I just did a master-class with Ryan Edwards, a Verdi baritone who sang
frequently at the Met in the '80s. His training at Juilliard included
acting classes (NOT opera-acting, ACTING acting) with John Houseman, who
found it remarkable that Edwards and only one other opera major bothered
to take ACTING classes at Juilliard (one of the best acting schools in the
country, by the way, along with being one of the best music
conservatories). But what surprised Houseman even more was that among the
rest of the class members - all ACTING majors - NOT A SINGLE ONE was
taking voice lessons at the school. When he asked one of the students
about this, and was told "Well, I'm not a singer, I'm an actor", Houseman
asked the student whether his VOICE wasn't absolutely critical and
integral to his ability to ACT effectively.
Frankly, I think the focus on "acting for the opera" is somewhat
misguided. Today's audiences are increasingly LESS tolerant of
non-naturalistic acting in opera. These audiences are conditioned by
movies, television, and theatre to expect a very high standard of acting,
not just in non-musical theatre. They expect to see REALISTIC acting in
opera and in musicals, and even in ballet and modern dance.
The best acting training an opera singer can get is "regular" theatrical
acting. Indeed, actors have much better memorisation skills than singers
when it comes to text, because they do not use music AS A CRUTCH (how many
times have you observed other singers - or yourself - when they forget
words in a piece; they seldom forget melody, but they often forget words.
And when they do, how do they then try to remember it? By SINGING the
passage where the forgotten words are - they can't remember them WITHOUT
the melody - NOT a good thing, frankly, because as important as the music
is, it has very little meaning WITHOUT THE WORDS - any meaning it has is
in light of the way it reinforces what is said BY THE WORDS). The opera
singer who becomes a master of acting TEXT, and learning how to use
movement, body language, inflection, etc. to convey the meaning of TEXT,
will, I am convinced, be a MUCH better operatic actor than one who never
attempts to learn to act without the musical "crutch".
Of course there are skills of acting that must be ADAPTED for
singing-acting. But frankly, I don't think the skills are DIFFERENT for
operatic acting. They are simply used somewhat differently in some cases.
I would suggest that the best acting training for an opera singer is
probably Shakespearean acting. AN excellent start would be to read
John Barton's book ACTING SHAKESPEARE - which is the book that was derived
from his BBC television series that explored this topic with some of the
greats of the Royal Shakespeare Company. The many points that Barton makes
about interpretation of Shakespeare - handling of the text, the poetry,
the rhythms (the "music"), etc. of Shakespeare's plays, as well as
character development, interaction, etc., are all directly applicable to
operatic acting. And because Shakespeare is often NOT "naturalistic" in
his use of language - and yet, in modern times, Shakespeare is being acted
more, and more naturalistically, because this is what audiences both want
and, increasingly, expect - the modern techniques for acting Shakespeare
are quite a good model for how other "non-naturalistic" texts (such as
opera libretti) should be acted as well.
One of the best things about learning to ACT without music first is that
one can concentrate completely on the craft of ACTING, on how to interpret
text, how to make movement, body language, etc. express the meaning (overt
and implied) of text, etc. All without having to worry about getting the
music right, vocal technique issues, etc. Not only that, it gives the
singer very good preparation for dealing with the spoken dialogue of
operas-comique, Singspiels, and other operas in which the singers must
both speak and sing. Nothing is more agonising than to have a singer who
just finished a glorious rendering of an aria open his or her mouth to
speak, and deliver lines in such a stilted, unbelievable way as to
totally shatter the audience's suspension of disbelief.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
______________________________________
I will sing with the spirit, and I
will sing with the understanding also.
1 Corinthians 14:15
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