Opera from soul to voice

“The study of singing must be complemented by cultivating more collateral disciplines: […] Many singers are unaware of the enormous expressive charge generated by the word pronounced with the energy necessary to decisively convey the image evoked, an emotion that is added to that produced by singing, doubling its effectiveness. They do not know how many technical problems can be solved by the driving force of vigorous and clear diction. Too often the sung word, instead of acquiring new meanings from the music, loses the quiver of accent and the snap of articulation and with them the possibility of substantiating the singing. Accurate diction corrects open sounds […] to make them float with airy lightness and bounce with natural elegance. Vowels must not resemble each other, making the text incomprehensible; and consonants must not arrive too early or be too energetically articulated and doubled, so as to interrupt the continuity of a legato and the tension of a cantabile. Today, when singing is no longer understood as hedonistic enjoyment for its own sake, one wants to follow what happens on stage, and a clear perception of the word becomes a title of merit. A beautiful voice is no longer enough to impose itself when it lacks the supplementary qualities that a good cultural and musical education can provide. The technical limitation touches dramatic levels, especially in male voices, when agility and flourishes are required: a trill appears to be an insurmountable obstacle, ‘messa di voce’ is completely ignored, muffled and spun notes are the prerogative of the few, the acrobatic games of the virtuosic repertoire prohibited. One is forced to cut, modify, let go. The irresponsibility of certain singing schools in this respect, beyond incomprehensible ignorance today, verges on recklessness and dishonesty. Not enough attention is paid to the set text, so that too many performers tackle a role without investigating the symbolic meanings of the words they encounter: superficial analysis tolerates perfunctory and anodyne characterisations of the characters and acting that lacks conviction and intensity. A misreading of the text, the character’s psychologically erroneous response to the situation at hand, the lack of knowledge of what happens before and after the aria being sung lead to absurd and nonsensical interpretations, often endorsed by a tradition uncritically received out of laziness or ignorance. … In competitions and auditions where Puccini pages are sung, the arias of Mimì, Butterfly, Liù, Manon all have the same flavour, the same expressive value. When there is authentic personality, even from a romance one should be able to grasp the profound difference that runs between the character of Mimì and that of Liù or Manon. In the great authors, the reasons of the music never come to mortify those of the text. Too often we forget that in theatre we tell men’s stories and that these stories will be captivating for the listener the more the actor knows how to enliven them with the images and emotions of his art’. (A. Zedda)

To become an artist, it is indispensable that technical preparation be crowned by character study. The attitude, mimicry, contextualisation, psychology and interaction, after the understanding and singing performance of the libretto adhering exclusively to the text and musical writing, is what gives charm to the performer capable of emotionally engaging the audience, which decrees his or her success. When one goes to an audition with the hope of getting a role, one must also have acquired this aspect of artistic preparation, it is not a task that can be left to the directors. With the renewal of the show, in fact, directors often make changes to the characters, settings, etc., but the artist must start from a “base” that cannot but be the correct interpretation of the libretto through understanding the text, which does not mean understanding the meaning of the words, but rather why “those” words were used. The young people taking part in the course will also have the opportunity to discover works that do not belong to their repertoire, first of all to increase their own culture, but above all to better understand how to deal with the characters they will have to impersonate. After understanding the libretto and its transposition to the score, the young people, having reached a new vision, will perform to demonstrate what they have acquired from the notions offered.