Particia Neway: To this we've come

Strange to say, but the first time I heard Gian Carlo Menotti's opera The Consul, I was in high school, babysitting the neighbors two kids. They went to bed early and I amused myself by channel surfing, stumbling on Menotti's opera just as it started on PBS's Great Performances. I was shocked by the story, musical language and the main aria "To this we've come." Its hopeful consonance in the middle of the dissonant bleak work made a huge impact on my 17 year old brain. Menotti's opera was the first I ever saw from beginning to end if you don't count my first performance in opera being Carmen. I was in third grade and sang in the children's chorus, but I digress!

The soprano who created the role of Magda Sorel in The Consul was Particia Neway, who recently died at the age of 92 (see Theatre Aficionado at Large), having sung 269 performances of Menotti's opera. She sang at a time when 'crossover' meant something different that it does now, my point being that Neway sang on Broadway in major roles with operatic technique. She won a Tony as the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music. Look closely and you will find Tatiana Troyanos singing in the chorus.  

The choral singing is full-bodied and womanly, with none of the hooty or straightened approach you find today. All too often, choral directors try to find 'blend' by limiting rather than expanding. This may have everything to do with the fact that many conductors today aren't singers. At any rate, the choral approach of Neway's time on Broadway was classically driven, a very different approach than can be heard today.

Here is Neway accepting her Tony Award in 1960.

You can find Neway in Menotti's The Consul on DVD here. What a beautifully burnished voice. She sang a great deal at The New York City Opera, back when its home was The City Center of Music and Drama on 55th Street.

Oh..and do you see, those who have been reading my posts about Tomatis and Right Ear Laterality, that Neway definitely sings out the right side of her mouth, that is, the 'funnel' of the mouth points toward the right ear?

Here's an experiment: go look at lots of YouTube videos and see who sings towards the right and who sings towards left. Is there a difference in quality of tone? And if so, what is it?  

Ron Raines

I went to see Stephen Sondheim's legendary show Follies last week which was in the last week of its New York run (it closed on Sunday and is moving to Los Angeles). Among the many luminaries in the cast was Ron Raines. As fate would have it, I went to see my barber yesterday and who was in the chair ahead of me? None other than Mr. Raines. Introductions were made and it was a pleasure to shake his hand and tell him how much I enjoyed his performance. He's fantastic.

Ron Raines has been hitting it out of the park eight shows a week, singing and acting with such authenticity that it makes your heart ache. In the character of Benjamin Stone, Raines swaggers in at the beginning of Act 1, bluster and bitterness on his breath. But by the end of Act 2, when sitting in a puddle of confetti on the floor, Raines as Ben has burned his way into your consciousness. You know this man, especially if you are over 40, Raines making you feel underneath Ben's hard shell. No smoke and mirrors here. How does he do it? With his voice, of course. Rains has real technique, vocal and otherwise, which serve the story. 

In an interview between Raines and his co-star Elaine Page at the American Theatre Wing's website (which you can listen to the full interview here), Page asks Raines about the difference between singing opera and theatre, which, coincidentally, both have done at New York City Opera: Page in Sweeny Todd and Raines in The Merry Widow and New Moon. 

Page: "Is there a difference, you know, in terms of the art of it?" 

Rains: "Not for me. I keep trying to learn how to sing and tell a story." 

Page then goes on to relate how Sondheim wants singers to sing, not talk his songs.

"I want you to sing it!" - Stephen Sondheim

Aside from the 'how-much-tone-should-one-make-in-the-theatre-when-singing' matter, it's the "keep trying to learn how to sing and tell a story" thought that interests me. Mr. Raines shows every evidence of doing just that. (Listen to him here.)

Technique isn't something you can buy like a carton of milk on the corner. It isn't a product. It's an art and a craft- a way of life. Yes. You need someone to show you the 'how' of it. But the teacher also needs a great student, someone who does more than stand there, waiting for fame and fortune to come with no effort involved. The truth is: the really great performers never stop learning. And Ron Raines hasn't.

Don't miss this consummate artist in Los Angeles.

The Vannuccini School: Part V

William L. Whitney (1861-1950)

William L. Whitney was an exponent of Luigi Vannuccini, one of a handful of legendary singing masters at the second half of the 19th century which included Manuel García, Pauline-Viardot-García, Francesco Lamperti and Antonio Sangiovanni. Vocal giants all, their precepts were inculcated by their students in a manner that has little credence today with the emphasis on repertoire rather than scales and exercises in order to develop technique. This was done in order to establish a 'grid' upon which repertoire was laid.

This 'grid' was rooted in Italian tonal values and the acquisition of 'pure vowels,' two words that have been supplanted by terms like 'formant tuning' and "resonance strategies." While useful in regard to vocal mechanics, the latter terms don't have what 'pure vowels' does, which is an emphasis on vowel quality. This 'pointing' of the student's ear is, of course, the stuff of Empiricism, being passed from teacher to student in the confines of the voice studio. After all, before you can sing a 'pure tone,' you have to have a teacher who is its living embodiment. In short, you have to hear it before you can do it, knowledge of 'pure tone's' physical conformation being only part of the equation. Putting parts in the 'correct' position never being as effective as an awareness of the sound which brings those same parts into position without effort or self-consiousness, seeing what happens when a 'pure tone' is made is a teaching all its own.

Whitney and his wife, Leta Fulton Whitney

William L. Whitney, a concert and oratorio singer in England, Italy, Germany and America, taught with these ideals at New England Conservatory of Music, starting in 1888, his two most famous students being Louise Homer and Eleanor Steber. He also had studios in Florence and Paris, teaching for a time at the Royal Normal and Wimbledon Colleges in London, England. He remained on the faulty of the Conservatory until his death in 1950, an association of sixty years duration. His memorial service was held there January 5, 1950. 

The difficult task falls upon me of trying to express, however, inadequately, our sense of irreparable loss- deep personal loss as well as the shattering loss to the Conservatory. I might dwell at length on what his going takes from us- the characteristics so indelibly fastened in our memories; his boundless energy, his indefatigable spirit and dignity- the exacting demands he made upon himself: his intolerance of sham and the mediocre, yet endless patience with and encouragement for worthy youth; his wonderful smile which reflected a world of kindness; his pungent and penetrating criticism, always softened by a whimsical and delicious humor; the wisdom and just decisions he contributed to the Faculty Council, and finally, the vast accumulation of knowledge and experience in his art which he poured so endlessly into the minds and hearts of generations of pupils, insuring the perpetuation of this great art for years to come.  

To us teachers and students, he leaves then a rare model of maintaining complete and absolute integrity in his art and work - a perfect example of a career which, by his selfless desire to give out, regenerated perpetually his great spirit. Who of us, at the of a career, would not prize this reward above most, to have it said of him, as we can so justly say of our departed friend, - "He was a great artist, an inspired teacher, a devoted friend, and above all, a good man'? 

I wish to thank Ms. Maryalice Perrin-Mohr, Archivist, The New England Conservatory of Music, for the photographs and information on William L. Whitney contained within this post. Her generosity is greatly appreciated. 

LoVetri Post

Jeannie LoVetri

If you haven't read her blog LoVetri Post, you really are missing something. The conscience of a generation, Jeannie LoVetri's missives should be required reading for the would-be vocal pedagogue, voice student and scientist, b'way baby and classical cat.

It's not often that you meet someone who burns with the same passion you do. But when you do, it's a good thing to pay attention.

Mourning NYCO

Amanda Edge

Readers who have followed the continuing saga of the NYCO archives will be saddened to learn that the orchestra and chorus were locked out of rehearsals today after a weekend of mediation- an action which presages the end of the company. This morning, I read (Facebook) the following letter from my colleague Amanda Edge who appeared in NYCO's La Traviata at the State Theater in Lincoln Center of the Performing Arts. I want to thank Amanda for allowing me to reprint her words on this page. She expresses the feelings and thoughts of hundreds of company members who have given their lives, love and art to a once glittering, prestigious and groundbreaking arts organization.

A Lincoln Center arts organization representing itself with a black hole. A marketing campaign featuring a smashed car and a man dressed like a gangster. An obscure repertoire with no proven public appeal. A general manager/artistic director with no experience running an opera company. Is it so difficult to venture that the decline of New York City Opera is not the inevitable result of a sagging economy, but is due instead to questionable-to-terrible repertory choices and gross mismanagement? Actually, there is little evidence to suggest that New York City Opera’s current management didn’t purposefully send the company into a nosedive.  

I had the honor of dancing with the company in 2007, as the gypsy in New York City Opera’s popular La Traviata. And my longtime boyfriend Billy was – until this meltdown - the last remaining dancer on contract. So, full disclosure: my interest in NYCO definitely lands firmly on the side of the artists, the choristers, orchestra members, stage managers, and assistant directors. However, as someone with a 20-year performing career (New York City Ballet, Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera, and Twyla Tharp’s Come Fly Away), and as an opera-goer who has attended NYCO for over 2 decades (long before I ever met Billy in State Theater’s elevator #7) I also think I have a relatively educated idea of what’s good, and what audiences want to see. 

A personal survey of my trips to the theater over the past several years proves that the arts at Lincoln Center – and in the city - thrive when savvy choices are made. While the stock market imploded in 2008, South Pacific played to sold-out crowds at the Vivian Beaumont and extended its limited run. The stunning production earned 7 Tony Awards and ran for over two years. 

The New York Philharmonic continues to present appealing programs, giving us Brahms, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Ravel, as well as Gershwin and Cole Porter. We’re buying tickets. At what will always be the New York State Theater to me, New York City Ballet has been thrilling audiences: Wendy Whelan in Diamonds or the drum regiment of Union Jack; Tiler Peck in Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux; Daniel Ulbricht in Prodigal Son. What’s not to love? 

The Nutcracker was presented Live From Lincoln Center (on PBS and aired in movie theaters). Someone named Paul McCartney recently composed a score for the company. And, when New York City Opera sold a handful of their weeks to NYCB last year, story ballets like Midsummer Night’s Dream, Coppélia, and The Sleeping Beauty put families in the seats. 

American Ballet Theatre’s Giselle at the Metropolitan Opera House last Spring: The 170-year old ballet was a hit, and the packed house jumped to its feet as the curtain closed. Thunderous applause and appreciative shouts filled the cavernous Met, and a number of fans rushed to the foot of the stage. 

The School of American Ballet’s Gala Workshop at Julliard’s Peter Jay Sharpe Theater: The performance garnered a response that was loud, long, effusive and genuine as the ticket-buyers (who were not just parents!) enthusiastically celebrated a new group of future dance stars. There was not an empty seat at City Center this past November as the dancers of American Ballet Theatre soared in Twyla Tharp’s In the Upper Room. Billy Elliot, a phenomenal show that closed on Broadway this evening, won 10 Tony Awards and ran for over 3 years. We saw it twice, and would have gone back tonight if any tickets had been available. War Horse at the Vivian Beaumont: The magical puppets have been entertaining a captivated house, and it garnered 6 Tony Awards last year. I think there’s a puppet at New York City Opera too, but he’s of an entirely different sort. 

Last year, while New York City Opera’s sparse, dissonant, and abysmal (and very expensive to mount) Monodramas was critically acclaimed in the New York Times, the glowing review of opening night neglected to mention that the theater was over 60% papered. 

As a 16-year old studying at the School of American Ballet, I often signed out of my dorm room to cross the plaza and see New York City Opera. Standing room tickets were $10, and I attended beautiful productions of Madame Butterfly and Carmen. Charlie Wigler, a counselor at SAB, noticed my interest in opera; he asked if I had ever seen Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. I hadn’t, so a couple of days later he took my classmate, ABT’s Paloma Herrera, and me to the double bill, where we spotted Placido Domingo in the audience. The performance was riveting, and I was hooked. In the following years, I became a regular, attending tremendous productions of The Mikado, The Ballad of Baby Doe, H.M.S. Pinafore, Rigoletto, Brigadoon, Die Tote Stadt, Semele, Rinaldo, Candide, Carmina Burana, Prince Igor, La Rondine, and more (not typical offerings at the Metropolitan Opera). I listened to recordings of Boito’s Classical Sabbath from Mefistofele, and of Beverly Sills singing Villa from The Merry Widow. In both cases, I wept. 

This weekend, the artists of New York City Opera were left to reject an insulting offer of $4000/year without health insurance (while George Steel makes $400,000/year in a true example of the 1% in America). What Steel, Charles Wall, and NYCO’s board have done is unconscionable; the pompous, selfish, elitist group has blithely defaced the people’s opera. The artists of the company, who were offered 80% below the 2011 national poverty level of $22,350, are the casualties of war. It appears that New York has lost New York City Opera, once a vibrant jewel in the artistic crown of this great city.  

Download Beverly “Bubbles” Sills singing Villa. Sip a quality wine. And mourn the loss of her company.

NYU International Voice Symposium

Washington Square Park 

I took the train downtown from the West Side to West 4th Street, walked a few blocks to the far side of Washington Square Park and plunked down in a seat in a half-darkened oval shaped room for the next eight hours. What was I doing? Listening to my fellow wizards hold forth on everything from lip trills to a comparison between Classical Western Singing and Classical Indian (Hindustani) Styles. Fascinating stuff in you are into that sort of thing. And I am. 

Conferences are an excellent way to keep abreast of the latest research as well as hob-knob with those of like mind. That is exactly what happens during breaks: everyone is brought up to date, makes contacts, shares ideas and observations and dishes everything that is served. Warm, hot and cold: it's a generous meal of presentations, original research and thought provoking information. Something for everyone if well-designed. And this conference seems to have all the necessary elements under Brian Gill's direction. 

Tomorrow will see presentations by Johan Sundberg and Ingo Titze, two giants in Voice Science. I've read their books and can't wait to see them in action. 

Ferdinand Sieber

His book is on Kindle now, did you know that?  Yes-sir-ee.  You can now download Ferdinand Sieber's (1822-1895) book of vocal exercises for baritone for your Kindle (he wrote many books of vocal exercises which you will find with google). While you may have used Sieber's books of exercises in the past, or saw them on a shelf in a music library, I am guessing you didn't know who he was.

I remember seeing the book below at Patelson's Music Store behind Carnegie Hall some years ago before it closed. But I didn't know who Sieber was until I starting doing research on Anna E. Schoen-Rene (1864-1942), the musical daughter of Manuel Garcia and Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Schoen-Rene had lessons with Sieber in Berlin as a young woman before studying with PaulineViardot-Garcia in Paris in the 1880's.

Sieber also wrote a book on singing titled Katechismus der Gesangskunst (1885). I found a copy of the English translation  - The Art of Singing, and Voice Culture (1908) - at Abebooks. Reading it, one gleans that we was and Old School boy.

Though Sieber did not have the enduring fame that has been accorded to Francesco Lamperti and Manuel Garcia, he was considered one of the foremost exponents of the Old Italian School.

HERR FERDINAND SIEBER, the famous singing-teacher, died at his home in Berlin on February 18th, from inflammation of the lungs. At the time of his death he was the greatest living exponent of the old Italian method of voice-culture. He was called by Leo Kofler the "apostolic successor" to the old masters, for he could trace his pedagogical descent directly from the days of Porpora. A short time before his death, Herr Sieber published a new book of vocal exercises, planned to bridge over what seemed to be a break in his voicetraining series already issued. His exercises are not only admirable for the voice, but they are also exceedingly tuneful, many being melodious enough for songs. Werner's Magazine 1885

Ok. So perhaps the 'greatest living exponent of the old Italian method' was stretching things a bit. After all, Manuel Garcia and his sister weren't dead yet. And they could trace their pedagogical descent through their father, Manuel Garcia the Elder, who studied with Giovanni Anzani, a student of the great Nicola Porpora. What was Seiber's lineage? He studied voice with Gorgio Ronconi, the famous Verdi baritone. And Ronconi was a student of his father, who had studied with a Venetian vocal master in the late 18th century. No small potatoes that.

Time Travel

Angle at 40

While visiting my parents over the weekend (New Year's Day is also my father's birthday) I found a cassette tape in the bottom of a box. A talisman of time travel, it was a recording I had made in 1990 and had totally forgotten about. 

I had been singing at New York City Opera for two years and was approached to record a song - She Walks in Beauty- that had been commissioned by a patron for the New York Philharmonic. I met with the composer Joseph Turrin, coached the song and then recorded it at a studio in midtown in two takes a week later. Another piece - Lullaby - was added at the last minute and was recorded in one take. That was quick! Being a busy thirty-two year old, I put the cassette in a box when it arrived in the mail a few weeks later and went on with my life. 

It's a curious experience hearing yourself after so many years. You hear not only the voice, but who you were and weren't, what you knew without being taught, and what you had yet to learn. In this case, I hear that my right ear had not yet fully awakened, a process that began after I went to the Listening Center in Toronto in 1999.

Oh, but I was a young man. Unlike Benjamin Stone in Follies, I do remember him. He idolized Gerald Souzay and listened to everything he recorded.

She Walks in Beauty

Lullaby

Eugénie García

Eugénie García

Wife and student of Manuel García, Eugénie (née Mayer) García (1818-1880) sang with the Opera Comique in Paris and became a noted singing teacher. She left her husband after a few years, afterwhich he decamped to London, marrying an Englishwoman with whom he had two daughters after his estranged wife died at the age of sixty-two. Manuel and Eugénie's child, Gustave García, became an actor and wrote a book titled The Actor's Art.

Images from the New York Public Library Digital Library

The Vannuccini School of Singing: Part IV

Julia Stacey Gould

Successful Singing: The Method of Famous Teachers 

Vannuccini, Florence 
Whitney, Boston

Reaching back through them

to the Italian School of Singing

of a century ago.

1942

Tone Resonance 

Explanation of Tone Resonance 

A violin string, by itself, produces only a small amount of tone. If the string is on a violin this tone is amplified by vibrations of the instrument. When the violin is played by an artist, this same string can produce a tone which can be heard in a large auditorium above an entire orchestra. 

We can recognize the vibrant quality in a vocal tone which we call resonance. If the tone is properly placed, we can feel in our own voice the resonance which comes from the vibration in the mouth and in the nasal cavities. The fundamental vocal tone, to have its full quality and color must have this resonance which can be produced in several ways. 

1. Resonance from the mouth. 

The natural sounding board of the tone is the roof of the mouth. The tone has been placed forward in the mouth against the teeth. From this position the tone receives resonance from the roof of the mouth. The roof of the mouth is bone, curved and arched in exactly the formation to reflect the tone and to project over the pulpit in an old church or the shell in back of the bandstand are examples of such a reflection of tone. The reflector in back of a bulb in an automobile headlight focuses and intensifies the light and throws it a long distance. In the same way the sounding board amplifies and directs the tone,

This type of resonance which comes from the mouth can be felt most clearly in the speaking voice or in the singing or lower notes of the scale.  

2. Resonance from the face and head. 

As the voice is raised in pitch, the sense of vibration in the mouth grows less, and more resonance can be felt in the face and head.  

It can be seen by consulting any diagram which shows the nasal passages of the head that there are cavities in, around, and in back of the nose which are backed by bone structure. These facial cavities are several times larger than the mouth cavity. In producing a tone, part of the breath can be deflected from the mouth and directed up through these cavities. The resulting vibration adds resonance which gives roundness, richness, color, and quality to the tone. The fundamental tone has little carrying quality. A tone with this added resonance, however, will carry easily and with a rich quality throughout a large hall. No amount of effort can make a tone carry, but with resonance, the tone carries without effort.  

As the tone is raised in pitch, the resonance grows correspondingly higher in the head cavity until the vibration is felt above the eyes and all through the forehead and top of the head. This head tone is natural and should be unforced and free. In the open vowel sounds it is easily produced. Consonants are less easy to sing, and practice is necessary before words are easily pronounced in the higher resonance.  

The resonance in "the mask" or facial cavities can be sensed and built up most quickly by practicing and singing softy. In a descending scale or in a descending interval, resonance can be brought down from the higher tones to the lower tones. For this reason, descending phrases are most valuable for vocalizes. In ascending phrases, it is necessary to plan for the higher resonances. This is done by anticipating and by using the placement which will be called for at the higher part of the phrase. It is essential, however, that the lower notes are sung softly.  

In all instances, the resonance that is felt in the higher tones can be brought down through the lower parts of the phrase. The lower resonance cannot be carried into the upper tones with any success.  

The muscles of the face should be relaxed, and the upper lip should be in its natural position. The length of the lip allows all the resonance of the facial cavity to be utilized and gives added richness and color to the tone. (p. 24-25) 

The argumentative moderns among us will raise their voices in a loud chorus to point out that the nasal cavities having nothing to do with resonance and we should once and for all do away with this business of 'forward placement', forgetting, of course, that they raise themselves higher by cutting off the heads of the many successful vocal pedagogues who came before them. They ignore the fact that, though the Empiricists of the past may not have been scientifically correct, their methods were no less effective. The teachings of the past need not, in my view, be negated because they cannot be sufficiently explained. We use electricity all the time, but don't quite fully understand how it works. Does that mean we should sit in the dark?