The Maestro

Maestro Alfredo Kraus is remembered in a statue erected in his honor at Las Palmas, at the entrance to the auditorium named after him.

Progress Report

Progress Report

Today I have another lesson with my voice teacher. We are making some interesting progress. I have been (slowly) discovering that I need even less air for vocal production than I felt I did. When first starting lessons with Martile, the sensation of the open throat made almost made me feel like I had to fill that huge (for me at the time) space, by whatever means possible!

Back when I was suffering from Delusions of Leggiero, aside from singing with a high larynx and a pinched tone, I also sang in a very controlled manner, a precious manner even, imitating what I thought would be the proper leggiero sound. James Allbritten told me that my voice was, essentially, like a wild horse I had been restraining all of my life and that I would first have to let it go wild.  As a result, when faced with such a nice open field to run through, I really did go wild. Now my body is discovering that it can do twice of what it used to do with only half the effort, and with better quality. The easing of pressure is a key in freeing up my upper register, and I am looking forward to making more progress.

I have two confirmed singing engagements, a Christmas recital in December and Purcell's "Raise, Raise the Voice" for January. On Tuesday I am going to audition for the tenor solo in Bach's "Wachet Auf!" cantata.

Serial Killer

From the hallowed school of the postmodern delusion comes Nico Muhly, wunderkind extraordinaire and protegé of Phillip Glass (after listening to Muhly, you'll understand why he needs 'protection') whose newest 'opera' has been universally panned for being to music what a dentist's drill is to a picnic.

I must say that I enjoy listening to Mr. Muhly. It gives me a new-found appreciation for good composers. He provides a valuable service, as long as he doesn't think he is to be found guilty of composition: While Mr. Muhly's crimes are many, musical ability is not to be found among them.

It should be noted that when a recent pair of premieres at the Barbican earned him such very, very bad reviews ( Andrew Clements: "Though Muhly was flavour of the month in New York, the pieces gave no hint of what all the fuss might be about. They were like slow, painful death.") this very mature and intellectual composer whined on his blog"I have never seen 'flavour of the month' spelled in that way and am secretly thrilled to be dismissed in such a fashioun,"; he also refers to "cunty English reviews".

By his sophomoric attempt at humour, It would seem to me that Mr. Muhly has as loose a grasp on the realities of language as he does on music-making.

Slight Hold

I want to apologize for there being no posts this and last week. I have been preparing a concert which will happen tomorrow. After the concert I will be able to finish some posts I have been working on.

Fishing for pearls

Kraus and McDaniel tear it up in one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for two men: The Pearlfisher's Duet (Au Fond Du Temple Saint)

In the opera: Nadir returns to the village, and he and Zurga recall how their friendship was once threatened when they both fell in love with an unknown priestess. They swear eternal friendship.

Bizet was a wonderful composer. Listen to this duet with your eyes closed and tell me if you can hear this:   You know how they're talking about how beautiful this woman, the priestess Leyla, is? In the music, can you  hear how beautiful she is? Right around "La foule est en genoux" (the crowd is on its knees), listen to what Bizet does in the background. It sends shivers up my spine.

Bad Auditions, and Kraus + Sprezzatura

Audition Results


 Unfortunately, I had a bad audition this Sunday.

I was auditioning for Tamino with "Dies Bildnis" but  after a good start, many of the old habits returned. I started out great... then at one very specific point I felt it. I felt my larynx rising and closing, and I didn't really have a way to recover at that point. The ending was... a great deal beneath my standards. And that frustrates and infuriates me.

I hate the feeling of being betrayed by your body like that. The hardest part of being a singer for me is coming to terms with the fact that no matter how polished your mind is, your body takes twice as long as your mind does to grasp a new thing. Sometimes even longer, depending on the frequency of the previous muscular habit.

Because "Dies Bildnis" an aria I've sung before with others teachers and with so much baggage, the muscular memory  associated with it is particularly tricky. Specially anything associated with the vowel "I" (to you English speakers it'd be an "Ee" sound) is troublesome for me, as the larynx wants to rise at that point, the palate wants to collapse and the note wants to  laminate itself onto my nose (it's not pretty).

The 'i' is a vowel I attack constantly during warm-ups and study sessions. It's at a point where I win some of the time and the old habits win most of the time, and it'll slowly be the other way eventually. And then I win. But that's a ways off right now- how far away? I don't know.

One of the masters of the open "I" sound is Alfredo Kraus, and interestingly enough he used to say that that particular vowel was the key to his vocal technique. Of course, it is: if you can produce an "I" with ease at any point in your register, you've already mastered what an open throat feels like and you could do anything.

Martile says I have an easy and ringing high C waiting to escape, if I only let it. The problem is all this tension I've accumulated at the base of my tongue. We're working on that, of course, and already I sound like a different tenor. But muscle memory, damned muscle memory....

This has come as a double whammy, since  last Saturday I had to sing the count's aria and the finale of act I from the Barber of Seville, again something I had done before,  for a gala, and Bam, hello raised larynx. The gala was something I couldn't avoid, as I had singed up for it before changing teachers. If I could have chosen what I would sing nowadays, I would not have chosen Rossini at all (since it is now outside of my fach, or vocal category) - but alas, it was one of those situations where you couldn't really win: If you pull out, you get a bad mark for professionalism, and if you perform in a sub-standard fashion you get marked as well. The only legitimate time to withdraw from a production is in cases where you suffer from a truly bad ailment or a broken leg (although since Joyce DiDonato's accident, that's up to debate.)

A friend of mine, a colleague I have known for several years, put it best:

"Oh doesn't that suck when it's a piece you know you could sing well if you hadn't already sung it in the not so good way! Baggage....bah!"

Well, all in all as a recap the audition didn't go well- If  I manage to land the role, it'll be a wonderful thing, but right now I'm almost positive there is no way I'm getting the role- so, time to plan for more things to do in January. I've got a concert coming up on the 17th, so more on that soon.

More On Sprezzatura and Alfredo Kraus

One of my readers here (I have readers! How exciting is that?) mentioned that he couldn't really appreciate Kraus' ease of production, probably because he made it look too easy. Perhaps. But I would like to submit for your listening pleasure two arias that exhibit Kraus' technical mastery and sprezzatura at its best:

1) Kraus singing Donizetti's "La Fille Du Regiment" (in Italian), and singing that particuarly hellish aria, "Ah! mes amis, quel jour de fête!" which has been affectionately called the "Mount Everest" for tenors. It features nine high Cs and it comes early in the opera. One high C is often nerve-wracking, but nine in a row in rapid-fire succession? Madness, you say!

Well, if it is madness then Alfredo Kraus is simply Demented in his perfect rendition:



2) Now a bit of the lyrical Kraus. This aria from Gounod's "Faust" isn't considered "showy", certainly not in the same aspect as "Ah! mes amis" is. Although the aria does have one triumphant high C at its climax, 90% of the aria is a lyrical contemplation. This requires depth of interpretation to give appropriate profundity, while still being able to top off the high C at the word "presence." Alfredo Kraus, of course, not only does an amazing job of it, but every single time I have seen him in a live production of this, he is always treated to a near-apocalyptic ovation at the very end of the aria. At one point someone clocked a particular ovation at nine minutes.



Here's hoping that these videos help you appreciate the maestro.

The art of Sprezzatura, Masterclasses and Audtions

Yesterday I was incredibly fortunate to be able to audit a Master Class by Daniel Helfgot , Opera Director, recipient of the Director of the Year 2009 award from the Classical Singer Magazine, and author of the book "The Third Line: The Singer As Interpreter."  The class was superb and we all learned a great deal from the different examples that cropped up with every singer. Maestro Helfgot is a very insightful man, and very incisive with his observations.

After the class I purchased his book, which I am very eager to read. One of the things I was very grateful for him to mention is the issue of translation--- in the day and age of the supertitle, there really is no reason for an opera company to translate a work into English. He used a quote my father is often fond of using, "Traduttore, Traditore!" or "Translator, Traitor!" (the pun is lost when you translate it, which really underlines the point) - a composer often writes in accordance to specific vowel values, when it comes to specific sections according to his intention. To translate the text is to rob the audience and the performers of that intention, and the opera more often than not changes completely ( and many times turns out just goofy, such as the Ruth & Thomas Martin translation of "Una Furtiva Lagrima", from "M'ama! Si, M'ama!" to "Darling! You love me!"). I will be posting comments as I read "The Third Line," hopefully a chapter-by-chapter comment.

Well, today I have an audition for the role of Prince Tamino in Mozart's "Die Zauberflote." I have been having problems with the aria because it is a piece I sung before with previous teachers, and when I sing it a lot of muscle memory and baggage comes up. However, I have noticed that if I become absorbed in the character and the character's motivations, and let the music guide me (Mozart, as all of the supreme good composers, tells you exactly what's going on with the character's action in the score, so all you need to do is listen to the accompaniment to your aria), the problems lessen greatly, or disappear at times, with the better technique coming to the fore.  I think today's audition will go well, I simply have to get out of my own head and get into Tamino's instead.

It is so interesting that an aria like Tamino's "Dies Bildnis" is so deceitful- to the casual listener it may seem not nearly as difficult as Pamina's "Ach, Ich Fuhls" or , of course, the Queen of the Night's insane arias, but Tamino's two arias have very nasty pitfalls that can swallow you whole if you're not careful. When a good tenor sings it you barely even notice its difficulty - when a bad tenor sings it, you're perfectly aware of it all.  This is an example of one of the attributes of the ideal opera singer: Sprezzatura.  Sprezzatura is the rehearsed spontaneity, studied carelessness, and well-practiced naturalness that underlies persuasive discourse.  The term was coined by Balthasar Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier (1528): "To avoid affectation in every way possible . . . and (to pronounce a new word perhaps) to practice in all things a certain Sprezzatura, so as to conceal all art and make whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it."

One of the masters of Sprezzatura was the legendary tenor, Alfredo Kraus. Here you have a prime example of Maestro Kraus displaying the height of Sprezzatura-singing. He tackles the extremely difficult aria "Je crois entendre encore" from Bizet's "Le Pecheurs De Perles" as if it were nothing but a dream. His high B flats, and then the final high C, come out with seemingly no effort whatsoever, and the expression in his face says "I could do this all night, are you kidding me? This isn't hard at all. But isn't it beautiful?" This is as close to perfection as any tenor can get. Perhaps the only objectionable thing in this live video recording is the inexplicable coldness of the German public listening to him. After such a rendition, a man of his skill deserves a standing ovation at least.