, singing, music and dance. It is an illusion, a moment frozen in time and captured inside your brain for the rest of your life. How many times have you heard the expression "I guess you had to be there."

Acting vs. Voice

Intriguing question. Although I have little experience with live opera, Iam a fairly regular concert-goer, and can attest to the pleasure of feelingsound waves in the hall as they strike the body. It's a tad different fromlistening to a recording.Still, on the whole, I think the music itself, live or recorded, can do thejob. Who among us hasn't been just working around the house, doingsomething perfectly ordinary, when a beautiful voice or melody came out ofthe hi-fi and, without warning, performed the equivalent of a tackle andemotional takedown? No acting needed there. Live concerts, however, do offer that mysterious, unpredictable thing thatpasses between the actor or performer and the audience. This powerful buthard-to-define interaction certainly adds a fulfilling dimension to theexperience. In addition, many people enjoy the group aspect of thephenomenon, maybe even more than the substance of the performance.

Acting vs. Voice

The voice and the drama are both important. However, the acting must be inthe VOICE. I consider physical acting a bonus, though a very nice bonus. Agreat vocal actor with mediocre physical acting usually achieve more dramain opera than a great physical actor with mediocre vocal acting. Anyonedisagree?Of course the pure voice also matters. However, the beauty of singing (asin apart from the drama) is more than a beautiful sound. It is also in theway the music is handled, which I suppose we call musicality. My operatic life was reared on audio recordings. My first love was Corelli,and I was in love before I even saw a picture of him. Then came Callas andde los Angeles. I was never into DVDs. But seeing the recent Met Oneginboth on HD and live blew me away. I could not sleep for 2 days after thelive experience. And that is a combination of vocalism, acting and goodproduction/directing. That is when I started reconsidering my views aboutphysical acting and visuals in opera. But I have to say that there wasgreat acting in the voice of Hvorostovsky. Finally, I have doubts how knowledgeable people are about acting on an operaboard in general. Just like, I wouldn't expect to find convincingdiscussions about singing on a theater board. I went to Carnige Mellon U.for college and we had one of the best drama schools in the nation. Myfavorite thing to do those days (before I got into opera) was to go to thestudent productions, and I have seen some really good theater. Sometimeswhat people here consider good acting are really just attention grabbing onstage, instead of insightful, thought-provoking portraits.

Acting vs. Voice

Something that I wanted to post about for a long time.Dessay and Netrebko are marvelous actresses. Of that I think there is little debate. Both have had their sharesof vocal criticism as well. Heck, I would be hard pressedto name more than one famous singer that was immune.Maybe Caruso? The ongoing debate about what importancea singers ability to act is well documented on this list and others. My gut tells me that those who say voice is all thatmatters and if you get some great acting as well it's a bonus.Singers such as Caballe, Sutherland, and Pavarotti have been good examples of the "it's all about the voice" debate. I am a little ambivalent thought I would putmyself squarely in the give me glorious sound and I don'tcare if they stand there and once in a while move therearms around. Sutherland used to defend her critics bysaying if you want great acting than go to a play. I tend to agree with her. After all why do we opera loyalist havesuch large audio collections? Because it is about the voice.Why do we prefer the live experience over a DVD? againwe all know that even the most expensive, elaborateaudio video systems still pale with being there and gettingthe reverberations on the ear first hand. So where is myambivalence? One of the greatest nights in all my operagoing was Diana Soviero in Suor Angelica in Miami. I saw itagain when it moved to Fort Lauderdale and brought a different group of friends this time to share the experience.All I can say was that she had it all. Voice plus acting andI've seen a lot of Bohemes and Butterflys (the tear jerkergold standards)? This night made them seem like comediesby comparison. The cliche not a dry eye in the audienceis really a cliche. I have seen many a person control thereemotions when I was beyond an appropriate amount of tears.(IMHO) Not that night or the second performance. No clichehere. The Madrid video is legendary I own it. I cry. Howeverit isn't the same as being there and seeing tough guys, ushersyou name it bawling to the point of embarrassment. So whatI am saying/asking is I sure now what to think about thismuch covered topic.

Resonance

One of the most thrilling and in some ways "miraculous" elements of the human voice is the inherent resonance, where in some cases, you cannot believe how a human throat can produce tones like that....4000 audience members..a barn in which to sing...a blasting orchestra....The other night at the Lucia I listened to the way Giordani produces the middle voice, or thinking of the Licitra Turiddu..I am not thinking necessarily of high notes as much as just the middle voice and the brilliance of the tone. Sometimes specific tones make me "jump" as if the artist is singing in my ear. I recall so vividly Mario del Monaco in act Four Norma, singing a very low note on "NO, si vil non sono" in the scene with Callas, and almost turning to my friend and telling him to stop yelling in my ear! Of course the training and the technique allows for these "miracles" to take place...and what a thrill to hear any of these voices resonate throughout the theatre. This thrill is not limited to loud voices, as the element of "forward placement" applies all over the vocal spectrum. I recall the wonderful Welsh soprano Rebecca Evans, singing a "Batti,batti" that floated up to the balcony like pure honey. There are also big voices that cannot seem to produce this kind of "grab you" feeling, such as Martina Arroyo, whose beautiful large voice never seemed to "get out" and so volume was not here an important factor, since the voice did not seem to possess that certain resonance (squillo is the term we use.). I am sure you can offer examples of where certain voices grab you the way I have described, or where you felt that the artist lacked enough basic resonance to make a strong enough impression. I never said that loud is good..I am speaking here of the forward placement in the "mask" and how it comes across to the listener in the theatre.

More Vibrato

Gradually, with the recognition of the diaphragm and the intercostal musclesyou start, quite deliberately to learn vibrato.So rather then a vibrato being a natural form of expression individual toeach person, it was taught to me as a very deliberate and worked on mode ofexpression which took some time to master.I find it interesting that singing teachers don't use vibrato exercises invocalise. There is a notion that this should be a " natural " consequence ofproper vocal training and therefore unneccesary to teach. I completelydisagree with this view as singers must be made aware of all the musculatureinvolved in securing his or her vibrato.

Vibrato

The whole notion of vibrato is an interesting concept in the art of singing.I was initially trained as a flautist and wished above everything else to have a vibrato like James Galway's!When you start playing the flute, students ALWAYS play with a straight tone.The reason is a simple enough - no mastery of the muscles which are needed to support the breath.In my endeavour to emulate Jimmy Galway my " vibrato " sounded very much like a goat on crack - very fast and unsatisfactory!Gradually, with the recognition of the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles you start, quite deliberately to learn vibrato.The exercises I started with consisted of using for example 4 "wobbles" per cotchet beat( Wobbles was the term used by my teacher and also none other then Trevoy Wye, a famous British Flute Teacher) in a simple hymn tune which hooked into the support needed to sustain a line of vibrato. Any throat sounds that occured during these exercises were frowned upon and for good reason - you don't support any breath emission with the muscles of the throat.So rather then a vibrato being a natural form of expression individual to each person, it was taught to me as a very deliberate and worked on mode of expression which took some time to master.I find it interesting that singing teachers don't use vibrato exercises in vocalise. There is a notion that this should be a " natural " consequence of proper vocal training and therefore unneccesary to teach. I completely disagree with this view as singers must be made aware of all the musculature involved in securing his or her vibrato.My flute teacher also got me to picture a sine wave and using that picture as a model of a perfectly produced vibrato - not too fast, not too slow and very smooth.

Reducing Virbato

I was wondering how difficult it is to reduceintrusive vibrato?

Once a singer develops a widevibrato / wobble is it ofetn too late?It depends on what is causing it and the age of the singer. If the singer is young and has a particularly low or large voice, such as a bass or a young Verdi baritone, the cause is often lack of support. These kinds of voices usually take more breath to vibrate the vocal folds than others, and for them it takes more time to gain breath control and muscle development of the resisting muscles in the back, chest, abdomen and intercostals If the singer is older than fifty, it is can be age related. Vocal folds lose elasticity, and muscle mass decreases with age. This will cause an age wobble. The time that this happens has a lot to do with genetics and general health. People age at different rates, some sooner, some much later, some abruptly, and some gradually. Some women lose their voices at menopause, and others do not. The ones that don't, have a hormonal system that slows down the loss of muscle tone. It has to do with how much natural testosterone is in the system as the estrogen levels drop. If the wobble is caused from vocal abuse, recovery is possible in some cases. It depends on the extent and kind of damage, and how ingrained the singing habits are. The older the singer, the more difficult it is to undo the habits that caused it in the first place. Common habits that can lead to a wobble usually involve pushing involving support and focus issues, covering too low in the passaggio with men, singing wide open without proper cover or mixing high notes in men. Men must either mix or cover high notes, or damage will result. Whether one mixes or covers is a stylistic issue as well as a technical one. Damage caused by habitual use is more difficult to treat than temporary abuse such as singing too much one summer or singing a role beyond one's means, then it depends on the extent of the damage. complete vocal rest usually fixes those kinds of problems, then getting the breath support back in place which will then be out of shape will follow. Continual abuse of this kind however will result in more permanent damage. Sometimes a singer simply has a naturally wide vibrato. If the oscillation doesn't exceed the distance of a half a step between two pitches of a scale ( a minor 2nd), most people don't seem to mind. If it exceeds the interval of a half step, it will sound out of tune. Habits are pretty much ingrained by thirty-five for most singers, and by then they have become part of a singer's muscle memory, which is also tied in with a singer's expressiveness. If a wobble has been intermittent, or is recent, the chance to fix it is more possible than someone who has had a continual wobble since the beginning. There are exceptions. If the singer is a basso profundo with a big voice, the opposite may true, he may have a wobble until he is thirty-five, then he sings without one for quite some time. This can also be true with some helden bass baritones. Keep in mind that I am speaking of exceptionally large voices and low voices. What you usually get is a Wagnerian baritone or bass baritone pushed beyond his means, and this can cause a wobble. There are many factors that can cause a wobble, and the solution depends on these different factors, so each case has to be analyzed on it's own merits.

Eleanor Steber & Crossover Voices

I sadly have to agree about the ill-advised appearance of Mme Steberat the Continental Baths; Mr Delos is quite right -- the comments areterrible, her faux grandezza just so vulgar etc. And, I understand herappearance in a bath house cost her the teaching position she hadat Juilliard. A mess. And it wasn't even crossover, to be realistic. Steber always sang popular music with her full operatic tone. Andthat was a big mistake -- "Every time we say goodbye" becameManon's farewell, etc. I always thought D. Kirsten was the bestoperatic crossover singer; she used her full range, but a smallertone, and she did not try to embue with "grandeur." It worked,and she understood microphones. Nobody could best Steber with Mozart, but Dorothy beat herevery time with Cole Porter and Jerome Kern. I will say, forVictor Herbert -- who was really operetta -- Steber could do itvery well.