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Tonight Barbara, David and I saw Shining City by Conor McPherson at Barrington Stage 2.
It is a puzzling play, at least to me. There are two protagonists. One is a former priest who is now a psychologist who has split with his girlfriend who has borne his child.
The other is a middle aged business man who has lost his wife in an accident and sees her ghost in their home. It turns out that he had an aborted affair with a woman shortly before the accident and blames himself for her death. He comes to the psychologist for help.
Mark H. Dold
Mark H. Dold is the psychologist and Wilbur Edwin Henry is the business man.
Wilbur Edwin Henry
Deanna Gibson is the girlfriend who shows up for an emotional scene with the psychologist in which he tells her he can't live with her.
Patrick Ball is a young man the psychologist brings home for sex in a later scene. They have a very awkward time trying to get it on.
In the end the businessman is doing much better and brings the gift of a lamp to thank the psychologist. The psychologist decides to go back to his girlfriend and their baby.
As the businessman, Wilbur Edwin Henry really steals the show in several emotional scenes. They are practically monologues.
Mark H. Dold, whom I have seen before, was good as the very mixed-up shrink. In the scenes with Mr. Henry, he basically just listens.
I feel part of the reason that I have doubts about the play is that I feel the part of the psychologist could have been written better. The scene with the young man seemed gratuitous. Possible it was to show the sexual confusion of the shrink. The title of the play is based on the quotation from the Bible about not hiding one's light under a bushel. I really did not see the connection with the action of the play.
Barbara and David read great significance in the gift of the lamp at the end. Light under a bushel and so on.
At the very end, as the businessman bids farewell to the shrink, as the door is closed, a very bloody image of a woman is there behind the door. Apparently the shrink has inherited the dead wife.
Other than that....
Tonight Peggy, Jim, David, and I saw Man of La Mancha at Barrington Stage. To put it mildly, I was underwhelmed. I'm not quite sure why. I saw the original production in New York at the ANTA Theatre in Washington Square in 1965. As I remember, this was a temporary theatre, possibly even a tent. I remember that a large bridge-like stairway was lowered from the top of the stage into the audience. Other than that, I have no vivid memories.
Richard Kiley was Don Quixote and Joan Diener was Aldonza. I guess that they were fine. The show ran for several thousand performances.
Jeff McCarthy
Tonight's performance was a 'puzzlement' to me. (Sorry to mix Broadway shows). I had a hard time getting involved in the production. Jeff McCarthy played Don Quixote and Felicia Boswell was Aldonza tonight.
He is a stalwart of Barrington Stage and has appeared in many of their musical productions. I saw him in Sweeney Todd several years ago and felt he was just not a Sweeney Todd vocally. I had the same feeling tonight as regards his singing of the Don. I'm not sure whether he was trying to make his voice sound 'old', like the aging Cervantes, but it really didn't work very well. Gaspy phrases followed by very loud high notes.
Felicia Boswell
Ms. Boswell acted the part of Aldonza very well but has an even more problematic vocality than he. She pushes the 'chest' voice up to the point of pain and then flips into a tiny head voice for a few notes.
Several other of the male singers had really fine voices, especially Tom Alan Robbins as Sancho Panza.
Tom Alan Robbins
I just had a very difficult time staying involved with the often wandering plot. And the singing of the two leads really put me off.
Oh well, there speaks the voice teacher...
The show started life as a 1959 Television, non-musical presentation. Sometimes trying to expand a work pushes it out of context. This is what I felt tonight.
***********************
After finishing this blog last night, I went to You Tube to hear Richard Kiley's interpretation of the role. This is what was missing in last's night's production. He sang 'The Impossible Dream' with fervor, rich voice, and an effortless long musical line. No gasps. When he came to climactic high notes, they were the obvious emotional response to the text. Not a desperate attempt to gain applause.
The main character in any production has to hold the whole thing together. When lesser characters sing better than the star it weakens the whole thing.
Imagine Otello without a strong Otello.
I also just listened to Joan Diener as Aldonza. More of an operatic voice that still has the show-biz sound.
Tonight David and I saw a fascinating play, Butler, at Barrington Stage 2. Richard Strand, the author, has managed to treat a very serious subject in a hysterically funny way.
The play takes place during the Civil War and the Butler is Major General Benjamin Butler, an exceptionally colorful person.
The plot concerns a slave who tries to give himself up to the General at Fort Monroe. At this period escaped slaves were supposed to be returned to their masters without exception.
While the General likes to rant and roar, he has a soft heart and tries to find a way to avoid doing this. Over the course of the play the General and the slave have shouting contests which are very funny. Finally a Major from the Confederacy comes to take the slave back to his owner. The General refuses to do this on the basis that the slave is 'contraband'.
David Schramm is over the top as Benjamin Butler, shouting and slamming his fist on the desk as he and the slave argue.
Ben Cole plays Lieutenant Kelly, the General's aide who takes some of the General's ire but in the end helps to save the slave.
Maurice Jones plays Shepard Mallory, the slave, with energy and humor.
John Hickok is Major Cary who comes to collect Mallory to return him to his master.
The writing and the performances are all extraordinary. It was a fine evening in the theater.
David and I have been kept busy this weekend keeping up with concerts by two of my vocal students in two states other than Massachusetts.
Friday night we drove to Middletown, CT to hear Kate Callahan sing the role of Mimi in Puccini's La Bohème. She did a splendid job with the Connecticut Lyric Opera Company. Most of the other members of the cast sang well, especially Luke Scott, baritone, as Marcello.
I would have to quibble with some of the staging. Too much of the time the singers were placed at the rear of the stage making it difficult to hear them over the orchestra, which was too loud throughout the performance. The orchestra actually played very well indeed, but covered the singing much of the time, allowing only high notes to be heard over the orchestral sound.
Today, Saturday, we drove to Barrytown, New York, over a very scenic route, to hear Nat Watson sing A Bach Winterreise, a program of arias for baritone, 'cello and organ. The very fine 'cellist was Christine Gummere, who was principle 'cellist of the Riverside Symphony for 19 years and founder of Sinfonia New York. The excellent organist was John Scott, organist and choirmaster at St. Thomas church in New York City and former assistant Organist at Southwark and St. Paul's Cathedral in London.
Nat sang with his usual bravura in difficult arias taken from various Bach cantatas. His resonant voice filled the charming St. John's Episcopal Church in Barrytown.
It was great weekend, capped by a marvelous dinner of soft shell crabs at The Woodland Restaurant in Lakeville, CT on our way home.
Yum!
On Sunday afternoon, May 24th, the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation presented a benefit concert at the Sandisfield Arts Center in Sandisfield, MA.
Julian Müller, 'cellist, Justina Golden, mezzo-soprano,
Balint Zsoldos, pianist and myself were the performers. It was a brilliant afternoon of great music.
Julian and Balint played works by Dvorak and Brahms. Julian played a series of pieces for solo 'cello by John Harbison.
Justina sang the Rückert Lieder of Mahler and with Julian at the 'cello and me at the piano, Zwei Gesänge of Brahms.
Julian has been the recipient of financial aid from the Ferris Burtis Music Foundation throughout his work on a bachelor's degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music. He graduated from this institution this spring and will attend Mannes School of Music in New York City this fall to work on his Master's degree.
Justina is a vocal student of Herbert Burtis and has her own vocal studio in Florence, Ma. She was recently soloist in Mendelssohn's Elijah at Smith College as well at a performance of German Lieder at Amherst College.
The Ferris Burtis Music Foundation has as its aim the support of talented young classical musicians in their education and careers. It welcomes tax-free gifts to help in its work in this area. If you wish to make a gift to the Foundation, you may send your check, made out to Ferris Burtis Foundation, Berkshire Taconic Foundation, 800 North Main, Sheffield, MA 01257.
http://ferrisburtisfoundation.blogspot.com
I am thinking of asking the House of Representatives of the United States of America to pass a bill in the interest of vocal sanity- mine, at any rate- limiting the number of wobbles per pitch that an opera singer can employ so that pitch itself becomes a moot point, the sound is loud and shrill, and I begin heading for the back door of the hall.
The Senate
Oh! I forgot! The House doesn't pass bills anymore, does it?
Then maybe I can fly my Gyro copter onto the lawn of the Senate, loaded with requests from other wobble-weary voice teachers, demanding that the members take action. This really should come before the Committee on Terrorism, I think.
It sure scares the Hell out of me.
Where can I get a Gyro copter?
Or I could scale the fence around the
White House and walk right in the front door, which apparently is always left open in a welcoming manner, and go directly to see President Obama. He doesn't have much else on his plate at the moment.
But I'm not sure this is worth going to Federal Prison to accomplish.
What brought this tirade on was my driving home from Winsted listening to the 1:00 p.m opera broadcast. Actually a re-broadcast of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Shostakovitch. It's a wonderful opera by a great composer. All the voices were large enough and good enough to sing these demanding roles, but most of them (who shall remain nameless, to protect the guilty) were pushing their voices beyond all reason to sound 1.Louder? 2.More Dramatic 3. Wobblier?
I choose #3.
(I feel the same way, Dmitri!)
A wobble is a psychotic sound that needs therapy- Freudian or 'take your pick'. But it is not a natural occurrence in any one's neck- or shouldn't be.
Every voice has a vibrato. This is a perfectly natural event that occurs in singing as the air passes through the vocal cords and the muscles (involuntary for the most part) move to operate the cords to produce the desired pitch.
Each human voice has its own amount of movement during this event. Some voices have almost no vibrato. I'm not talking about the singers who purposely constrain the muscles of the neck to straighten the tone for effect, but of a light voice whose vibrato, like the rest of this type of voice is delicate.
Other voices have other amounts of vibrato. Usually the larger a voice the greater the vibrato, the higher one sings, the more vibrato may naturally occur, etc.
A wobble is a vibrato that has been pushed out of control. It blurs the pitch, pushes the sound into often unattractive places, and basically distorts what is supposed to be going on- which is MUSIC.
Oh yes! That's what we're trying to produce- MUSIC! The music suffers when wobble walks in the door- or into the throat, in this case.
Well...... No House resolution, no Gyro copter, no chat with Barach- What's voice teacher to do.
I think I'm taking too much Prednisone!
(*'I wonder as I wobble' is a chapter heading from my book Sing On! Sing On!, published by ECSchirmer, Boston, MA)
I have been infested this past week with bronchitis, sinusitis, and asthma; a happy trio that is a part of my COPD: Crappy Old Pulmonary-itis. Dammit!
Spending nights half sitting up in my trusty recliner in order to breath, while wheezing, with sounds in my bronchi as if I were gargling Lake Erie at its worst, deep coughs, which make my abdominal muscles feel as though someone were punching me, and gasping from having no time to get a really good inhalation because so much of my air and energy is being expended in an outward trajectory, I have realized all over again the importance of good breathing in singing.
Singing?
Who said anything about singing?
It proved to me, as I have taught for years, that air is our energy, both for singing and just plain old fashioned living.Without the ability to move air in and out of our bodies efficiently, we are dead, either vocally or in reality.
Guidelines for lady singers:
1. Give up the corseted strapless gowns when you are performing. I don't mean sing in the nude, though you would probably sell more tickets; just get a flowing gown and leave the high heels in your suitcase.
The corseted dresses pinch your upper body and waistline making it impossible to take a deep breath. Remember the rule for a deep breath is 'The belly button needs to move out when you inhale!'
The high heels throw your butt out in the rear and put your body into a tense situation. Most men don't wear high heels (Maybe some very short tenors) or corsets, although Beniamino Gigli apparently wore one, so for the most part this doesn't apply to men. I'll have another post for helpful hints for the male variety of singers coming up.
You can see the weird things I think about while gasping for air.
Thanks to my PA, I am on a good
course of meds and using my nebulizer, which has made all the difference in my health.
General health and healthy singing are all a part of the same way of life.
Do it!
(I am pictured in my Chicago Studio)
