On becoming the song

'Mary becomes the song!' Olga Averino, my long-time friend and mentor, said this about Mary Carter years ago when we were sitting together in her Cambridge apartment talking, as usual, about singing and singers. After years of teaching and listening to singers from the past and present, Olga said that she had become slightly jaded about singers in general and about a few in particular. But she loved Mary's singing and her involvement in what she sang.

I have quoted this phrase several times in these pages, and have been wondering, can everyone 'become the song'? Is one born with this gift or can one learn how to do it? Both Olga and I were of the opinion that it is obvious to any careful listener when a singer is genuinely involved in the emotion of the text and the music and when they are 'play-acting'. The whole sound of the voice is different. It is the same when someone is telling you something untrue: a lie, even a white one, never rings quite right in the ear.

I guess it is truth that enables one to become anything, but a song in particular. I have always encouraged my students to study the text of the song carefully, learn the degrees of meaning and emotion found within, and then 'Just sing the damned song!' That's another of my pet phrases.

I have had students with wonderful voices who could never fully convince me that they knew what they were singing about. Memorizing the words is only one small step. Any parrot can do that. Whether one is singing in English or another language; whether or not one is fluent in the language in which he or she is singing, at very least within the song, one must have plumbed the depths of every word, every phrase. Otherwise, one is singing a lie. Maybe a white one, but a lie nevertheless.

Lorraine Hunt Lieberson always became the song. Janet Brown always becomes the song. Jane Bryden, Karen Smith Emerson, Judith Gray, Peggy Noecker, all have that same gift that pulls the listener into the web that they are weaving. I'm bragging a bit because all of these women have studied with me. Nathaniel Watson and Jim Maddalena become the song. Ben Luxon, God knows, became the song. I'm still bragging because they have worked with me as well. I'm a very lucky teacher! They all were granted a wonderful gift which they helped to grow as they fully entered the world of song. I could mention a number of other well-known singers who do this out of hand. Christa Ludwig, Montserrat Caballe, Teresa Berganza, Phyllis Curtin, Jon Vickers, Placido Domingo, and on and on.

But then there are those, who shall remain unmentioned, who never quite reach that depth of intense commitment to their art. Pretty voices but superficial involvement. As Olga used to say after hearing a luke-warm rendition of a song or aria by a beautiful voice, 'Well, now, what else can you do?'

Becoming the song is not something a teacher can hand a student. The teacher can help the singer find a deeper meaning in whatever he or she is singing, but then it is up to the singer to give up 'wordly cares', push everything else out of the way, become the song and just sing it- with feeling.

A mezzo I once heard sing in a performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, at which I was playing the organ continuo, asked the conductor, 'Do you want this with, or without, emotion?'

Well, if I have a choice.....