Is there a critic in the house?

There was a time where critics were kinda needed, were lauded even. Remember back to the olden days when people read newspapers and, in the big cities, discerning audiences often relied on critics do tell them if a show, opera, or concert was worthy of their attending? Many of these critics influenced box office receipts - a great review could save a season; a terrible review could plummet earned income and risk ruin for the producer or producing company.

There was also a time when I was lauded by critics. My favorites come from a Bluebeard’s Castle I conducted at Opera Festival of New Jersey about twenty years ago: New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini praised my “lithe pacing and vivid colors” while Pulitzer prize-winning London Financial Times critic Martin Bernheimer wrote “Hansen respected the delicate balance between passion and introspection. He made much of Bartok’s epic essay in psycho-sexual angst.” and David Patrick Stearns in the Philadelphia Inquirer noted “Hansen revealed another side of the score: stroke after stroke of musical characterization that’s often obscured by dazzling orchestral color, skillfully drawing the ear into the two characters’ hearts of darkness.” 

Obviously these were great critics. I mean, psycho-sexual angst and hearts of darkness!

I’ve also gotten my share of terrible reviews (obviously by uninformed critics LOL), been misquoted by the press, and had my name misspelled (Peter Henson was my fav). As I tell my students, if you believe the good reviews, you must believe the bad ones. Therefore, ignore them all – unless you need a press quote for your bio!

Don’t get me wrong, there’s been some great critics. The composer Virgil Thompson was a noted critic (the book to read is “Composer on the Aisle” by that brilliant critic cited above, Anthony Tommasini), Alex Ross (another book to read is “The Rest Is Noise”, simply the best book on the 20th century musical universe), and Anne Midgett (although there are some who point to a few “mean” reviews, I often agreed with her). It was the influential NY Times critic Harold C. Schoenberg who said, ''Criticism is only informed opinion. I write a piece that is a personal reaction based, hopefully, on a lot of years of study, background, scholarship and whatever intuition I have. It's not a critic's job to be right or wrong; it's his job to express an opinion in readable English.''

Apologies to any non-English critics…

When I told my wife Elizabeth the title to this article, “Is there a critic in the house?” She thought I had asked “Is there a cricket in the house?” We laughed.

Yet, like a lone cricket chirping away in a quiet room, a critic in the house can be sort of annoying. Not for anyone in the audience during the actual performance, but for the performers who are informed of a critic’s presence beforehand or for a nervous producer wondering if the reviews will “pan” the show or lead to a run at the box office, the knowledge that a critic is going to chirp their thoughts after the show from an unseen location you can’t find, is very unnerving. A performer’s internal monologue can be hijacked with nerves or worry (the last time so-and-so heard me they hated/loved me) and I understand, from first-hand experience, how knowing a Tommasini is in the house can add a wee bit more sweat to my pits.

Broadway still relies on these reviews. A terrific show gets panned and it’ll close the next day, or soon thereafter. The influence of reviews on audiences and shows alike is well documented by anecdotes. I produced a very boring opera (in my opinion) that on opening night was lightly attended and politely applauded. Then this amazing review came out the next day, “run to see this show” (I’m paraphrasing) and we sold out the run. The performances got better as there was more feedback from the audience - laughter, riotous applause, standing ovations. David Hyde Pierce talks about how a bad review shut down a show (and even changed the audience reactions) in this interview: https://youtu.be/9jU8xcYrBcw?si=TE7bRxREjYGVBzzG (If you don’t want to go to the video… Basically, during previews the audiences were laughing hysterically, then came a terrible review after opening night and that next performance audiences sat in silence. The show closed two weeks later.)

So, these critics can wield a big trophy or an axe. For operas, I’ve been wondering for decades why music critics were sent to review operas and not theatre critics. I’ve asked around. Often I get the “but opera is about the singing” (no it’s not, that’s called a recital and even then, it’s about the singing and the pianist.) I’ve been told that some theatre critics are “tone deaf”, or not “educated enough” to apply their informed opinions to opera. Is opera that convoluted? Is opera so difficult to penetrate from a musical standpoint? Is opera singing so foreign that someone can’t judge it who might also judge musical theatre? I’d love for theatre critics to come and take a critical eye to the latest libretto being given a production, or have them turn their informed opinions to how the costume plot supported the director’s choices of movement, or any such thing that music critics seldom if ever even touch upon (let alone can see.) So why do music critics, adept at recital and/or concert repertoire, review the opera? 

Often in reviews, the conductors are ignored or hardly mentioned (“so-and-so kept things together”). I think it is because they aren’t on a podium. Just read any orchestral review and there are sometimes paragraphs about the gestures, how they communicated, how those things affected the music, and still to this day if it’s a women conductor, what they might have worn (can that stop please?!) Being down in the pit renders a conductor invisible and so, for many critics, this renders their informed opinion useless. For you see, I believe they don’t really know what’s going on down there unless they can see the arms and gestures of the conductors. 

But these critics CAN see what’s on the stage, so that gets reviewed. Costumes were colorful, or cheap looking, sets were spectacular or drab, singers acted well, were funny, overacted, or were histrionic. The lighting design seldom gets a mention (and lighting is the crucial component in opera because it affects everything, from the color palette of the costumes, makeup, hair and set painting down to whether a singer can see the conductor.) Directors, the ones actually responsible for putting all those visual elements together, often get ignored or barely mentioned (“moved the singers well”). Many times, singers get criticized for acting choices they did not make - hello, it was the director! As well, I’ve often seen poor reviews for a stage director while everyone performing got rave reviews - for their acting and movement! Again, it was probably a director responsible. 

Recently, a local critic in Montreal reviewed a student performance of an opera I produced (to be clear, I did not conduct it or direct it). It goes without saying that some critics simply can’t tell the difference between professional and student productions. In Montreal, my program once received a review that was unbelievably positive and even compared us to the multi-million dollar L’opéra de Montreal (as in, our show was just as good as anything recently on the OdM’s stage; first off, no it wasn’t and secondly why write that?!) We’ve also received a handful of terrible reviews, and many mixed reviews. But most reviews for students – either when mentioned too negatively, or not mentioned at all – can be detrimental and often hurtful to training young singers. It teaches them to be careful and to worry about what others might think of their choices just when we are trying to get them to try to make choices. 

We have a policy of not posting reviews - good or bad - because someone always - ALWAYS - either gets left out of the accolades, or a student gets targeted publicly for bad singing, either by name or by innuendo. This latest review (not gonna link it, not gonna quote it) was so problematic on so many levels. Pointing out who among the students gave wonderful performances is terrific. Thanks. But writing that some of the singers in smaller roles need to be given an honest talking to by their voice teachers (intimating that they’re not good enough to pursue a career in singing) stepped over a line. And it was an ignorant thing to write.

Why ignorant?

Because those of us who work with young singers (from undergraduates through young artists to even established emerging stars) know that THINGS CHANGE DYNAMICALLY from week to week, month to month, and year to year. 

I have worked with the biggest young talents and seen many of them falter. I have worked with questionable talent and seen them, often through sheer willpower, get to the Met. My roommate in my undergraduate school was told by many judgmental voice teachers (often at voice competitions) that if she kept singing that way, she’d ruin her voice. Many who knew her in her first few years might have discounted her talent. Certainly, this Montreal critic probably would have lumped her into needing an honest talk because her voice was not put together when she was first on the stage. But she learned to sing, applied a work ethic beyond her peers, and developed by being given opportunities to be on the operatic stage. You don’t just study and then assume the role of Tosca. It is a process.  I can’t tell you how thrilling it was to witness her Met debut standing on that stage taking her bow!

With all that said, I’m thinking I should ask some questions about criticism. 

Is criticism for criticism’s sake important to classical music? 

If so, why? When? How? At what point?

Has the time come to think of new ways of criticizing/reviewing?

I’d be interested in knowing others’ thoughts.

But before I leave this subject, I’d like to write about the real critics - the teachers, coaches, conductors, directors, gatekeepers (like artistic administrators, directors of programs, and adjudicators) - who are the most influential critics when it comes time to teach and prepare young singers for a career.

Why is it we can’t sit and enjoy a singer doing something that only a microscopic fraction of the world’s population attempts to do: tell a story in public, on a stage, with just their instrument, their body, in an art form that is beyond collaborative, without judging them at the same time? When I write “judging”, I mean observing what is not quite right, what needs work, or what is wrong.

Why take the parts of an opera singer’s performance apart in order to judge them better? 

Why not see the whole first, discuss that, then get down to details? 

Why start with what's not quite right?

How integral to training is constant, unceasing, glaring judgement? 

It’s totally cool to think “beautiful voice, but their top is tight” and another thing to tell the singer that they need to “fix their top”. Or to judge a lack of enough breath to get through a phrase and have that turn into a takedown of their entire support system. Or to see some tension in a jaw and think that what will help will be to tell them that their jaw is tight, so be less tight. 

Has anyone read “The Inner Game of Tennis”? Pointing out what’s wrong often causes it to continue or get worse. The mind is a huge part of being a performer and when the mind is filled with “don’ts” instead of tangible things to “do”, many do not perform optimally, and many do not get better technically because they’re singing to fix something.

Why fix singers? Why insist that teaching a singer is about working on their weaknesses?

How about focusing on their positive points? Those positive habits and talents are probably what got the singer into said program or cast. Focus on making the top notes that blossom in high mezzo rep consistently gorgeous. A tenor’s ability to sing long phrases without breaths can be turned into finding more repertoire to show that off. The lists are endless. Teaching is not just pointing out what the problems are. It should also be pointing out what the great things are.

Yes – everyone needs to work on stuff. That’s not my point. Continue the work, of course. But a sole concentration on what’s wrong will ignore what’s right and that part of a singer must also be nurtured!

But the same goes for what learning is! That notion is hard for young musicians to hear, let alone understand fully. I’ve oft been told that I should be “more critical” or that the coaching was “too positive” (that comment was fun, because I was digging into details and I thought I’d been too hard on them!). Singers especially confuse learning and good teaching with needing to be in a room with someone who is going to fix them, someone who will turn them into a real artist, someone who will make them better, some magical being who will yada yada yada.

Yes, we need critical thinking. Yes, we need objective criticism. Yes, we need to be judgmental when it comes to picking a winner or a Fiordiligi. Yes, all of us musicians need our critical minds at play, 90% of the time. It’s about balance. Learning to turn off the inner critic so that the instinctive performer has a chance to dance on the stage without fear.

A final parting idea:

Today’s opera world does not need a local critic telling audiences to shut up and behave because their cheering was disturbing the Heilige Kunst present in the Hallowed Halls of Opera. That’s just Victorian colonialism and classicism turned into pretentious bullshit. We don’t need that in today’s worrisome climate of dying audiences and low ticket sales. The last thing we need is to ostracize today’s new opera going audiences who already might feel uncomfortable in these strange spaces (what to wear, when to clap, etc.). 

How lucky and wondrous was it to have a big audience yelling and whistling and being boisterous at a comic opera telling the story of Cinderella to the (to-my-ears) mostly boring Massenet score (I can tolerate only so many diminished chords going nowhere)? 

The time to sit in silence is over. If one needs abject obeisance for the classical clergy to worship a dead composer, I’d suggest investing in a home entertainment system. 

But don’t take the joy from the onstage performers and don’t judge others for enjoying themselves and sharing that emotion with others.

(And that goes for those of us responsible for the care and nurturing of young singers!)

Auditions (2023 version)

2023 VERSION!

Well, it's been a ride. The Pre-Covid days are long gone. Covid shutdowns came and went (fingers crossed) but a few things from that pivot have stuck: namely video audition submissions. But In-Person Auditions are back and going strong again so I thought I'd edit my regular auditions blog for 2023.  

Here it is:

It's that time of year, a time that ramps up the anxiety and stress levels for many young singers:

Audition application and audition season has commenced!

All around North America, singers in undergraduate and graduate programs are finishing up their auditions for their schools' opera programs, hoping to get cast in a production, scenes program or opera classes. In addition, those singers who want to move beyond the pay-to-sing programs are feeling the avalanche of deadlines fast Glimmerglass, Merola, Canadian Opera Company, Santa Fe, Central City, etc. with their requisite YAP tracker accounts spouting reminders and checklists. As for the singers fresh out of school, the desperation factor starts to creep into place -- will this be my last audition season? What happens if I don't get any auditions? How am I going to pay for all the application fees, travel and hotel expenses?

Life was simpler ten to fifteen years ago. Really.

Time was when deadlines for summer programs were mid to late October (imagine!), not end of August. There's a huge difference between the two, especially for singers just starting a new grad program and/or starting in studying with a new teacher in a new city.

And yet, every year I get requests for recommendation letters as well as requests for "what should I sing for my 5 arias" from students I barely know.

I've often thought that first year masters students shouldn't try to do summer program auditions during their initial semester at a new school with new coaches and teachers. Maybe a better idea would be to FOCUS ON THAT FIRST SEMESTER. Work on technical issues, get the hard courses out of the way, get to know the city in a casual fashion, make friends, hear symphony concerts, etc.  These are things one can't really do while preparing an audition packet (especially if there are new arias in it) or flying in and out to take summer program auditions from October to December.  I know everyone feels rushed to be a success, but there are lots and lots of singers who make it without pushing themselves onto such a fast track.

Perhaps an even better idea might be to either take the summer "off" from singing, get a job or an internship, maybe focus on reading literature or researching new arias, visit museums, take in outdoor events/plays/symphonies, visit the Glimmerglasses of North America to see what the level actually is out there. Travel and explore!

But I don't think anyone will listen to my sage advice, so I'll put down my thoughts on AUDITIONS that I post most every fall, albeit with some modifications for 2023.

TEN THOUGHTS ON AUDITIONS:

1) A successful audition is a complicated thing. It has more to do with the day, who/what the panel is looking for and why, the needs of a given season, whether the panel's blood sugar is normal, if their attention span is fixed or waning, and/or their personal taste in practically everything. In short, little to do with the singer's talent. The sooner one accepts this, the better. It helps to remove the JUDGEMENT happening constantly inside one's mind.

2) Attitude counts for a lot. How a singer walks in the door, how they communicate with the panel and the pianist, the body language signals before singing, between arias, and at the close of the audition. It is vital that a singer present themselves in a heightened (I don't want to say exaggerated) version of whoever they want to "be" at an audition. You can't just quietly enter a room, whisper your aria to the panel, sing like Renee, exit like a mouse and expect that your Renee-esque tones will win the day.  Most auditions nowadays take into account personalities and how a singer might fit in to a group of other singers. If there is a worry about confidence in how a singer presents themselves (and I mean their "self" as opposed to presenting a character from an opera), then there can easily be a worry about how that singer might function in a group of drama-filled opera singers all living and eating together for 6 to 12 weeks.

3) The panel has no imagination. Okay, maybe they have a little. But mostly, not much. This means the singer's imagination needs to come into play in a big, big way. You need to know who you are singing to and why you need to sing to them. You need to know if it's day or night, inside or outside, in a furnished room or a courtyard. Are there other people in the scene that the aria takes place in? You simply can not just stand there and make pretty tones. Not any more, my friends. There must be a strong connection to the text, a huge musical mind at work making decisions and taking stands in multiple areas (ornamentation is just one example.) And if someone is telling you that it's the voice, and only the voice, that'll get you into a young artist program, then they are telling you what we all want to believe is true, but actually isn't true. An opera singer has always been, and will always be, a human being who acts with their voice. So work on the human being part, the acting part, as well as the singing part. Work on it before the audition. You can't think for a moment that your gestures will just appear and make sense, or that fixating on the wall behind the panel will make anyone in the room think you're an operatic Viola Davis or Robert Downey, Jr. They work on their characters before the camera shoots, and so should you. Actors live in a broad, imaginative world, and so should you.

4) What you wear is less important nowadays. Pants on a soprano? Fine. Jeans on a tenor? Fine. Culottes on a bass? Fine. Glasses? If you need them absolutely! Formal dress or tux? Perhaps think that one over... Think about how you'll define yourself as a human being to a set of strangers who may never have met you. Define yourself boldly in order to make an impression -- do everything you can to not look like all those other people in the lobby waiting to sing. Color is important, absolutely. So is bling. Remember, the panel is made up of human beings who have been looking at hundreds of singers. It's impossible to remember everyone, particularly if twelve baritones all singing Malatesta's aria show up in a dark navy suit, with polished shoes, a blue shirt and variable ties to match. If your repertoire doesn't separate you from the pack, then your acting and singing skills need to come into play along with the rest of your "package" - which includes what you look like when you walk in the door. And if anyone tells you not to wear a dress above the knee, or to make sure you're wearing a tie, smile and ignore their advice. North Americans are WAY too uptight about how someone dresses for an opera audition and it's finally, finally changing with the younger generation of leaders. The Europeans got this totally right years ago: jeans, a smart shirt, maybe a leather jacket, and cool sneakers are all it takes for most auditions over there.

5) This is YOUR time slot. Use it, invest in the moment and enjoy sharing your talents. A ten-minute audition slot is not the time to fix your technique, make dramatic discoveries, or improvise some ornaments for your Rameau aria. The audition is about YOU. Share yourself, how you are at the PRESENT moment - not how you might be five years from now. If you have someone telling you you'll be the next great Tosca, well how lovely, but don't go taking "Vissi d'arte" around to auditions if you're some young 20ish soprano who really should be singing "V'adoro pupile". Sing the lightest literature possible. Take a step back, fach-wise; especially if you're being cast in school productions in heavier, or even, dramatic roles. This happens a lot -- getting confused over "what" you are because at your school you have the biggest voice, so you get cast as the Countess or Fiordiligi, but you really are a Susanna or Despina out there in the real world. For mezzo's, it's even trickier. Of course you're not a character mezzo, you're a high lyric soprano who just hasn't figured out her top, but you get cast as Miss Pinkerton instead of Laetitia... And then there are the tenors needing to walk around as lyric baritones while their voices evolve... Just be who you are. Every audition is only a snapshot of the singer you are at that moment, and this changes so quickly and dramatically. Be flexible in your early 20s. You don't have to present your future-illustrious-international career's best five arias during the fall of your senior year at college to an AGMA apprenticeship program. But you do have to present some version of YOURSELF, and be confident about it regardless of the fact that the arias might just be stepping stones to other arias in later years.

6) Prepare 5 to 15 arias for the audition season. Come on. Learn more than 5 arias. People who are pursuing other careers in the arts (just think about the hundreds of songs your musical theatre singer counter-parts have in their current rep!) make it a vital part of their training to learn AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE about their chosen fields. Walk into an audition and present the required 3-5 arias you had to put down in YAPTracker but then have a rep sheet with those plus "Additional Arias". It is a terrible, terrible thing that young singers - and the people who teach, train, and hire them - think that learning an aria should take months and months OR that having more than five arias running around your head is somehow difficult or confusing to both singer and panel. My thoughts on these arias? 

    1) Two contrasting baroque arias (one fast, one slow) 

    2) Two contrasting Mozart arias (either tempo or dramatic situation) 

    3) One aria by Rossini, Bellini, or Donizetti (or a composer like them) 

    4) A German, Czech, Russian, Polish, or Spanish aria of some sort 

    5) An aria from a verismo opera 

    6) An aria in French (either baroque or 19th century)

    7) Two contrasting 20th century arias 

    8) Two contrasting musical theatre arias (literally tens of thousands to choose from!)

    9) An aria from G&S or Offenbach or Lehar or Strauss, Jr.

    10) An aria from an opera written since 2000, preferably by a woman and/or a BIPOC composer!

For those who were counting, that's 14 musical pieces. If most are about 4 minutes long, then we're talking about an hour's worth of repertoire. Make a commitment to learn literature, to explore beyond the Anthologies and canonic composers. The above 10 categories can easily fill the needed "5" for any young artist program and then you'll have extra arias to have wiggle room if you need to vary one or two, or offer a piece of musical theatre, or add a couple extra arias that represent a company's upcoming season. But if you walk around with barely 5, you are limiting your opportunities. I know singers who can learn an aria in a day, and rather well. How long does it really take to learn an aria? If you don't learn quickly, figure out how. Then use every coaching, every masterclass opportunity, every studio class opportunity (heck, sing for friends!) to role out these pieces and get feedback. A 2023 update: If you aren't someone who thinks they should audition with baroque arias, or have problems with bel canto or verismo rep, that's okay. Eliminate those categories. If you have strengths like contemporary music or musical theatre, then perhaps augment those categories with a few more choices. If you believe that opera rep needs to be more diverse, then make sure your own audition rep is diverse. This is not a prescriptive "rule", it's a nudge to go out there and learn more repertoire!

7) Don't wear an all black anything to an audition. 2023 update: This really is my only non-negotiable piece of advice, and particular to me (so go ahead and ignore it if you look wonderful in all black). There was one audition season at Glimmerglass when we saw over a dozen sopranos in one day wearing a black dress with a set of pearls. It was impossible to keep them straight.

8) Keep an audition journal. Go crazy -- keep a journal everyday. Write down how the audition went, later write down if you got the contract or not, or any kind of feedback given. Describe the venue's acoustic or the pianists' abilities. A journal can really be a wonderful thing!

9) Figure out how to breathe in stressful situations. One of the first things that can evaporate in an audition is the BREATH. Getting it past your collarbone, for instance, can sometimes be a challenge during an important audition. Work on breathing outside of an audition. Ask your voice teacher about the breath. Their answers might surprise you. Seek out places to practice breathing: swimming pools, yoga, mediation, hiking up steep inclines, walking... Before your audition, have a breathing plan. Make space and time to center yourself outside of the room with your breath. Breathe in the audition room, too! Breathe between arias. Breathe!

10) Try, as best as you can, to not place too much importance on any audition. Even at the Met finals, if you listen to what many of the winners say, they'll talk about how they tried to make it "just" another opportunity to sing. If you walk into a room thinking that your whole future career (and therefore life) depends on the outcome, you are setting yourself up for failure. How about a "I don't care what you think" attitude? If you're walking into an audition believing that what the panel thinks of you is more important than what you think of yourself, then you should turn around and walk away.

A Bonus Thought: Remember that what you do -- singing opera -- is something quite special. It's something that billions of other human beings on this planet can not do. It's a crazy, joyous thing to put yourself into the head-space of an 18th century peasant or a Greek God or a famous character from Shakespeare. Who gets to do that and try to make a living at it? It's a transcendental experience to channel the genius of a Mozart, Rossini, Stravinsky, or Saariaho. While you sing their music, they live again. Their minds come alive once more from beyond the grave through your vocal cords, face, and body. Most people can't even imagine what that must be like!  So live it! Do it!

And learn an aria or two...

Best of luck to all of you out there!

Updated: Fantastic OPERA Beasts, and Where to Find Them!

 Updated from my original 2016 post.

“I solemnly swear I am up to no good!”

I read those words over a decade ago and loved them, for it sounded like my personal mantra that I’d been secretly saying to myself my entire life!

The title of this blog is “Fantastic Opera Beasts and Where To Find Them” inspired by the film Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them.

The latest, and let it be said the most adult, evolution of the Wizarding World by author J. K. Rowling, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them hit the movie screens years ago. I took my family to see it and was yet again amazed and surprised by the film’s imaginative span and Rowling’s seemingly endless ability to morph, create, recreate, and exponentially expand the Harry Potter Universe.

If you are one of those who have not read the books, or seen the films, then perhaps this blog isn’t going to make much sense. I’ll try to refrain from getting too nerdy, but apologies ahead of time. If you want to skip down into the REAL blog about singing and magic, it’s about eight paragraphs further. (I’ve put asterisks and bolded the header so you can skip quickly to it!)

Rowling’s books, her play (the international hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child), the billion-dollar Potter film series, and now this new series of films, attest to her ability to roll out big stories peopled with wizards, magical creatures, elves, goblins, muggles, nomajs (the American version of muggles), giants and a hippogriff or two all interacting on multiple levels of narrative story, allegory, and deeply emotional and political themes. Fantastic Beasts… is probably the most obvious of all of her output when it comes to the creation of an allegory that is very focused on real human history. Her output as a creative force is operatic on many fronts.

Opera, the genre, is vast and huge; very much like Rowling’s universe. Actually, opera is bigger, by far, than the Wizarding World because the repertoire spans over 400 years, and it’s written and sung in practically every language known to Earth (and beyond, we have operas in Klingon and in languages from Middle-Earth). Opera is very dense and complex, particularly in the information that’s passed from the stage to the audience via the singers, the designers, and everyone else involved in a production. If a song could be said to be written in a few gigabytes, a song cycle would be a dozen gigabytes, symphonies would be hundreds of gigabytes. But operas are written in terrabytes. Hundreds of terrabytes comprise Wagner’s Ring Cycle alone. If you don’t know about TBs, it’s a huge, HUGE amount of data. 

It is not possible to simply sit down and take in everything that is an opera in one exposure. However, the thing that makes opera magical is that one CAN sit down and get so very much in one sitting, and that information is so very different from human to human. Each and every person who watches any opera walks away with a different experience. If one goes to a great opera like La bohéme and sits with 3,000 others, each will have a different experience, a different take. Each of the players in the orchestra and the singers onstage will also have a different and unique experience. No opera is ever, ever, ever the same from night to night. The variations are boundless. Like going to a Michelin-starred restaurant named La Boheme, you’re sure to get a fantastic meal, but the ingredients in each of those same dishes is absolutely different than the night before and the chefs putting the meals together are oftentimes different humans night to night. Not to mention the wine choices affecting the food tastes, where you’re sat, the others in the dining room, etc. Opera proves the point that we are all interconnected in a vast array of brilliant shining lights.

J.K. Rowling gets that idea, and gets it in spades. Fantastic Beasts… is no exception. And it started me thinking.

My first thought went to another English creative force: Benjamin Britten. His output was riddled (yes, riddled) with works about the Outsider. Peter Grimes, Albert Herring, Owen Wingrave, Death in Venice, to name the obvious examples, are operas where society and the audience peer into the life of a man who is not like the rest of the other characters. Again, connections to Britten’s personal life as being a closeted gay man in Great Britain who was able to move around in society quite easily — even with his secret being common knowledge as it was never spoken about in what was called “polite society” — come to mind. Britten was an outsider living in the midst of a society that chose to not see the real him, or his inner secret. An outsider composing operas about outsiders that became wildly popular with audiences, even more so since his death.

Rowling’s Outsider is the wizard Newt Scamander. He arrives by sea to the United States in 1926 via Ellis Island with just his suitcase, seemingly yet another immigrant trying to follow the American dream. He is befriended, in what is clearly the lower east side of Manhattan, by three characters: Tina and Queenie Goldstein, magical sisters, and a baker, Jacob Kowalski. Connecting Newt to these three very specific types of characters in a story that is all about the magical community trying to hide itself from the rest of the “non-magics” (nomajs) seems to me to be a clear nod at what was going on in parts of Europe and in America during this time of terrible anti-semitism and the rise of fascism throughout the world. Jews started to hide the fact that they were Jews (not something new, by any means — just read up on what Mahler went through in his life) in order to move freely throughout society, academia, and business. A few years later, as the world seems to regularly forget, Jews’ very lives were at stake and millions killed. In the 1920s and 1930s, the danger was very real, at least to those who were aware and who could clearly see and understand the political rhetoric.

There are many evils in this new movie. The biggest threat is the unseen Grindelwald, the wizarding world’s Hitler. Grindelwald’s M.O. is that he believes the laws keeping Nomajs and wizards apart keeps the magical community from becoming the dominant power in the world. He dreams of a wizarding war (set to take place during the WW2 years) that will finally allow wizards to rule the world. But the movie plot actually entails trying to defeat a more devastating evil. It is an evil that can destroy cities and kill children: Child Wizards Repressing Their Magic.

Really? Repression as a destructive force? YES.

So — when a magical child tries to hide and/or repress their natural abilities, their magical talent, their literal magic, a horrible thing occurs: an “Obscurus” forms. This is a magical parasite that develops over time; basically if one doesn’t perform spells, the magic turns inwards and eats the child-wizard, turning them into a huge destructive black mass/cloud that rips apart streets and skyscrapers alike. Once this happens, the child dies (the film says usually by the age of 10). How terrifying! It is up to the Hogwarts' educated hero, Newt, and his band of three friends, to save New York City’s lower east side. They do that, as well as exposing who Grindelwald is pretending to be.

**Okay, so how does all of this relate to singing?**

I have believed for many decades that singers are magical. Let’s face it, all musicians are. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that we are the only special people on the globe — far from it. In fact, I think there are many different types of wizarding communities among us: poets, architects, software designers, composers, mothers; basically anyone who creates.

Singers are a special community of musical wizards. We even train singers and musicians at special schools with specialists who teach and coach using enchantments, craft, potions, divination, and other magical arts. (I even teach at a school that some think actually looks like Hogwarts!) To get into these special schools, your talent must be evaluated in a mystical gathering called an “audition” by a coven of like-minded creatures who invite or deny entrance. Our mystical ancient maestros wave their magical batons into space and music happens out of thin air. We look into ancient books and read/speak an ancient language that most non-musicians (our version of Muggles) can sometimes only recognize as “music," but actually have no idea what the secrets inherent in those scores actually are, or how to read them, let alone realize them. Some of us are born into musical families, but many are also born into Muggle families who have no idea what makes us so darn strange and amazing. 

To perform an operatic score requires a great deal of this specialized, magical training but an even greater amount of actual magic is required.

Just to sing, to phonate pitches and then control their duration, dynamics, shape, and color, is a magical spell that first requires one’s imagination. We imagine the notes and our brains somehow — and this really still is a mystery — create sounds that get organized by our throats, lungs, tongues, and lips into poetry that is carried out into the world via simple vibrations. Where before there is only silence, after a musician magics the air with their imaginative intentions, there is music. 

They do this with the most invisible of elemental forces: AIR. Breathe in silence, breathe out Mozart. This is an amazing thing that way too few singers admit, let alone realize.  We acknowledge far too often that other creative artists seem special in their own abilities — from creating sculptures out of dirt to building virtual dreamscapes out of binary electrical exchanges — but seldom really think to ourselves how special we are.

But Rowling also gives us a warning about thinking we are the only kind of special. This idea of thinking you are especially special can turn an ego to the dark side; the Trumpsters call people like us elitists due to our extensive educations. Well, we are, in a certain sense, elitist. However, there is a danger when an elitist mistakes Elitism for Puritanism. In classical music we have many different types of Puritans, or purists as we actually call them. I liken purists on the far right and far left to the followers of Voldemort - his DeathEaters - in Rowling’s world. They see their versions of the world in black and white, in right and wrong, in oppressors and the oppressed. There is no room for imagination, for innovation, for change, or for freedom to express new ideas or old ideas. Only the political decisions of a few, or the words written in someone’s holy scripture, or the ideas of a demagogue, are important. The individual dies in order to make sure that the purebloods, or today’s puritanical evangelicals or the purely politically correct, have their say in who is or is not allowed to think, to believe, or to express themselves freely. 

Our recent destructive history teaches us this — the McCarthy years, the tragedies of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the nightmare of the Stalinist regime. All three political ideologies sought to control culture by defining what it was and what it wasn’t. Millions died, thousands of lives were ruined, careers were destroyed and lost. Yet these nightmares came about not from evil, but from an attempt to make things safe for the People, to make everyone more comfortable and to create a more cohesive society where everyone would live in greater peace and prosperity. Sound familiar?

Musicians run into these puritans from time to time. The passionate musicologists, the early music specialists, the editors of critical editions, the connoisseurs of old opera recordings, the critics either holding to an older aesthetic against updates or to younger critics shocked to find that opera contains historical elements of sexism and racism. Opera is an art form that is big enough to accommodate many different opinions. But it is not an art form that works in, or under, any ideology that tries to repress artistic ideas. Let’s hold a seance and ask Shostakovich his thoughts on this subject, shall we? 

We shouldn’t hide ourselves from those who don’t get us. We need to engage everyone and anyone who’ll listen. Otherwise, our bubble shrinks and we’re left with no audience at all — magical or muggle.

Opera lives not just for us specialists and lovers of opera, but also for the casual listener, the regular opera-goer, or the film director who needs to give an Evil-British-Spy something to listen to while he drives his Porsche to go kill some innocent, good-looking person.

During the training of these magical singers, there is now a risk involved. That risk is to be too safe, i.e. to not actualize their individual “noise” (as I call the sound one makes while singing) for fear that that “noise” might be too unique, perhaps a bit ugly, or out of tune, or a bit out of control. 

To not be safe seems crazy. Crazy. I remember thinking that the teachers at Hogwarts were insane to just expect the first years to know how to do things, but especially none of them seemed to anticipate injuries. From the first flying lesson on their brooms to Hagrid’s putting Harry on the Hippogriff (what was he thinking?!) these teachers dared to allow their students to experience the magic firsthand, regardless of the outcome. Seamus, in the book series, kept blowing things up with his wand during his initial attempts at spells. Harry freely admitted he’s not a great wizard, he’s just lucky (plus he had great instincts and trusted those instincts throughout all seven books). Young singers need to make contact with the magic firsthand as well. They need to be allowed to blow sounds up, turn the bird purple instead of red, say the spell backwards and in the wrong order, put the wrong type of eye of newt into a potion, but especially they need to learn to trust their instincts and be courageous. Seldom do the children at Hogwarts die in the classrooms (that’s a whole other topic…), and as I am fond of saying, opera seldom kills those who study it!

Fantastic Beasts… shows all of us in the magical/musical community the danger of repressing our talents. Trying to hide our sound, our ideas, our creative forces can result in an obscuring state, which eventually implodes into a destructive monster, both within and without. Failure certainly occurs if we obscure our talents by not sharing them, if we obscure our ideas by worrying whether they will be deemed acceptable by others. If we repress our literal voices in order to make safe sounds, or sing correctly, or make artistic choices based on the notion of non-offence or choices that are denying the truth of the piece, we risk destroying ourselves. We risk destroying the art itself. The magic dies.

How is Music Magic? Music stops time, moves it forward and backwards. The sound of music, of voices joined together, can incite violence or passionate love, it can nurture the minds of babies, calm a lost soul, ease the pain of someone’s grief, wipe away the anxiety of tomorrow — at least for a brief time while the spell lasts.  Music can heal; science is proving this right now. Music vibrates on the quantum level, in the music of the spheres, and can exist in our brains alone. Right now, I’m hearing strains of Mozart’s great Die Zauberflöte wafting around in my head. Is it real? Yes, it’s happening in my head (Dumbledore taught us this truth at King’s Cross Station in one of my favorite moments from “Deathly Hallows”). 

Opera is an art form that needs all the other arts in order to create it. It needs an audience of wizards and muggles. But mostly, it demands a vast imagination from all those involved.

And that is the biggest danger of all, as humans can imagine heaven and hell equally well.  

Therefore, let’s all be careful, let’s watch out for each other, courageously stand up for ideas and freedoms. To defend yourself, and others, against the Dark Arts first takes the wisdom to perceive the difference between truths and lies. As the year of 2022 ends, all of us must redouble our efforts in order to seek actual truth and look past the hashtags and the 140 character social media postings. Life is beyond complicated and no issue is black or white. Those who think otherwise are dabbling in the Dark Arts and us musical magicians need to arm ourselves. But more importantly, we need to seek each other out in order to join forces.

For Fantastic Beasts… also shows that the 1920s wizarding world sat upon a precipice: whether to hide themselves further, go to war, deny their magic, or figure out a different path forward. If only our current world knew which choice might win out in the coming decade. 

Who will be our magical leaders in the years to come? Who will help our musical wizarding community navigate the treacherous waters rising around us? Is Grindelwald hiding in our midst? These new voices making themselves heard, are they misguided Muggles sensing that our art is old-fashioned, wrong, or boring simply because they don’t understand it? Will new audiences walk into our theatres and be able to see beyond the superficialities of opera and truly listen with their eyes and see with their ears? (Yes, you read that one right.) 

Or maybe there’s a new generation of magical musicians waiting to step forward to help divine a new and better future for all that includes every part of our exceptionally strange operatic Art? Opera has dangerous, wonderful and truly magical spells that allow us to think deeper than we’d like, feel stronger than we knew possible, love the strange and familiar, question our very nature, but especially allow us to recognize the humanity that lives in each and every one of us. I know there are many Newts out there, and hope that they open up their suitcases pretty soon.

Mischief Managed.

Don Giovanni: The Monster

    Mozart's score for "Don Giovanni" is arguably his most sophisticated, emotional, and forward-looking opera. There are moments of such Germanic emotionalism underscored by his wonderful canvas of chromaticism and Sturm und Drang elements that foreshadow Beethoven, von Weber, Bellini, Berlioz, Verdi, and of course, Wagner. Da Ponte's libretto is also one of his best, mixing dark drama with many moments of giocoso (playfulness). Mozart even labeled it a dramma giocoso when it premiered in Prague at the National Theatre of Bohemia in 1787 (later entering it into his catalogue as an opera buffa.) The blending of comedy, melodrama, and supernatural elements is also a forerunner of the 19th century Gothic fiction by Mary Shelley, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Dickens, and Bram Stoker.

    But it has a problem, a big problem.

    For most of its life as a performed opera for the public, audiences have historically been entertained by the story of Don Giovanni, loosely based on the myth of Don Juan as well as the real-life Casanova, as a simple tale of the rake-seducer of women who ends up being punished for his libertine life by being taken directly down to Hell by the supernatural figure of the Stone Guest who he has invited to dinner and who enters in during the act two finale with some of the most famous music ever written. Many women who are patrons and opera lovers of a certain age have told me that they find the idea of a grand seducer quite a positive figure to love/hate onstage. For others, they wonder why the show is done anymore. 

    Why? Because Don Giovanni seduces women, sleeps with them, and then dumps them so that he can find a new lover. This was a libertine notion, and certainly not foreign to the Europeans who first saw the opera as it spread across the world and gained in popularity. According to Giovanni's servant, Leporello, he has done this not just hundreds of times, but over a thousand times; all over Europe. Reading a translation of Leporello's aria "Madamina..." is like reading a horror story of tricked women, many of whom were most likely taken against their will or at least slept with him under false pretensions (promises of marriage in particular). The loss of a woman's honor was a huge, massive and often completely devastating loss to her and her family.

    So why was it such a popular opera, given that the first thing that happens is a chase scene where Giovanni's latest conquest is following him out of her house late at night as he is fleeing masked? This is a scene that has, over the recent years especially, become quite complicated to stage. Did Anna ask him up? Did he break in to force himself on her? What happened right before the opera's curtain goes up? There's nothing in the libretto, only later do we get Anna's story where she tells her fiancé that a man she did not know appeared in her room, tried to force himself on her, and then finally tried to get away because she was screaming. We also meet one of his spurned women, Donna Elvira, who has chased him to Seville to either exact revenge, or plead with him to renounce his life and return to her. During the course of the opera we witness another seduction, that of the peasant (and recently married) Zerlina whom he later attacks in his castle. In act two, Giovanni sings a serenade under a window in order to get a woman to let him in. Is this his modus operandi? Serenade women with a mandolin and then take their virginity? And how is that anything to applaud or think might be something to turn into a beautiful moment onstage? Giovanni himself talks about how wonderful a night he's had "hunting young girls".

    Giovanni is a monster.

    So as the stage director for a "Giovanni" production, what am I to do with not just his character, but the whole piece? The music is too fantastic to jettison this opera from the repertoire but the subject matter is way too traumatic to put on the stage, especially with students who are very aware of #MeToo, the PTSD involved in sexual harassment and assault, let alone the trauma of presenting this onstage to others.

    So I've taken Giovanni the monster and made him an actual monster in my production, one who lives in a completely fictional world of vampires.

    This idea came to me ten years ago when I was mounting a semi-staged production at McGill. I explored the idea, it was somewhat successful, and then I put it away. However, once we decided to produce it again at McGill, it was clear I needed to address the issues that made the piece untenable to many of my students. 

    If one looks at the libretto, one finds a large number of references to blood. Anna sees the pool of blood around her murdered father, the Commendatore. Anna demands of her fiancé that they kill the offender and make his blood flow. Elvira shows up demanding vengeance of a kind that can only happen by Giovanni being killed. Giovanni talks about hunting young women. Leporello talks about a "flush of blood" during the act two finale. 

    And what is this assault Giovanni makes? It is to murder a woman's honor, something so awful for so many centuries, that a part of their self dies too. During the Gothic era, when vampire tales became extremely popular, it was clear that the metaphor for a vampire being invited into the house by his victims, biting and sucking their blood in the bedroom, and then flying away as a bat or running away as a wolf into the night, was mostly about sex. Vampires have been sexualized ever since they changed from the eastern European nosferatu monster who lives in cemeteries into a dapper, sexy, gentlemanly Count Draculas who seduce women and then kills them. This sexy vampire character is now all over present-day media, books, film, and tv - from Anne Rice's "Interview with a Vampire" to those many angsty-teenage stories of High School heartthrob vampires found all over the world.

    It then transforms the piece to remove the sexual assault and replace it with actual assault where a literal, supernatural predator is out there hunting women to kill them. It makes clear that everything Giovanni is doing is terrible and monstrous. There is no room for "oh, but his serenade in Act Two is so melodic and lovely" because he's under that window trying to get a woman to invite him in so he can kill her.

    In order to adjust the opera for this concept, I have placed it in the Victorian, Gothic period of the 1880s in Bohemia so that the supernatural elements can seem more at home. Giovanni lives in an abandoned castle falling apart next to a grave yard. Donna Elvira is a 19th century Buffy-the-vampire-slayer who arrives in town hunting Giovanni, loaded with weapons to kill him. She shows up with a crossbow, a bag of stakes, a crucifix, garlic, holy water, a knife, and a pistol with lots of silver bullets. She is here to kill him. The Commendatore dies not by a sword fight, but by shooting five bullets into Giovanni's body as he walks toward him, unaffected, and them is attacked in the classic vampire way - he is drained of blood and dies. For me, the move into the fictional world of the vampire works quite well for this particular character since he shows up as the invited Stone Guest - a supernatural figure. In the world of a vampire, if you are bitten you might end up UnDead. So the Commendatore's reappearance at the end of the opera is just another vampire seeking revenge on his maker.

    There are many other implications with this concept. One of the biggest is how I treat the serenade at the top of Act Two. No longer is it "cringy" watching a potential rapist try to get invited in while we all listen to this gorgeous serenade sung by a lovely baritone. I show it now as part of his supernatural powers. Vampires were known to be able to hypnotize, so I show another woman (the owner of a tavern next to the other building) coming under Giovanni's "spell" (his voice), and being pulled toward him against her will. We clearly understand he is there to kill, and so he does; just as the accompaniment to his serenade ends he attacks her and she dies. Will there be applause after that aria I wonder? Should there ever be applause after that aria when one thinks about its implications?

    Other transformations: Instead of a big feast of food at a table in the act two finale, we see dead bodies lying around as servants bring in peasants for Giovanni to feast on. He drinks their blood and even talks about what great wine he is being served. We see his voracious appetite for death on display as happy orchestral music is played from various operas known to audiences at the time. But perhaps the biggest change for a character in this concept is Leporello.

    How complicit is Leporello in the original libretto? Is he forced to do his master's bidding? There are a few times when it is clear that Leporello tries to emulate his master's behaviour (resulting in getting slapped at Zerlina's wedding by one of her friends). He so often starts a scene by saying he's going to leave his master because he is fed up with his life and his master's morals. Yet he doesn't. He is strangely tied to Giovanni. In my vampire-Giovanni world, Leporello is a Renfield type of character who is caught under the vampire's spell.

    I'm not sure if this concept answers other questions about the morals of the piece when seen through a 2022 lens, but it has been an interesting one to explore with the designers and the student cast members.

    As well, I hope that our audiences enjoy the choices of our music director, Stephen Hargreaves, who has led the students to create the most highly ornamented Don Giovanni I've ever been a part of.

    And remember -- vampires aren't real.

 

Paths of Sewanee

Written the morning of July 17, 2021 at the Blue Chair Cafe, Sewanee Tennessee

Paths of Sewanee

The clouds roll by as I step out for a morning walk in Sewanee.

Sleek shiny black skinks greet my bleary eyes as the bird song awakens my ears to their frenzy.

The morning sun waking me hours after waking the birds thrilled to meet another day.

Eating handfuls of wild raspberries growing by the haunted graveyard, crossing the path of Mr. Grumpy Turtle and a nervous, twitching little rabbit; I walk.

From deeper in the wood, movement happens and just as we exchange looks, a young fawn leaps away.

But mostly, and because they permeate Sewanee, it's the trees that silently make their presence known. 

The oaks courageously standing watch over the woods.

The exhalation of the forest spreads a kind of delicious, sweet air that I take in with every other step.

Breathing in the trees.

An exchange of sorts between their ancient wisdom and my ancient knees.

Paths open and close.

Drizzle.

Rain.

The heat of the sun.

All blend together morning after morning.

Then another music starts up, joining the bemused bird choruses of cardinal clicks, chick-a-dee-dee-dees; as the locusts' gnarly sounds rise to join the crickets: Another exchange begins, another complex interplay for the day as a lone tuba warms up on a bench outside, exploring their own paths of sound.

Another kind of sharing.

The singers start their warmups inside stone walls as a meadow of pianists fly across their keyboards in whirls of scales. 

The conductors wave their magic wands of birch in front of eager young magicians creating sounds from air, from metal, from wood, from horsehair.

A magic permeates Sewanee.

Courageous young musicians exploring their own unique paths via our many musical tour guides;

Following the maps of trails created by composers - some from long ago, some forgotten in time, some emerging as saplings from their own thousands of forests strewn across the world.

Music.

From under a canopy of green, vistas open before us - of majestic valleys and skies;

From under a canopy of symphonies and arias, real and imagined vistas open before us - visions created from sound that stir the soul.

And more steps are taken, magical and musical.

And more of the forest unfolds along these paths in Sewanee, visited by echoes of Beethoven, Verdi, and Williams; 

Echoing down into Abbo's Alley where children still dance to the music of the trees.

Listen.