Getting it together

I have been working with my students at Smith on various recitals they are presenting this spring as the school year comes to a close. Having worked with professional singers for a long time, it somehow didn't occur to me how many things besides singing a young performer has to learn to appear on the concert stage. And it's up to the teacher to help them learn these techniques. Mea culpa!

Naturally, first and foremost, the vocal apparatus must be in good working order; the technique secure, the musicality in place, and the songs well-memorized. But beyond that, one also has to know how to walk on and off the stage without looking strange, bow, and interact with the audience in a convincing manner. How to acknowledge the accompanist in a graceful manner. I think next term I shall offer a class in stage deportment in addition to the language classes I gave this past year.

There is also the question of what to do with these two things hanging down at our sides while we sing. Arms and hands seem sometimes not to want to be a part of the performance. We really have to watch ourselves in a mirror as we prepare to sing a program, deciding whether we are doing anything expressive with our arms and hands, or too much. Have we turned into a whirling dervish? Do we look like a plaster Saint? Are we frozen into place?

I have seen examples of all of these characteristics, and not just with amateurs. Lorraine had a wonderful sense of calm on stage in concert. No matter how violent the text she was singing her movements were always appropriate but never over done. In opera, especially the Peter Sellers stagings that she did, she often had to roll around on the stage while singing coloratura melismas in Handel; but in concert it was the calm assurance that she was certain that what she was going to do was going to be wonderful that always carried her through.

I remember seeing a Russian mezzo some years ago in Carnegie Hall. She was indeed a very great singer but her stance in the first group of Bach songs she sang, holding her two hands pointed outstretched in front of her, looked as if she were about to make a swan dive into the orchestra. After that group, she used her hands in a perfectly normal way. Perhaps that is a Russian tradition when singing Bach?

Our facial expression must also evoke the words we are singing. I think that sometimes one is thinking so much about what comes next that it is easy to get a blank expression on the face just trying to concentrate. Again, I don't want to see one 'making faces', but if one watches in a mirror as one sings a song, the face should reflect sadness, joy, misery, whatever the text calls for. And in an easy natural way.

One thing that helps all of these extra-singing movements to feel free and easy, is to be absolutely sure of the notes and words and emotions one is singing long before the performance. When one is trying desperately to remember what comes next, it is very easy to get this blank stare of concentration on the face that does not convey much to the listener. The answer to this is LEARN YOUR MUSIC WELL IN ADVANCE!

Every singer should take a course in acting. Where, when merely speaking, one learns to convey emotion both in the voice and in the body. This kind of body-language is just as important for the singer if not more so.

It is probably easier to achieve this ease in characterization when one is singing an operatic role. For here, your character is delineated as is your movement on stage. You also are the same character for the entire opera. In a song recital, your character changes with each song. You must play a variety of roles. This is obviously more difficult.

It's like doing a one-person show where you keep changing characters. Years ago, I saw Ruth Draper, the great monologist, do such a performance on Broadway. She slipped easily from character to character within the same scene and you were convinced that there were many other people on the stage with her, even though she was all alone up there. Cornelia Otis Skinner did the same sort of thing as did Joyce Grenfell, the British actress. I guess this sort of performance isn't seen much anymore. We see one-woman shows, but these earlier actresses were acting out complete scenes populated by numerous others who just weren't there!

In a song recital, the singer must be Ruth Draper, Cornelia Otis Skinner, Joyce Grenfell, Montserrat Caballe, Maria Callas, and Lorraine Hunt Lieberson all wrapped into one!

Preparation must include every single thing you will do on stage: walking, bowing, expressing, and singing!