[Dixielandjazz] The Importance of Visual Presentation in Music

[Steve Barbone]

We've had prior threads about the importance of the visual presentation when
performing music. Below is an article (excerpted because it is very long)
about what is occurring in the Operatic World these days. How they are
re-inventing their presentations . . . and why.

IMO, we have the same problems in Jazz, and those of us who perform would be
well advised to learn how to engage the audience. We, like Opera, have to
make the music believable from a visual perspective when performing live.

Like it or not, times have changed. (love that 1st paragraph) <grin>

Cheers,
Steve Barbone  

NY TIMES - September 9, 2007 - By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

Operatic Acting? Oxymoron No More
 
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD

THE tenor lifts sausage arms skyward, ignoring the soprano as he ardently
professes his love to the grand tier. She looks on with a distracted smile,
the slight tension in her eyes suggesting not swelling emotion but
determination to nail the top note a few bars away. Note secured, applause
graciously accepted, her fatal swoon has all the pliant delicacy of a
redwood succumbing to a chain saw.

Bad opera acting of cliché can certainly still be found in some outposts of
the opera world, even betimes in New York. But most regular opera goers
would probably agree that standards have been rising impressively in recent
years. In the world¹s major houses, first-rate singing is more often
accompanied by nuanced, emotionally textured performances, bringing the art
form closer to its ideal as a seamless blend of drama and music.

A confluence of various circumstances is helping to raise the bar across the
opera world: an influx of dedicated directors, often drawn from the theater
world; the audience¹s more direct engagement with narrative, brought about
by the advent of titles; and the gifts of new generations of performers. The
park-and-bark performing style of the bad old days, as it is mockingly
referred to within the industry, may come to be a thing of the fabled past.

Peter Gelb, entering his second full season as general manager of the
Metropolitan Opera, (NYC) whose enthusiasm for promoting opera as a cohesive
dramatic art form borders on the evangelical, insists that the raising of
theatrical standards will be ³the salvation of opera.² Already he has taken
several initiatives that put a new emphasis on opera as a rounded theatrical
experience, as opposed to a strictly musical one. Mr. Gelb has also made a
point of hiring numerous directors from the theater world.

In forging alliances between opera and other media, Mr. Gelb hopes both to
supply the tools and to create the incentives for performances that meet the
generally higher standards of interpretation required by the less-forgiving
audiences, directors ‹ and cameras ‹ of theater and film.

³You still have to prioritize the voice,² But for me the question is: Is the
singer present in what he or she is saying? It¹s not possible to engage an
audience if the performer is unengaged, no matter how much scenery you have
around. The show will have a dead center. People deserve the total
experience that opera has advertised itself as providing, a union of all the
arts.²

In the view of Renée Fleming, one of the world¹s leading sopranos, who
appears in ³La Traviata² and ³Otello² at the Met this season, it may indeed
be the people in the seats who are largely driving the rise in standards.

³The quality of acting in opera has improved drastically since I started
singing,² she said. ³To a significant degree I think it¹s because today the
audience is more demanding. Television and film have permeated our society
to such a degree that they¹ve created higher expectations for persuasive
acting in opera. Now the old arch style of playing the diva, which some
performers still indulge in, is considered close to camp.²

Stephen Wadsworth, an opera and theater director who has dedicated much of
his time to training singers in the art of dramatic expression said; ³It is
a singular tragedy and a source of shame that the conservatories and
universities that offer serious actor training for singers you can count on
one hand,² he said, or rather, thundered. As a result, he added, ³even today
90 percent of the opera productions on view would make Verdi or Wagner or
Handel spin in their graves because of the extent to which the music is
curated responsibly and the drama irresponsibly.²

Mr. Wadsworth, a former actor and (briefly) opera singer himself, has fought
against the tide of indifference by teaching acting to singers in various
capacities for 25 years. In January he will become the first director of
opera studies for the Juilliard Opera Center, a full-time position in which
he will concentrate specifically and intensively on teaching acting to
singers embarking on careers. It should be noted, the Juilliard School has
moved into the forefront of integrating acting study into singers¹ musical
educations. 

But onstage is still where most aspiring singers learn to hone and develop
such acting talent as they have. Performers with initiative ‹ and the luck
to work with directors engaged in eliciting the maximum theatrical potential
from opera ‹ have the chance to mature as artists. Others may not.

³Many singers have said that their acting breakthroughs only came when they
had the chance to work with great directors,² Mr. Gelb said. ³

Still, Rene Fleming noted, ³in my experience most directors in opera have
simply accepted singers¹ abilities ‹ good or bad ‹ rather than dig in and
help them become better actors.²

³Opera has specific acting problems that don¹t exist in theater,² Ms.
Fleming said, and they make dedicated study that much more important. ³I
know great directors who don¹t know what to do with Handel. In a Handel
opera you are singing the same words over and over. How do you make them
fresh every time you repeat the sentence, how do you make every moment
expressive? It takes a lot of serious work.²

An increasing emphasis on truthful characterization and rounded productions
is giving rise to higher expectations. Brian Zeger, artistic director of the
vocal arts program at Juilliard, said: ³I think opera singers have a more
diverse set of skills than the average singers had 20 or 30 or 40 years ago.
And they have to. I think it unlikely that a singer could make a major
career today ignoring any of the facets of performing. All the skills have
to be there.²

As standards evolve across the opera world, questions arise about the
altered criteria by which performers are cast, raising the troublesome
corollary issue of discrimination based on looks and size. The soprano
Deborah Voigt, by most accounts in possession of one of the world¹s great
voices, made headlines in 2004 when she went public after having been let go
from a Covent Garden production because she didn¹t fit into the director¹s
concept, which is to say, the little black dress he expected her character
to wear. Ms. Voigt later had surgery to help reduce her weight.

³No one will say anything officially,² said Ms. Racette, who happens to be
trim and attractive. ³But we are all seeing the choices being made, the way
roles are being cast.²

³What it¹s about is artistry,² he said, pointing to the example of Stephanie
Blythe, an un-svelte singer who appears often at the Met, to regular acclaim
for both her singing and her acting. ³She will have a great future here,² he
added.