I have been reviewing opera at least since 1947 when I first realized that every singer was not perfect. On that occasion the Violetta tried for the high E-flat at the end of Act I of La Traviata and spectacularly missed it. Ten years and some two hundred performances later the Dallas Morning News published my first critique–of the Metropolitan Opera’s Samson et Dalila, with Rise Stevens. I loved it, and that started me on my way. Between then and 1982, I wrote regularly, first for the Dallas Times Herald, then for Opera News and from 1973 until 1981 for the New York Post. When I became General Director of Seattle Opera, I have had the opportunity over the last three decades plus to view criticism from the other side.
As a General Director the best way to describe my reaction to criticism was coined by an English General Director some time ago. “Critics,” he either wrote or said, “have given me many bad breakfasts, but never a bad lunch.” Of course one hates a bad notice, but it can’t affect your own feelings about a performance or a production. You presented the work because, I hope, you believed in it, and although the critic may have pointed out some true flaws–some that you may not have noted–I at least never let what was said change my opinion.
What bothers me about opera criticism today is the overwhelming emphasis on the production–the direction, the sets, the costumes. What is often dismissed to the last paragraph–this is more the case in Europe than in America but it happens here too–are the singers and the conductor.
Most audiences, I have found, have no idea how important the conductor is to the success of any opera performance. It is no exaggeration to say that a conductor can make or break any individual performer. If anyone thinks this doesn’t happen, you are flat out wrong. Sudden elongations in tempos or the reverse can destroy a singer, and if you don’t think this ever takes place, I want to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn. Further, consistent high speed or, more frequently, slow tempos without tension can make boring any opera with even the greatest singers.
The audience in general comes to an opera because they like singing. Right? It is a singing art form, and it is famous singers who sell out a theater, not any production (I have to make an exception: there are a few modern directors who distort the meaning of a work so severely, probably to live out their own sexual or masochistic fantasies, that the audience comes to see the scandal.). Since singers are really what sell tickets, it seems absurd to me that they are increasingly dismissed by one or two word descriptions.
Is it hard to characterize singers’ performances in a way that the general public will understand what you are writing? Yes. Should all English-speaking critics writing for an American audience shy away from Italian or German terms that will mystify readers? Yes. Vocal range, for instance, is a fair substitute for tessitura, coloratura for fioritura; every foreign word can be rendered in intelligible English. More important, in review after review I find that critics do not even try to analyze singers’ performances. I do not mean that a critic should harp on one note badly sung or other technical points; what needs to be said is whether the artist animated the words with real feeling or just sang technically. There is far, far too much singing these days in this country that is precisely accurate but absolutely lacking in either emotion or abandon, and this should be pointed out.
It’s great to have new productions and new points of view of familiar operas, but at least to me the failure to attempt to let a reader know what really happened at the performance reviewed is fatal. A critic’s job, I think, is to work from a trunkful of experience and to make a reader feel in reading the review that he or she really knows the work well and what it was like to have been present at the performance. I am personally reading too little of that, and I think it hurts the public’s interest and excitement in the art form.
First of all, a review is one person’s opinion. Whether or not that person is qualified to express his or her opinion does not detract from the fact it’s only one opinion. I agree with you that all too often everything BUT the singing and conducting are discussed in reviews.
Some singers have a sensitivity for the meaning of the words they are singing. They put things into context to create a character that conveys the plot to the audience. Unfortunately, many people don’t do their homework BEFORE attending a performance, so they don’t have perspective or understanding of what the composer and librettist have created.
Speight,
I couldn’t agree with you more. Although not many audience members are aware of it while it is actually in progress (nor need they be at that moment!), it is the conductor 1) who literally ‘directs’ the flow and drama of each live performance — energizing the integration of singers and orchestra for the maximum aesthetic impact of each production; — and 2) who further should be aware enough to know, and kind enough to weld and support, each singer’s (and player’s) strengths and weaknesses into a coherent orchestral and vocal architecture and flow — in order to maximize the inherent musical and dramatic integration of the score. Not all conductors see both of these as their mission and role, — however in opera it is essential. The singers’ performances are literally in the conductor’s hands!
On a more personal note,, as a boy soprano chorister and soloist at the MET in its glory days I was infatuated with Rise Stevens and stayed to the end of each CARMEN performance (Amara, Tucker, Merrill). Ditto Tebaldi’s and Bjoerling’s BOHEME, Milanov’s GIOCONDA, FORZA and CAVALLERIA, Del Monaco’s CHENIER and TROVATORE, Steber’s MOZART roles, Albanese’s BUTTERFLY, and many others..
And, despite my previous musical training and background, nothing brought the above home to me as a young teenager so clearly as Mitropoulos’s conducting of DIE WALKUERE. I was riveted from the first string tremolos he launched — to the last dying embers of Loge’s fire!
Peter Mark,
Artistic Director Emeritus
Virginia Opera
I do envy your chorister days at the Met, Peter. I saw many of those same performances, but from the front of the house. GOLDEN DAYS indeed!
Thank-you for this very thoughtful view of opera and its criticism from a clearly experienced opera director. I, along with my colleague, Henriette Kund, started the Maryland Lyric Ipera last year on the premise that opera is fundamentally about singing and the singer needs to have the freedom to be able to sing with abandon, as you say. This is how the singers from an earlier age all sang. When we were reviewed this summer the comment from the reviewer was that she had not heard such glorious singing in ages. We produced a semi-staged version with no costumes or sets but it was acted out. To me and my colleagues here at MDLO there is no opera without glorious singing. All the emotions and the character come through the singing. Thank-you for this great article. We need more voices that bemoan the lack of emphasis on the vocal aspect of opera!
Excellent article. What is missing today from many productions is Collaboration. Among the conductor, director, and the singers. When one part of that trio is allowed total control, then the liklihood of the best result goes out the window.
Egotism needs to be checked at the door in order for collaboration to succeed.
Thank you, Speight, for defending singing and music in opera. These are two of the three pillars that opera rests upon. The third is the drama, of course. Opera is incomplete without all three and in recent decades the music and the singing seem to have become merely afterthoughts to the stage director’s “concept.” This was one of the reasons I quit singing rather early. It seemed everywhere I went to work, the music was the poor stepchild of the whims of the stage director. I was attracted to opera because of the musical underpinnings, but less and less time was being devoted to working out the complex issues of the music. Usually it was relegated to short discussions with the maestro during breaks in staging or at the already time-constrained sitz! So usually it came down to agreeing that we normally do this or that. It was essentially like rehearsing to a prerecorded track. Not interesting, just safe. When I first began singing and in my most revered experiences, we had musical rehearsals before staging. But that waned. I felt bad for the wonderful conductors I worked with whose great talents and lifetime of experience were being treated like second-rate hacks. This really troubled me and I saw the writing on the wall.
One thing I must take some issue with, however, is your statement that “far, far too much singing…is precisely accurate…” In my experience as a listener and as a voice teacher, while the thrust of that assertion is true, one area that makes me crazy is the the lackluster attention shown by many “big name” artists to the accuracy of their coloratura. It is often very sloppy. But I agree otherwise about the precision without emotion or abandon. Seldom does one hear anyone acting with their voice. Great article! Thanks for putting it out there.
Dear Speight,
Thank you for these words,
your eyes AND ears over the many years!!
Jan
Associate Professor of Voice
Eastman School of Music
Fabulous, Speight – thank you for this. Design is certainly one part of opera, but it shouldn’t be the whole story. Some of the most memorable productions I’ve seen are concert operas, or semi-staged as they’re often called (as one tenor participating in one of them said to me, “Forget the “semi” part of it – it’s really staged!”
Your comments about the correctness brought an instant recall to mind… while observing and photographing conductor Edoardo Müller — and whether for Verdi or Mozart — he would patiently listen to [singer] work through his or her first aria in the music rehearsal. He’d say, “That was very nice. Very correct.” [pause] “But I l think *too* correct. I want you to bring more passion, more of your personality to it.” And with his encouragement, they always did.
Cheers,
I couldn’t agree more. I get tired of reviews that mention actual singing almost as a postscript at the bottom of a review or as a parenthetical insertion in the midst of a consideration of the production and direction. Performances of real individual profile and personality that go beyond the notes and delve into the character created by the composer deserve to be highlighted and recognized by the critic. The late John Steane thought that “”Properly exercised, the critic’s function is to enrich, the sharpen the awareness and quicken the response.” Likewise, when it’s clear that a talented, imaginative singer is being straitjacketed or otherwise hampered by the producer or the conductor, that too should be pointed out. How can a vocal artist create a memorable portrait when costumed as a vegetable or a rat?
I would appreciate more reviews that distinguish between the merely good or adequate and something higher and better. Singers who are schooled to “fit in” and efface real individuality seem all too common. John Steane in the same article also wrote, “Voices are increasingly schooled to conform to as universally acceptable a norm as possible.” Often it seems so they can fit in to whatever bizarrerie the attention-seeking, often artistically sterile, director dreams up.
Peter Mark’s own recollections of the Met in the fifties spark the thought that maybe that was a real Golden Age when there was great singing by artists who still had a living generational connection with a vibrant art form coupled with Bing’s initiative in bringing in directors and designers who loved that art form, sought only
to serve it and not themselves with fresh, modern innovative, but faithful productions, and, down in the pit, conductors who at least had some conception of their role in energizing the performance and allowing singers to create unforgettable portrayals.
I hear and see a lot of current performances. But, in my retirement, I’ve had the time to pull some vintage opera recordings off the shelf from the era Peter Mark mentioned, 50s, 60s that I literally had not heard in decades. Only to ask myself, “why am I again genuinely excited about Aida, CavPag, Rigoletto, Lohengrin, Rosenkavalier, etc” ; operas I thought I’d gone stale on, yet on these old recordings are like a jolt of electricity?
Thank you, Speight, loved listening to you back in the 80’s when I was just starting out. You are indeed a mentor.
I am now trying to convince my local opera company to continue family -friendly opera (Hansel and Gretle, Amahl,,,, etc… ) to get all involved, but it does seem impossible, does it not…
How interesting that there is not one comment in disagreement! Amen to your observations, Mr. Jenkins!
However: “coloratura” is also an Italian word!!!