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| re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? | |
| Last Edit: Chromolume 09:39 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 09:36 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? - PlayWiz 06:03 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
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| It's a matter of making the voice adjust to the style. That's certainly a major component. And, much as I'm stereotyping here (also take into account that I'm a huge opera fan, so I'm not being disdainful, just realistic), many opera singers generally seem to concentrate on the music rather than the text, whereas singing the text is much more an expected part of a musical. So, especially with musicals that are heavily based in text (Sondheim, for instance), the music often gets oversung by opera singers, at the expense of that text. Yes, some singers can really get how to approach things the other way around, but many just can't. A related symptom is the tendency to only go for rounded vowels. There was a concert A Little Night Music in Boston some years back with the Boston Pops (with Christine Ebersole and Ron Raines, who were great) that gave most of the supporting roles to young classical singers from the Tanglewood program. I remember, in "It Would Have Been Wonderful," how Ron Raines would say "if" but the young American classical singer doing Carl-Magnus could only say "eeeeeeeef." Is that English?? Similarly, when the Theatre Du Chatelet did Into The Woods, it opened with the theatre singers in the cast singing "I wish," but the more operatic voices singing "I weeeesh." It takes one right out of the performance because it sounds phony and overblown. (I was, however, very pleasantly surprised at Natalie Dessay's Fosca when the same company did Passion - hearing this wonderful coloratura get very appropriately "speak-y" with Fosca's music was a treat. I think she really understood how to go about it.) |
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| re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? | |
| Last Edit: PlayWiz 11:20 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 11:16 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? - Chromolume 09:36 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
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| I believe that Natalie Dessay started off training as an actress, and it shows in her performances. She retired from singing opera, but still performs in other venues both acting and singing. When I was singing a lot of opera, my opera coach, who's at the Met, was the son of a well-known Broadway musical director and producer. So he knows the difference between musicals and opera performance, even though he concentrates much more on opera. When I first brought in some musical theater stuff to him, he said "You've really got the style right!". Later, when I had been singing a lot of musical theater and had been cast in another opera for him to coach me in, he had me add back vibrato and ground myself more for projection's sake to get back into the different vocal production and style that was right for opera. They have their similarities, but you're right -- someone singing "eeeef" instead of "if" just sounds wrong and artificial in musical theater, unless you intend your character to be that way. |
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| re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? | |
| Last Edit: Chromolume 09:51 pm EDT 08/01/20 | |
| Posted by: Chromolume 09:49 pm EDT 08/01/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? - PlayWiz 11:16 pm EDT 07/31/20 | |
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| Staying on "ee" vs. "ih" for a moment - I also have a fun memory of a classmate of mine in high school who was an amazing baritone, but was (if I remember correctly) not vocally trained at all - it was all just amazing talent. After his freshman year in college, he came back for the summer program we had in our town to play Harold in The Music Man. I was playing Jacey Squires, but also doing some vocal coaching, and I remember a night early on when we met to go through his songs. I remember we were doing the lead-in to "76 Trombones" and he, now with some definite classical voice training behind him, came out with "please observe me if you wheel / I'm Professor Harold Heel." And I stopped and said something like "my god, what have they done to your voice?" ;-) | |
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| re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? | |
| Posted by: PlayWiz 11:39 pm EDT 08/01/20 | |
| In reply to: re: I'm confused. Does anyone actually WANT to see opera stars perform musicals? - Chromolume 09:49 pm EDT 08/01/20 | |
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| Well,Ethel Merman did say that George Gershwin told her to never take a singing lesson. She was a natural and someone would have tried to homogenize her voice most likely. | |
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