As I pack to prepare to head to Torino, Italy to compete for the role of Nemorino, I have been walking around our apartment in Paris constantly humming every person's lines except my own. Those are the easy ones to remember. While working with one of my Parisian coaches this week, I stumbled repeatedly on my entrances when there was nothing more than the simple piano accompaniment. What I realized is that I know every single one of my lines, I often take my word and entrance cues off listening to the other characters...Not a good idea when the audition is just me and a pianist singing through the entire role (including ensembles) and there is no one else on stage with me. This has caused me to go back and really focus in on every character besides myself (hard for a tenor to do).
Amidst preparing for this trip to Italy, I have decided to change techniques mid-stream. Not exactly an easy thing to do (nor recommended). In any event, my whole thinking was, there is no time like the present. Regardless how Italy goes, the most important thing is to move forward in some aspect of my voice every day (be it language practice, technique work, etc). I know there is a limited amount of time we all have to get our careers off the ground before it becomes such an economic albatross that we have no choice, but to find some other kind of employment and way of life. I have felt this albatross growing stronger on my back this last year and have decided I need to make things happen (even if drastic). I am going for broke (literally and figuratively) and that means evaluating every aspect of how I work as a musician. I have gotten certain criticisms over the years that are now becoming pretty much a pattern and because of this I have been seeking advice from professionals all across the voice field to solve them. I did not have much success in the US finding help to solve these problems (the help I received in the US was more fixing the symptoms, but not really solving the root problems). Luckily, I stumbled into some people here in France that have really been able to help me. My new voice teacher and I have been working 5-6 days a week for 2-3 hours at a time for the past couple weeks just to get me a head start on this new technique as I head to Torino. His approach is to not treat the symptoms, but instead to fix the actual problems. This is certainly not an entirely novel approach to many things, but to my voice, it has been a huge help.
For you singers out there, let me suffice to say that Europe has an opinion on American singers and it is definitely a fair one. My voice embodies many of the problems we have as American English speakers singing in Italian, French, or German. It is sometimes too bright and shrill and at other times unfocused and lacking strength (without pushing) on the bottom. This is the general opinion of American singers. People here have told me it is because we form our mouths wrong when forming words. Europeans will form words at the very front of the mouth and lips and as Americans we form it in the back of our throats. This presents many interesting problems. Next, because we form everything in the backs of our mouths, we tend to also try and find all our resonance places there and in our heads (read...NOSE). This creates that midwest twang or southern drawl or many other accents we have in the USA. In any event, this whole process of speaking (or in this case singing and creating sound) needs to be re-learned to get the color that European singers are so famous for having. I won't get into the details, but needless to say, it has been a VERY tough road for me (however invigorating at the same time). There are times I sound like a child learning to speak for the first time, but at other moments, there is a greatness that sounds that I was never capable of before.
On other fronts, I am preparing to also sing in Marseille in front of the great tenor Rolando Villazon in 2 weeks and after that I am singing in a concertized version of The Rake's Progress in Paris on October 22nd (did I mention I still need to start learning that role!!). Somewhere in this I also have several local (ie local to Paris) auditions coming. They will be blogged about when I take them.
One more note to all the Americans out there. Paris, France and the rest of Europe are a wonderful way to vacation, visit, or live. The idea that either we (Americans) will be met with hostility, rudeness, or disdain could never be more far from the truth. Wherever I go, regardless of how well I speak a language, I always find people willing to do whatever they can to lend a hand or offer directions (even if often people know less about the city roads than you do as a traveler). In the US, there is almost an aversion to making an effort to meet people halfway with languages when communicating, but here, if you don't speak French, they will try English, and then if you don't speak that, they will try meeting you halfway with a little German, Spanish, Italian, or whatever to make the conversation happen. It is truly amazing to watch and of to be a part. There is a certain INclusion that exists here that seems to really be lacking in many parts of the US (where the term EXclusion really has a strong meaning).
au revoir!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
An American in Paris...
After having a great coaching in Paris yesterday, I decided to go for a run around Paris. I thought I was headed to the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Seine (which are just a few blocks from our apartment in le Marais, but somehow I ended up running the opposite direction (le Marais is horribly confusing with all these small narrow streets that change names on every block) and ended up at Paris Opera (the Bastille). Regardless, not a long jog. Being so close to Paris Opera reminds me of what used to be told to the Julliard kids as they prepared for careers at the Met...
'Although you may be in the building just across the street from the Met Opera and the Lincoln Center, that street you have to cross is the longest street you will ever have to walk in your life'.
It reminds me of where I am and how I feel about Paris Opera. I am minutes away from this beautiful opera house (and trust me, this edifice is magnificent), but I am also almost impenetrably far at the same time to taking the stage.
In my coaching yesterday, we focused on what I am lacking in my singing at this point...That certain something that allows the singer to relate to the audience and allow them to laugh and cry with us as we perform. It has nothing to do with technique, but everything to do with technique. As it was explained poetically to me yesterday, technique is the thing that allows us to sing unencumbered. So, while we often think we are building this huge constructure that allows us to sing, we are actually in fact tearing down that same constructure and eliminating the critical and emotional distance between the singer and the audience. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish, but at the same time, it is absolutely necessary to making great art. It is only then that our art can appear honest and then can really reach someone's heart strings.
So, to sum up: keep music as simple as possible and allow the music to just be itself. This also speaks to the state of Americans singing French music. It is normal for us to stress certain words, i.e. the noun or the adjective, or whatever. This is fact a great fallacy in french singing. We think often as Americans that we are showing the audience that we know the text and what it means by stressing the words. Wrong. In fact, we are destroying the line completely. The only way to express french text is to let it flow naturally. The french do not have the extreme ups and downs in their sentence flow like we do. This was the other big lesson yesterday. As I was singing stuff by Gounod, it was shown to me how the music itself in the rhythm gave as much emphasis as necessary and that anything more that what he wrote is just exaggeration to the french language. Oh, the things you can only learn about a language while in that country.
In audition news, I am still preparing for some small auditions here and also for some larger competitions in the next month.
I promise to take some pictures of our place soon and place them on my website. I will even include some shots of the homeless guy across the street who brings his mattress out every night and rests on it with his bottle of wine and harrasses all passers by for money to help support his drinking habit. That and the constant smell of cigarette smoke even at 3am. Oh and let me not forget that when you go to the local Target/Walmart (called BHV), it is IMPOSSIBLE to actually find anything in any logical manner. That includes finding throw rugs or alarm clocks. Would you believe we had to go to a specialty store to get an alarm clock? Or that I had to do quite a bit of searching to find protein powder for my workouts (called a Tonicizer here...I can't figure out if that is the French mocking us Americans for using all these food supplements).
Only in Paris, France folks...Only in Paris, France.
'Although you may be in the building just across the street from the Met Opera and the Lincoln Center, that street you have to cross is the longest street you will ever have to walk in your life'.
It reminds me of where I am and how I feel about Paris Opera. I am minutes away from this beautiful opera house (and trust me, this edifice is magnificent), but I am also almost impenetrably far at the same time to taking the stage.
In my coaching yesterday, we focused on what I am lacking in my singing at this point...That certain something that allows the singer to relate to the audience and allow them to laugh and cry with us as we perform. It has nothing to do with technique, but everything to do with technique. As it was explained poetically to me yesterday, technique is the thing that allows us to sing unencumbered. So, while we often think we are building this huge constructure that allows us to sing, we are actually in fact tearing down that same constructure and eliminating the critical and emotional distance between the singer and the audience. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish, but at the same time, it is absolutely necessary to making great art. It is only then that our art can appear honest and then can really reach someone's heart strings.
So, to sum up: keep music as simple as possible and allow the music to just be itself. This also speaks to the state of Americans singing French music. It is normal for us to stress certain words, i.e. the noun or the adjective, or whatever. This is fact a great fallacy in french singing. We think often as Americans that we are showing the audience that we know the text and what it means by stressing the words. Wrong. In fact, we are destroying the line completely. The only way to express french text is to let it flow naturally. The french do not have the extreme ups and downs in their sentence flow like we do. This was the other big lesson yesterday. As I was singing stuff by Gounod, it was shown to me how the music itself in the rhythm gave as much emphasis as necessary and that anything more that what he wrote is just exaggeration to the french language. Oh, the things you can only learn about a language while in that country.
In audition news, I am still preparing for some small auditions here and also for some larger competitions in the next month.
I promise to take some pictures of our place soon and place them on my website. I will even include some shots of the homeless guy across the street who brings his mattress out every night and rests on it with his bottle of wine and harrasses all passers by for money to help support his drinking habit. That and the constant smell of cigarette smoke even at 3am. Oh and let me not forget that when you go to the local Target/Walmart (called BHV), it is IMPOSSIBLE to actually find anything in any logical manner. That includes finding throw rugs or alarm clocks. Would you believe we had to go to a specialty store to get an alarm clock? Or that I had to do quite a bit of searching to find protein powder for my workouts (called a Tonicizer here...I can't figure out if that is the French mocking us Americans for using all these food supplements).
Only in Paris, France folks...Only in Paris, France.
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