Over the years, my objection to the opera press in general has rarely had to do with reviews of my own performances. What always upsets me about critics is their failure to report the shared sense of something so unusual happening that no one who witnesses a particular performance will ever forget it. I still don't know why critics dash out of the theater before observing an audience's reaction. Do they think the public doesn't know what's good or bad?... [There was] a performance by Itshak Perlman, Pinchas Zuckerman, and Isaac Stern in celebration of Stern's sixtieth birthday. Getting the world's three best violinists to play together was as momentous an event ... as putting together a pop concert with Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, and Barbra Streisand would be. The next day the reviews were fine, but none of the critics commented on the unique nature of the occasion or the extraordinary reaction of the audience.
I do believe criticism is necessary, but criticism is not a defined art form. It's just one person's opinion... A critic may have read more about opera than most of the other people in the audience, but that's about it. A critic's art also lies in their writing ability... critical writing that is boring is just as unacceptable to me as critical writing that's uninformed.
Both quotations from Beverly Sills' memoir entitled Beverly, by the singer and Lawrence Linderman.
I think it's really interesting to read things like this from one of the world's best-loved performers, someone that you cannot imagine ever got a really bad review. Certainly she would have, or at least productions she was involved with were reviewed badly; otherwise the second quotation would be odd coming from her. But I think her first point is even more pertinent at the moment.
It made me think about our experiences of music or of theatre, and how they can be coloured by "what we're listening out for". These days, in a bit of a vocal rut, I listen to singing with an extremely technical ear, and having had a sampling of many types of productions over the last few months, I watch with a director's eye. Thus, if the singing or production is not of relatively high quality, I have been known to tune out.
However, it's so important to me, and I remind myself of this all the time, not to forget that there may be other elements that make a performance special: the personnel involved (special collaborations? Debut? Farewell performance? Signature role?), the occasion (opening of La Scala? New production or commission?) or simply, personal reasons (first visit to Deustche Oper?) and those things are often much more important to your attitude going in, and therefore your experience, than the cut-and-dry, easily reviewed elements.
I'm of the opinion that if you decide you're not going to like it, you're not, and vice versa. Certain critics that write for the Toronto Star come to mind. But I find you're also in the position to decide how the audition or performance is going to go, too, and it can be a slippery slope if you've gotten into a negative cycle. As much as we should not take criticism from critics, colleagues, teachers, and directors to heart, it's pretty hard not to, and then it is useful to remember Beverly: It's only one person's opinion.
What it comes down to, in no particular order, is: audience reaction. personal bests. contribution, large or miniscule, to music history. Maybe. I mean, I cannot think what else could matter if you are doing your best, your audience is moved, and especially if our tradition benefits in some way from the occasion in which you participated.
It's been a hard, hard audition season for me. The criticism that I have received has been surprising, but consistent. Maybe that is the sign it should be taken to heart. I still have to be careful that I don't allow that criticism to define my conception of my artistry. After all, I know myself best, and I really know whether or not that's something that is under my control. And I wouldn't want Beverly to think I'd lost sight of the real reason we do this: to move people.
Bonjour, c'est moi.
- Danielle
- Your average Canadian soprano sallies forth into the big bad world of classical music in search of integrated, meaningful experiences as a performer and spectator. Currently in Baltimore, MD, pursuing a Masters degree in voice performance under the tutelage of Phyllis Bryn-Julson. Special interest in contemporary and experimental classical music, as well as interdisciplinary projects.
20 March 2010
18 March 2010
breaking on through
I was not exactly excited to sing in St Catharine's yesterday night. Mostly, it's because it's been a really long time since I put on a gown and sang Puccini - a year, to be exact. I haven't been feeling too great about my singing lately, either, which I'll go so far as to say is understandable after a very unsuccessful audition season and a nagging feeling that what I really need is to get back in the studio with a teacher who's willing to really kick my butt.
But it began well. It was a beautiful day. The drive west was spectacular, easy and in good company - I rode with Grenville, the violinist for the evening (which was in essence a sort of variety show, presented as entertainment at a wine tasting event for the clients of Investors Group of Niagara). We weren't sure what to expect from the event, having only been in contact via email with the presenter and the other acts.
I was pleasantly surprised. Also involved were Alchemy Unplugged, Mark Lalama of considerable and varied fame in his own right, and Elton Lammie. We had opera, popular Italian song, Beatles covers, original pop, remixes of Canon in D... and it was all gloriously mixed by an expert sound team resident to the venue, which was an enormous complex called Bethany Community Church.
That's right. I sang into a mic. And I sang to tracks.
It was my first Karaoke experience, and I can't say I was thrilled to be doing it. Principles aside, because certain things can't be avoided and I am all for entertainment value, my reticence had to do 100% with comfort level. I was afraid to sing with my full voice knowing it would be amplified, and had visions of horrible technical malfunctions, leaving me to sing a cappella, or worse, to someone else's track. I had never dealt with the prospect of an inflexible, conductorless orchestra - the recorded tempo was the tempo I was stuck with, whether it was the tempo I liked in my voice, and their interpretation of the music was the one I had to reconcile myself to, whether I thought there should be a breath here and a fermata there, or not. And if I needed an emergency breath, I'd better make up the time myself, because they sure weren't stopping for me. This, you can imagine, is a really frightening and uncomfortable experience if you are accustomed to things being the other way around. Orchestras normally follow soloists, and I am the soloist. How could this end well?
It ended well. It was a great exercise in listening. I pretended there was a conductor but that he was not looking at me, and I followed him as best I could. The monitor provided about as much orchestra in my ear as you can hear from the stage, and so overall, it approximated a performance within my realm of experience more than I could have imagined.
I was so thankful for the extremely warm reception we got, and the other artists did good business on their CD's. It's an idea I have been toying with, and the evening really drove home a point - audiences want to leave with more than a memory. They want to own their experience. I directed them to my website (which I am also overhauling), but music is not available for download there. Do I really expect them to continue to visit my Myspace page to listen to obscure 20th century music that I enjoy, and so do many of my colleagues, but has very little relevance to the audience that, like it or not, is much bigger and would rather hear me sing something they know?
Here is the impasse. I don't consider myself a crossover artist, though I sing musical theatre when I can and I enjoy doing this type of concert with other, non-classical musicians. I think my background as a classical artist is something I can bring to the table, and I want desperately to extend the audience for this music. But I have to remember that I am also an entertainer, and that my livelihood, my "life's blood", as Pavarotti (the legendary crossover artist - let's be honest - he was, at least a little) put it, is the audience. If they go away having been bored or alienated, I have failed. How to serve the music, and also serve the audience?
Perhaps a look at Pavarotti's ventures can begin to answer this question. I just finished reading the famous publicist Herbert Breslin's expose/bio on the great tenor. He tempered his concert repertoire with simple, moving popular song when he began to do arena concerts. O Sole Mio shared the stage with Nessun Dorma. It was in this way that his already considerable fame and his careful programming catapulted Nessun Dorma to nearly anthem status, and got it into the mainstream consciousness. Few people would consider that "modern classical music", but guess what -- it's 20th century opera. Yep. GO PAV.
So what if I made a little CD with some arias, Ave Maria, and some musical theatre, English art song, and maybe The Prayer? Who would crucify me? Certainly not last night's audience, and I bet I could sell a few copies besides to them. Have I compromised the value of those arias by juxtaposing them with "popera" and other music from popular genres? I don't think so; so long as I'm true to the style in every case, nothing is compromised. And that way, everyone's happy.
But it began well. It was a beautiful day. The drive west was spectacular, easy and in good company - I rode with Grenville, the violinist for the evening (which was in essence a sort of variety show, presented as entertainment at a wine tasting event for the clients of Investors Group of Niagara). We weren't sure what to expect from the event, having only been in contact via email with the presenter and the other acts.
I was pleasantly surprised. Also involved were Alchemy Unplugged, Mark Lalama of considerable and varied fame in his own right, and Elton Lammie. We had opera, popular Italian song, Beatles covers, original pop, remixes of Canon in D... and it was all gloriously mixed by an expert sound team resident to the venue, which was an enormous complex called Bethany Community Church.
That's right. I sang into a mic. And I sang to tracks.
It was my first Karaoke experience, and I can't say I was thrilled to be doing it. Principles aside, because certain things can't be avoided and I am all for entertainment value, my reticence had to do 100% with comfort level. I was afraid to sing with my full voice knowing it would be amplified, and had visions of horrible technical malfunctions, leaving me to sing a cappella, or worse, to someone else's track. I had never dealt with the prospect of an inflexible, conductorless orchestra - the recorded tempo was the tempo I was stuck with, whether it was the tempo I liked in my voice, and their interpretation of the music was the one I had to reconcile myself to, whether I thought there should be a breath here and a fermata there, or not. And if I needed an emergency breath, I'd better make up the time myself, because they sure weren't stopping for me. This, you can imagine, is a really frightening and uncomfortable experience if you are accustomed to things being the other way around. Orchestras normally follow soloists, and I am the soloist. How could this end well?
It ended well. It was a great exercise in listening. I pretended there was a conductor but that he was not looking at me, and I followed him as best I could. The monitor provided about as much orchestra in my ear as you can hear from the stage, and so overall, it approximated a performance within my realm of experience more than I could have imagined.
I was so thankful for the extremely warm reception we got, and the other artists did good business on their CD's. It's an idea I have been toying with, and the evening really drove home a point - audiences want to leave with more than a memory. They want to own their experience. I directed them to my website (which I am also overhauling), but music is not available for download there. Do I really expect them to continue to visit my Myspace page to listen to obscure 20th century music that I enjoy, and so do many of my colleagues, but has very little relevance to the audience that, like it or not, is much bigger and would rather hear me sing something they know?
Here is the impasse. I don't consider myself a crossover artist, though I sing musical theatre when I can and I enjoy doing this type of concert with other, non-classical musicians. I think my background as a classical artist is something I can bring to the table, and I want desperately to extend the audience for this music. But I have to remember that I am also an entertainer, and that my livelihood, my "life's blood", as Pavarotti (the legendary crossover artist - let's be honest - he was, at least a little) put it, is the audience. If they go away having been bored or alienated, I have failed. How to serve the music, and also serve the audience?
Perhaps a look at Pavarotti's ventures can begin to answer this question. I just finished reading the famous publicist Herbert Breslin's expose/bio on the great tenor. He tempered his concert repertoire with simple, moving popular song when he began to do arena concerts. O Sole Mio shared the stage with Nessun Dorma. It was in this way that his already considerable fame and his careful programming catapulted Nessun Dorma to nearly anthem status, and got it into the mainstream consciousness. Few people would consider that "modern classical music", but guess what -- it's 20th century opera. Yep. GO PAV.
So what if I made a little CD with some arias, Ave Maria, and some musical theatre, English art song, and maybe The Prayer? Who would crucify me? Certainly not last night's audience, and I bet I could sell a few copies besides to them. Have I compromised the value of those arias by juxtaposing them with "popera" and other music from popular genres? I don't think so; so long as I'm true to the style in every case, nothing is compromised. And that way, everyone's happy.
17 March 2010
15 March 2010
New outlets for opera?
Media, media, media.
To an artist, it means so many things. It can refer to our modes of expression -- visual media, electronic versus acoustic music -- or more readily, television, newspapers, radio, and all those other outlets that bring us publicity and exposure, criticism and accolades, and more recently, artistic possibilities. We've been creating for TV and radio for a long time. Now, with the youtube symphony orchestra behind us, it's easier to imagine creating art and music via web.
It's recently been brought to my attention that artists have begun to move in that direction with the help of the online alternative universe, Second Life. A band that I was researching appears to use Second Life to access audiences around the world, people that might not ever get the chance to come and hear them, or, for that matter, discover them. They take a line out of their real-life studio and basically create a webcast, which is not really a new idea because it's a lot like radio. In Second Life, the music that the community is hearing is being played by real people but also, simultaneously, their Second Life avatars, on a Second Life stage, and the audience is made up of the real people who are listening, and also their avatars. Two universes exist at once, and the venue is the Internet, so that the audience, which has bodies, unlike a radio audience, can be made up of people who are sitting in their living rooms in Cameroon, Egypt, Manitoba, and New Zealand, all at the same time. So it's a whole new level that is added to the performance, and it's mindblowing.
The implications are endless. Think of the possibilities. An entire company of operatic avatars simultaneously online to partake in a performance of Verdi's Requiem -- Jonas Kaufmann singing into his microphone from Zurich while the concertmaster saws away in Mannheim, and Levine conducts into a camera from his Manhattan apartment that broadcasts to each artist - and I can be there, in avatar form, to see their avatar forms make it happen. And isn't it only a matter of time before talent scouts, agents, and publicists begin exploiting online communities like Second Life? I think they probably do already, to some extent -- Facebook is a testament to that. But Second Life goes way beyond Facebook.
Does it scare you? I'm a bit of a Luddite, and it does scare me, a lot, actually. But I think that in order to survive in this fairly hostile artistic environment (or at least that is how I see it), you have to carve out a niche, and if all the real life niches are taken, why not carve out a virtual one?
It may not be for everyone. In fact, it may not be for me. A Met broadcast in HD leaves something to be desired for me; you just cannot beat being there.
But it's a thought.
To an artist, it means so many things. It can refer to our modes of expression -- visual media, electronic versus acoustic music -- or more readily, television, newspapers, radio, and all those other outlets that bring us publicity and exposure, criticism and accolades, and more recently, artistic possibilities. We've been creating for TV and radio for a long time. Now, with the youtube symphony orchestra behind us, it's easier to imagine creating art and music via web.
It's recently been brought to my attention that artists have begun to move in that direction with the help of the online alternative universe, Second Life. A band that I was researching appears to use Second Life to access audiences around the world, people that might not ever get the chance to come and hear them, or, for that matter, discover them. They take a line out of their real-life studio and basically create a webcast, which is not really a new idea because it's a lot like radio. In Second Life, the music that the community is hearing is being played by real people but also, simultaneously, their Second Life avatars, on a Second Life stage, and the audience is made up of the real people who are listening, and also their avatars. Two universes exist at once, and the venue is the Internet, so that the audience, which has bodies, unlike a radio audience, can be made up of people who are sitting in their living rooms in Cameroon, Egypt, Manitoba, and New Zealand, all at the same time. So it's a whole new level that is added to the performance, and it's mindblowing.
The implications are endless. Think of the possibilities. An entire company of operatic avatars simultaneously online to partake in a performance of Verdi's Requiem -- Jonas Kaufmann singing into his microphone from Zurich while the concertmaster saws away in Mannheim, and Levine conducts into a camera from his Manhattan apartment that broadcasts to each artist - and I can be there, in avatar form, to see their avatar forms make it happen. And isn't it only a matter of time before talent scouts, agents, and publicists begin exploiting online communities like Second Life? I think they probably do already, to some extent -- Facebook is a testament to that. But Second Life goes way beyond Facebook.
Does it scare you? I'm a bit of a Luddite, and it does scare me, a lot, actually. But I think that in order to survive in this fairly hostile artistic environment (or at least that is how I see it), you have to carve out a niche, and if all the real life niches are taken, why not carve out a virtual one?
It may not be for everyone. In fact, it may not be for me. A Met broadcast in HD leaves something to be desired for me; you just cannot beat being there.
But it's a thought.
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