> As it happens, Opera San Jose operates in a similar > fashion. The company > hires "resident artists" who are housed in the area, > train and work work work on several roles a season.
This system has BIG drawbacks, and I don't just say this because the three Opera San Jose performances I saw this season were absolutely horrible (they were more poorly cast with poor singers and awfully directed -- I understand they're having an internal crisis that accounts for the shoddy quality this year). I've seen very good productions there in the past, but they all show the same basic flaw.
When you have a repertory company which expects to hire one soprano to sing all the lead parts, one tenor to do the same, etc., as OSJ does, you will destroy the voices and comromise the production quality. Especially if you insist upon casting singers in their very young twenties, as OSJ has the reputation for doing. The idea of finding a leading lady capable of singing and fully doing justice to, while not compromising her own instrument, soprano roles in a season that is diverse enough to keep audiences coming, is ridiculous. Unless you're doing an "all-ina" season, or an "all operas whose protagonists are light lyric tenors" season, something is going to give. Audiences want to come see a Puccini, a Mozart, maybe a bel canto, maybe a verismo piece, a big Verdi -- don't tell me that you're going to cast the lead singer with the same four or six young people in all of these productions. It's a recipe for chewing singers up and spitting them out. In addition, you get bored of seeing one soprano sing everything for two seasons straight, especially if you are watching her technique get worse and worse as she sings roles across the board like Norina, Nedda, Violetta, Mimi, Tatiana, Juliette, Rosina, etc. Perhaps an older, experienced voice would know how to handle the different demands of each role, but a 23-year-old is just going to crumble.
People talk a lot about how the good old-fashioned repertory company doesn't exist in America and is fading from Europe. But even in Europe, there were a variety of singers to choose from -- not every singer in the company had the lead in every production, surely. Graham, who has worked in such houses in Germany, how does the system work in practice? I'm betting that there is a larger pool of singers than just two or three sopranos, two or three tenors, etc., yes? Big houses fly international singers is because that's how you get the best voices for one particular production; you get "the" Amneris of today, and a soprano who does a killer Aida but would be totally wrong if she had to sing Donna Anna, Adina, and Musetta in the same house.
It's not that I think everyone should specialize and sing only one role brilliantly, but I think that stretching a voice into too many different fachs (even if they're all broadly "soprano" or "tenor" roles) isn't good, especially when you're young. It's important to choose roles that are just right for your voice at the time, and if you belong to a repertory house that decides that roles A, B, C, and D are what's right for you -- because there's no one else to sing them, and because that's what will produce a lovely season for the audiences to appreciate -- I think you are being done a disservice.
Going back to Karen's idea, I think the idea of a local repertory company will work as long as your talent pool in the area is large enough. It's really boring to go see 6 out of 10 productions in a year where the leading tenor is the same man, or you see one soprano in every show. I can go to a season of 6 plays in a small theater company in the bay area and see the same actor in perhaps two of those shows (in a small part and later in a large part).
Again, maybe theater isn't like this because there is a larger pool; there are more struggling actor wannabes out there than singers, so the casting directors have more to draw upon. Maybe OSJ is failing (in my opinion) because they simply can't afford to house and pay more than two sopranos a year. I don't know. I think small repertory companies can exist, you just have to be careful so that you don't end up inappropriately casting voices and/or boring audiences.
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte, ibracamonte@y... San Francisco, CA moderator of Vocalist: the mailing list for singers (vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com)
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