a Trittico à la Danielle

I was in London twice this month, and my timing was impeccable, as I was able to catch a concert version of Otello (Verdi) with Gerald Finley as Iago!!! with the LSO on Dec 3 and Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera on Dec 13.

While Finley's interpretation of Iago was pretty much revolutionary and well-matched by the masterful playing of the LSO with Sir Colin Davis at the helm (and would we have expected anything different? The LSO IS RAD), I am sad to say his colleagues paled in comparison.
Otello was actually a pinch singer, whose name I am embarrassed to forget (the program is safely packed away in the suitcase heading to Canada with my mom) and I forgive him for any indiscretions (ie vowel modifications) he committed during the performance. I bet he'd gotten off the plane that morning; these things must be considered.
Entrances were made during the music, as it was a concert performance; Ms Tufano, who had 3 lines as Emilia, sashayed onstage with as much ado as she could muster during a very dramatic bit of Otello's, completely upstaging him, in a black strapless number that left absolutely nothing to the imagination from my seat in the rafters. She took her seat and proceeded to drink water, play with her hair, and rifle repeatedly through her score before completely botching her miniscule bit in the ensemble near the end of the first(?) act. I was unimpressed.
Anne Schwanewilms as Desdemona left a little to be desired as well -- absolutely not artistically, though, and I am sure she had a pretty voice, but I couldn't hear her at all for a good 90% of the opera. Good thing the orchestra was making pretty sounds.
As I mentioned, Finley absolutely stole the show. His Iago was ruthless and technically impeccable. The colours he achieved -- at one point subsiding to barely a whisper that was audible in every corner of the hall -- brought shivers and the notion that here was a man who had not a good bone in his body.

Der Rosenkavalier was certainly more polished, well-balanced, and overall, enjoyable. It boasted Sophie Koch (who is DROP DEAD GORGEOUS) as Octavian, Lucy Crowe (young and up and coming and really quite charming) as Sophie, and Soile Isokoski (no idea who she is, but a nice light lyric) as Marschallin, and the three made a very very dynamic trio. The cast included Thomas Allen as Faninal, which was a treat, and Peter Rose was an excellent Ochs. The production was a revival of the 1986 Covent Garden production , for which I give them props: the dress the Te Kanawa is wearing on the front cover is worth the price of admission (£12.50, I stood) alone.
I left the theatre that evening feeling as though I myself had done the opera: drained but wired, as you often are after a show, and craving human contact. I ended up writing something like 6 pages in my journal. I felt as though the performers really took me on a journey; I was inspired as I am not very often inspired after a night at the theatre. I can't say much more about it because some things you don't have words for.

The third opera of my Trittico is Carmen, here in Milano, which I have gotten sneak peeks of by way of my obliging colleague who is singing a supporting role. Sitting in on rehearsals of the opera that will open La Scala's season and chatting with JONAS KAUFMANN (who should be People's next Sexiest Man Alive, if only because he's SUUUUCH the Gentleman) is certainly how I like to spend my Friday nights. Tomorrow I will stand in line for one of 140 10-euro gallery seats to see the finished product. This is Emma Dante's new production which has gotten a lot of hype; from what I saw in rehearsal, there is a good deal of Roman Catholic imagery, as well as many allusions to the Sicilian mafia. It isn't really updated, though; it seems as though it will be suspended in time as more of an allegory than anything.

Stay tuned...

Bartoli or Bust...??

I just got back from London, where I had the privilege of seeing Der Rosenkavalier in an excellent production with a stellar cast at Covent Garden. It prompted me to dig out a reflection I wrote after seeing La Bohème in a regional house in Italy.

October 15, 2009

I went to see an opera in Cremona on Tuesday night. It was La Bohème, a standard, and I was curious what the quality of a regional opera produciton would be here, and what the audience would be like. The theatre looked big and classy, and their season has a lot of interesting things: Weill's Seven Deadly Sins, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, and La Voix Humaine which really piqued my curiosity, besides the usual fare (Verdi, Bellini, etc). Naturally, I wanted to check out any theatre company that would bring in Poulenc one-woman shows.

It turned out to be a real trial to get there. I worked until 6.30 that evening and caught a taxi to the Central Station for a 6.50 train. I was in a bad romantic comedy, chasing the lead to the airport, stuck in traffic, tapping my fingers on the armrest and praying for the light to turn green. I did make the train but only because I RAN; it got in at 7.50 and the show began at 8.30. I was in my seat in good time, but not without a few grey hairs.

Finding my way to the theatre was easy, but wandering around in the dark after the show trying to find my hostel was not. It turned out to be on the other side of town (which is actually maybe 1 km, but everything is relative) and thanks to the help of two very nice Cremonesi ladies, I arrived relatively intact at 11.45, a good hour after the rumpled, disgruntled priest who opened the door would have liked, by the looks of things.

I sat next to a tenor who was also there alone, and we got to chatting. When he learned that I was from Milano, he did a double take. "You came all that way to see THIS?" He got me thinking. I did come all this way, not without a good deal of effort, from the city of La Scala, to see what turned out to be a mediocre production of La Bohème, an opera that I will probably see a hundred more times in my life. To be fair, Cremona is about as far from Milano as Aurora is from Toronto, but Italy is a lot smaller than Canada, so what doesn't seem like a lot to me certainly does to your average Italian; you can also get home from Aurora late at night, while the trains from Cremona finish at 10 pm, hence my having to stay over.

Anyway, I sat there and thought about all the fuss I had to go to in order to get my butt in the seat that night. Was it worth it?

Well let's answer that quantitatively. I've definitely seen better operas, and definitely better Bohèmes, even on DVD or youtube. Some of the Bohèmes I've seen had singers that actually acted, even. They had a cool black and white 20's flapper thing going on, which really suited the production but isn't a new idea, really, but the music itself left something to be desired. The orchestra was often too loud for the younger singers (ie Rodolfo and Mimì), a common problem in my experience with Bohème, and the singers actually didn't have the most wonderful timbres, though they were technically pretty solid. As I said, very little acting went on and the direction definitely didn't help with that. The exception was Musetta, who admittedly has more to work with, as she is, after all, Musetta. My big complaint with the singing, though, was something that really surprised me-- there was a lack of understanding of the Puccini style. The singing was not speech-like in the lower register and there was a lack of refinement in general, phrases poorly shaped and demonstrative of an ignorance of the textual significance of the melody in certain places, especially in the ensembles.

So why, when I live in Milano and can be at La Scala in 15 minutes, did I even bother?

That's a really, really good question.

Opera fans and would-be opera fans, as well as opera singers and would-be opera singers, now are able to get their hands on a plethora of media showcasing la crème de la crème of opera then and now. Think youtube, HD broadcasts, and digital remastering of all the old vinyls. We can even subscribe to online players like the Met's and listen to historical recordings on demand. We have developed extremely sophisticated tastes as a result of this, and are less forgiving of things we perceive as faults but might actually just be differences in taste, style, or performance practice.

So if it's not Alvarez, Domingo, Fleming, Frittoli, why bother? Well, I want to be an opera singer, and at least a few other people reading this blog too, and there just isn't room for that many people at the top. There has to be stops along the way. Think about it. Let's say we decided that there wasn't any point in going to the opera unless it was as good a Violetta as Renée Fleming (I happen to like her Traviata). We'd all end up forswearing our regional and independent companies, not to mention university opera programs, and opera would be relegated to a handful of huge, well-oiled corporations worldwide, the Emperor of which would be the Met, churning out polished productions attended by the highest bidders. Nothing would exist in a lower price bracket or in a smaller city than London, Milano or Toronto.
It would also mean that a lot of us would be out of jobs with no hope of a career, and some of us want a different career than Covent Garden, anyway.

It isn't practical to declare an all-or-nothing situation when it comes to art; even though we all acknowledge that perhaps Pavarotti was the best of his kind, or Picasso, or whoever, all those other people doing the same work in their own way are reaching a miltitude of people on a variety of other levels.

Even if that means that some seriously mediocre theatre has to exist, that's OK. It just means we have to lower our standards to "realistic" and know what it is we are about to see before we see it. Because someday, it's going to be me up there, or you, in Teatro Ponchielli in a small Italian town, or some backwater German regional house, and all the bluehairs and twenty somethings who want a little culture in their Friday night expect me to do my best for them.

So I consider my travails not in vain; in fact, you can conceive of them as an investment in my career. In some small way my bum in the seat helps that theatre stay open one more year and have a budget to hire new talent, and therefore maybe me or someone like me when we're ready to grow up and get paid to sing. On top of that grassroots and independent opera and regionally funded companies not only diversify the industry and provide jobs on many levels and in a lot of ways (who else has to be there for the show to go on?) but they also provide a service to the community they are in, maybe a community who would not think to make a pilgrimage like I did to the nearest La Scala. A community that goes to opera because it's there and maybe wouldn't have otherwise is not a community on which opera is wasted. There's a little opera for everyone this way, and not just the die-hards.

a meditation

disclaimer: this is merely what the title suggests. comments for this are disabled so as to avoid the "oh but you're so good" feedback. it's a subject every performer must come to terms with. I hope those of you who are artists find it helpful in some small way.

My students are often perplexed or pleasantly surprised to find out I study opera as well as teach English. I think many are surprised, most of all, to discover that it's what I'd rather be doing. Of course it's a very glamorous idea, but they are wise to the fact that there are many obstacles on this particular road.
I just quit my job, but if one of my students had asked me what the most difficult thing about my other career is, I'd get them to take out their vocabulary lists and add:

re‧jec‧tion

1 [uncountable and countable] the act of not accepting, believing in, or agreeing with something [≠ acceptance]

rejection of
What are the reasons for his rejection of the theory?

2 [uncountable and countable] the act of not accepting someone for a job, school etc [≠ acceptance]:
They sent me a rejection letter.

3 [uncountable] a situation in which someone stops giving you love or attention:
He was left with a feeling of rejection and loss.

Definition from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Advanced Learner's Dictionary.

It's important, when you're learning new vocabulary, to understand its full range of usages, as well as the expressions and contexts usually associated with it. An artist's situation most readily falls into entry number two in the above definition, but humour me, my hypothetical English class, while I try and find a bright side to this very difficult noun.

1. In this case, rejection is synonymous with disagreement, or with the absence of belief in something. Rejection of an ideology, a religion, a political bent, a theory or hypothesis; or, rejection of one's interpretation of the role, perhaps. Sometimes it's a question of taste, isn't it, especially when we're dealing with conductors and directors who have specific visions for a production or ideas about performance practice of early music.
Would I be willing to compromise my artistic concept in an audition? No, I don't think so -- what if I guessed wrong as to what they might be thinking of, anyway? Then I wouldn't be any farther ahead, and I wouldn't have shown my particular brand of artistry, which might have been what they were looking for in the first place. To thine own self be true, even if you're scared it isn't to someone else's liking.

2. This is more straightforward, isn't it? The letter in your hand either says yes or no. When you audition for Guildhall, you finish singing and wait in the hall for 2-3 minutes before that very letter is in your hand: you've barely had time to form an objective opinion about your singing, and you're still in a very vulnerable place, so when the letter says no, it comes as a really big slap in the face.
There is no easy answer to this. The only consolation is that often, it has nothing to do with how you performed. After a while, and a stack of rejection letters, you start to wonder who IS looking for your particular voice and look and whether you'll be there when the chance comes up?
I have thought about collecting my rejection letters in a folder, so that when I start to get acceptances, I might look back at how far I've come and what rollercoasters I had to ride to get there, and feel thankful. But many of us fear: what if the acceptances never come! And then I'd be stuck with a pile of salt to rub into my wounds.

3. This could be applied to the relationship the singer has with her voice: let me tell you, it exists. The voice takes on a life of its own; sometimes it is nothing but obedient and sweet, even generous and unexpected; sometimes, it has its own ideas about how it's going to go; and sometimes, it deserts you entirely in your hour of need. It's tempting to have something to blame other than yourself. Indeed, there are many who would advise to think of your voice as separate from yourself, so that criticism and rejection do not appear to you are personal attacks, but commentary on an instrument.
The relationship goes two ways. Your voice can appear to reject you when you sing a terrible audition for which you should have theoretically sung the shit out of, pardon my French; the high notes just don't work like they should, or your runs are sloppy. What gives?
In the long term, after years of diligent practice and near-obsession and a whole string of no's, Voice begins to resemble an absent spouse: there in your life, but present in name only, remiss in giving the support you need in your endeavours, and failing to provide what things it promised implicitly to provide by entering this relationship with you: after all, why, when you have poured your blood, sweat, and tears into the relationship and given Voice everything you have, are you left with nothing? The relationship shouldn't be one-sided! Hard work should pay off; you've done your part, so it can't be your fault. The blame must fall somewhere.

At a certain point, and that point is different for everyone, either Voice starts pulling its weight, or you reject it: you get a divorce. You leave; you quit.

Perhaps that is what I find hardest about this line of work: in many careers, hard work and complete devotion results in raises, promotions, and recognition. To boot, you feel as though something very personal is on the line.

The fear to overcome is not fear of rejection, I think; your artistry should not be affected so easily by outside forces. The fear of giving your all to your relationship with your voice is much more pertinent. If you hold anything back from that relationship you can never be sure that Voice will deliver 100% either. A great deal of faith, trust and love of yourself, your voice, and your art is required.

This is what I am learning.

apples and oranges

November 4, 2009



Furniture exhibit at the civic museums, Castello Sforzesco, Milano

It's not so much that there is a fresco hanging in a gallery near a furniture exhibit in a gallery.
It's that these frescoes are hanging everywhere. I would not be surprised to see frescoes hanging over the toilets and leaning against walls in closets in my apartment.
As I come from a country several centuries younger than most of these frescoes I don't have to explain why this is novel.

The image as microcosm of the city itself:
Italy is littered with 2,000-year-old stones, preserved saints' bodies, most of the wonders of the art world in full restored glory, and boasts an incredibly rich cultural and military history.
Cars whiz past the Colosseo in Rome. People on cell phones or headsets weave through tourists on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence.
The subway system in Milano houses several glassed-in ruins they found while digging the tunnels.
It's 1200 and 2009 in Italy right now.
Milano is an incredibly modern city. It's on the very edge of design and fashion, and the Milanesi strive to one-up each other with the latest in this technology, that runway trend, this car, that artist. There is some serious money here, which makes it all possible (there exists the other extreme, unfortunately, and I have yet to really define a middle class). Although like in other great Italian cities, the ancient presides silently over the progress and the velocity and chaos and traffic and noise of modern Milano, there seems to me here a tension between the old and the new.
This is really only speculation, but let's take Rome. It is really, really difficult to ignore the Colosseo and the Foro Romano, and the rocks strewn about the city, and eventually you make peace with the fact that your past will always haunt you, kind of like the old-fashioned stodgy uncle you really hate because he's always talking about how you should be more like he was at 20-whatever but you can't really hate him, because he's family and you can't choose your family.
Milano, on the other hand, has little ancient treasures hiding in unexpected places. I turned a corner yesterday and came face to face with an enormous Baroque church I had never noticed before, because it was obscured by a modern building housing a bank (Milano is the financial seat of Italy... let's call this symbolism).
I was a little shocked but in a pleasant way, as I am discovering the city as an outsider/tourist and everything is a little bit magical. But humour me and imagine I am a Milanese: I am a self-styled Modern European. I am on the cutting edge, always. I can't find the balance between where we came from and where we are, because I move forward, not in circles, contemplating, pondering. I like fast lunches and long work days like they have in America. Sometimes I eat McDonald's. Maybe I have an inferiority complex... maybe that's why I can't stand the backward, old-fashioned south.
It's hard to put a finger on it. But in my opinion, the table wasn't happy about being next to the old-fashioned uncle fresco.



Emanuele Arciuli played a great solo piano program on Monday night. I sat above him in the gallery and watched his hands.

The Liszt and Schumann were played beautifully with a lot of sensitivity. Visually, they make so much sense to our well-conditioned brains. The keyboard is used in the ways we expect -- up and down and up and down go the hands, moving together or away from each other, moving in parallel lines from left to right and making broad strokes in one direction or the next. There is always a linear relationship between them. Tension grows and is resolved. Western music is so satisfyingly predictable.

The Carter he played, Night Fantasies, took linear relationships and said, "This crap is useless." I described Arciuli's hands to a friend as "robot spiders"; not only was the piece full of 64th and 128th notes (I don't know, it just seemed that way), it worked out musical ideas in circular, repetitious patterns that left the listener stewing over them even after the piece was done. There was cadence and discernible shape to the form, to be sure. But in terms of pitch content and for lack of a better word, musical "shapes", it resembled a scatter graph or an Etch-a-Sketch when realized. While Liszt and Schumann seem to muse out loud, Carter seems to need to brood introspectively over musical "problems" in order to develop and resolve them. In fact, I think this says a lot about the sociocultural "mood" in each relevant epoch. Extremely provocative; caused me to realize all over again that I think of music visually and how important that element of it is.




Today I went straight to the practice room following a particularly harrowing reading comprehension lesson with my class from hell.

Some things just don't feel like work. Some things make you forget anything that's bad in your life and obscure stress, worries, insecurity. They clarify priorities and put your life in perspective. Even a passive experience, like being a spectator, instills calm and replenishes what soul has been sucked that day.

Some things are a job that make you money while you pursue more lofty ambitions and don't deserve time or energy off the clock. This is taught to you by the enlightening experiences you have singing Verdi and Massenet, a clandestine locked away in the corner of the conservatory where no caretakers will find you and evict you from your not-booked, totally not-yours practice room, before a concert in which you hear the Brahms string sextet and Verklarte Nacht.
Or... I mean... other enlightening experiences.

(Aside: I see most of the concerts I go to alone and it's during this time I usually have weird abstracted brain experiences. I think it's why I have never been tempted to try drugs. Verklarte Nacht put me on another plane tonight; I had forgotten how much I love it.)
a wee taste.

To finish:
Further proof of Italy's schizophrenia follows in the form of two towns on the same lake (Como).


Colico in the north...

and Lecco in the south.

London: Round One

the hyde park christmas MONSTER!

My first trip to London this year was early in the month of December, when it was just beginning to get chilly, and got dark around 4 pm.
(Europe in the winter never ceases to surprise me -- for example, the idea of temperatures so high as to allow rain all winter is such a novelty. 4 pm darkness would be something I was accustomed to if I were from Edmonton, but I'm not.)

A guy butted in front of me in the boarding pass line, I think without knowing he was doing it; his belated "so sorry, sorry" immediately tipped me off as to his provenance. When I spotted his passport I asked where he was from exactly; turns out we are from the same province, same city, same PART of same city.. and.. SAME HIGH SCHOOL. It is a truly small world.

Aside from a minor broken-boot incident that resulted in a day and a half of sopping foot in incessant downpours, the trip was really lovely. I stayed with an old singer friend and saw another few friends from school and my travels here; I was refreshed by the sight of familiar faces even in unfamiliar locales. London isn't that unfamiliar to me, as I spent three weeks exploring it in 2007 when a good friend was living there. So that probably helped too.

I finally ticked Brick Lane off my London bucket list with a soul-searing curry and a good friend from university. My soul was revived by a rambunctious and truly uplifting production of La Cage aux Folles. Who doesn't need a little drag in their life?

While I haven't been offered admission to the Royal Academy, I was placed on the waitlist for the final round of auditions for the Aix-en-Provence summer residency for lied and contemporary repertoire. A small success, but a pertinent one: the audition was a true learning experience. I went in to that audition about as cold as I could have gone into any audition; they were running early and I was running late, having got lost in the maze that surrounds Waterloo station. It was cold and I had walked for half a hour. I went in and the first sounds I made were.. well.. honks. But I am convinced that there is nothing I do better than contemporary repertoire and art song, especially if it's Hymnen an die Nacht, and I swear to you, there is nothing more valuable than your strongest warhorse on a bad day. That piece has pulled me through I don't know how many auditions. It's not just that though; we all have to enumerate our strengths and play on them, and one of mine is being myself on stage. (It's when you ask me to be a character that I freeze up.) And who better to be singing something as outré as Hymnen an die Nacht or as intimate as, say, An den Mond?

Lessons learned...