Teacher! Teacher!

I had another wonderful afternoon's conversation with my friend whom we shall call 'The Other Voice Teacher'. It is amazing how many things we agree on! Imagine, two voice teachers agreeing on anything? She has had an even longer career as performer and teacher than I and we enjoy getting together and talking SINGING and SINGERS!

Today, one of the topics was the use of imagery in teaching voice. Both of us use it extensively in our own work. When a friend and student of mine was writing her doctoral dissertation some time ago, she chose the topic The Use of Imagery in Teaching Singing. She interviewed a number of singers and teachers on the subject, including my friend and myself, and came up with a wonderful study of this part of a singing teacher's arsenal.

I told my teacher-friend of a German mezzo-soprano who was singing the alto part in the St. Matthew Passion of Bach in a performance at which I was playing organ continuo and at which a student of mine was singing the soprano solos. This mezzo, in the first rehearsal, asked the conductor, 'Do you want this with or without emotion?' She managed to sing everything on the flat side of the pitch so I assume that she was singing 'without'. Maybe imagery would have helped her performance and her pitch. My student, who has perfect pitch, had a great time in the duet trying to tune to this unemotional tuning!

My doctoral student interviewed one singer, a tenor at the Met, who said he never used imagery; neither did his teacher. Both my friend and I agreed that singing , or teaching, without using imagery is a lot harder that singing and teaching with it. I think that singers who don't use imagery as a part of their technique must have a much more difficult time producing beautiful, free sounds. It must be boring just to sing the notes 'without emotion', which imagery surely inspires.

Olga Averino, with whom both of us had studied at various times, always said that she assumed that every singer wanted to make clear, free, beautiful sounds. Obviously, this doesn't always happen. If you are producing your voice simply from a physical to-do list, it is just not going to work as well as using your own set of images. Olga often said, 'If you think what you want to happen before you do it, it's very apt to happen'.

We also got on the subject of wobble-itis and decibel-itis, which seem to be popular parts of so many vocal techniques in today's operatic world. My friend and Mentor, Searle Wright, when wishing someone well before a concert always said: 'Sing Good! If you can't sing good, sing loud!!' Too many singers take only the last part of this to heart.

I remember asking my dear friend, the late, great dramatic soprano, Lucilla Udovich in Rome, why so many sopranos were wobbling these days. Lucille had a wonderful, sonorous voice without a sign of a wobble. You can hear her on the VCR of Turandot opposite Franco Correlli as proof. She replied, 'I guess they think that's what opera singers are supposed to sound like'. You can find out more about this wonderful singer whose career was shortened by back trouble, on Wikipedia. In the 80's she and I did concerts together in this country with her sitting down to sing. At that point she was not able to stand for any length of time. What a voice! She also did Master Classes for my students in New Jersey and at Harvard while she was in the USA.

This afternoon we went on to talk about body position- posture. My friend said when she saw a singer's chest push down when they were going for a high note, she knew it was going to be a catastrophe. You must keep your body in a line at all times. I brought up a famous diva whose beautiful voice turned sour because, in my humble opinion, of the tight-fitting gowns she insisted on wearing. There was just no place for the air to go. She was taking gasping, high breaths with heaving shoulders and chest. No-no!

We talked about how everyone's voice changes as one matures. The wise singer changes with it. Otherwise it will have disastrous consequences. She reminded me of the joint concert Maria Callas and Giuseppe di Stefano did years ago which ended both of their careers. It was hard to pick who sang worse. They both had had wonderful instruments, but they were at a point in their lives when they should have retooled. My friend told me that when she had sung with de Stefano in Vienna, he would often have to quit after the first act! Just pooped out. Not good!

I heard a tenor do this in a performance of Turandot that Sarah Caldwell put on at the Boston Opera House. Eva Marton was the Princess. In Act II, when she sang 'Straniero! and turned her face side to side to reach every corner of the hall, the first three rows of audience fainted from the gorgeous blast. I had never heard such a loud, and beautiful, voice. Unfortunately for the tenor, he tried to match her, decibel for decibel, a sort of operatic 'Anything you can sing, I can sing louder!' Well, he couldn't. And by 'Nessun dorma', he was whispereing. The love duet became a soprano solo with him gasping in the sidelines.

All in all it was a great afternoon. We're going to get together again when I return from Puerto Rico at which time she has offered to hear one of my students, who is preparing for a major audition, sing an aria that my friend premièred and is still the unquestioned definitive portrayer of that role.

On the way home I caught the last part of the Met's broadcast of La Traviata on my car radio. I was underwhelmed with the singing. As I told my friend, upon leaving, 'I'm getting to the point where I just don't like singers, just like Olga Averino!' At least not many at the Met these days.

Grumpy old man!!