Campbell Vertesi

Yesterday Bryn and I started rehearsal with Utah Festival Opera, our summer festival this year.  It is unbelievably nice to get to spend this summer together; that's far from the norm in this industry!  In fact, it's our first summer together in 3 years. 

It's also nice to back at this festival.  Utah Festival Opera is a relatively young company (17 years old or so) that does a lot of things right.  They have consistently strong musicians throughout their casts, they foster a relaxed yet professional work environment, and most importantly: they work very hard to engage their audience.  As a result I find this company fun to work for, rewarding in the calibre of shows presented, and refreshing in their approach to community leadership. 

This year I get to share that with my wife for the first time.  It's interesting being in a professional environment together.  I'm starting to realize that we have different professional styles, and different needs.  I expect that we'll have to be quite conscious of each other throughout the season, but overall I'm expecting it to be a great time.

This week, we moved away from the Midwest forever. 

There are things to love about the Midwest.  Primarily, the people there are bighearted, friendly types who want nothing more than to help you out.  My wife was born and raised there, and that's where I met her.  There are many people who like the simpler style of life, or the wide open spaces, or the down-to-earth American culture of the region.

That being said, I'm very happy to be moving on.  Of all the things I wanted to do with my life, spending 7 years in the bible belt was nowhere on the list.  Still, I wanted an American experience, and boy did I get it.  I'm unbelievably tired of being the only black sheep, having a radically different model of the world.  I'm tired of living somewhere where most people have never travelled out of the state, let alone the country; where "is Italian a language?" is an honest question that doesn't inspire laughter. 

I'm sad to leave my family in the Midwest, who worked unbelievably hard to accept this black sheep into their fold.  I will miss my friends and colleagues both in singing and at the restaurant, and I sincerely hope I get to see them all again, however unlikely that may be. 

This week we're in New York City for an audition, and the contrast couldn't be stronger.  Diversity is an amazing thing - people of all races, styles, and kinds.  Something going on at all times of the day and night, something for everybody of every lifestyle and interest.  I need to live somewhere like this - I need to live in a world class city.

After this audition, we fly to Utah for our summer contract.  I get to cover Escamillo, and hopefully take some time to do the work I missed out on while I was sick for 8 weeks this spring.  Then we leave for Paris - one of THE world class cities - and we go on to try and break into the European opera scene.  I couldn't be more excited.

Last night I had the opportunity to hear the Iris Orchestra play, with guest soloist Branford Marsalis.  Musically it was a great concert, but what struck me was the approach this symphony takes to its audience. 

I've been reading and thinking a lot about classical music accessability lately, largely thanks to this article by Alex Ross.  I agree with Ross, that it is critical for classical organizations to identify what are the core values that define classical music - and in the same breath, what are the peripheral elements that we can change. I think the Iris Orchestra is breaking some of the peripheral classical 'rules', and is making a much stronger connection with their audience because of it.

At the beginning of the concert, a random (as far as I can tell) orchestra member welcomes the audience with a short speech. Last night, she talked about how it felt to be a part of such a close group of musicians, how at home she felt in Memphis with her host family, and a little bit about the music they were going to play.  Next, the conductor (Michael Stern) talked to the audience about the program.  He was casual, funny, and clearly passionate about the music, and all of this transferred to the audience as if by osmosis.  We all got excited about the program right along with him.  Unlike many "conductor chats" I've seen, Maestro Stern's talk actually had some musical substance, and gave the audience concrete elements to listen for and look forward to.  The whole speaking bit took less than 10 minutes, but it made an enormous difference to the attitude and interest level of the audience.

 This is connecting with your audience.  This is what it means to make an audience feel that classical music is a part of their life, that this orchestra is a part of their community.  Instead of struggling against concert conventions, Iris just changes the game.  They actually imbue their audience with a passion for the music, and let them know that it's OK for a symphony (Shostakovich no. 9 in this case) to sound "mocking," "sarcastic,"or "funny."  It's OK to have fun listening to classical music.  They programmed film music beside modern songs, in the same concert with a major symphony and a jazz chart, and the audience loved it.  To me, this is the future of the symphony, if not all classical music.  We must connect with our audiences, or our art form will die.

If classical music is dying, it is because we've had rigor mortis for years.  Iris Orchestra makes music and musicianship come to life for their audience, and I wish more organizations would do the same.

At this morning's tour show, a little girl asked a question that I've heard many times before.  But something about how she phrased it, or maybe my state of mind at the time, made me think about it a little differently.  "How much practice did it take to put on the show?"

Immediate answer aside (about 5 days of rehearsal), it got me thinking - can you really define a "start" for work on a given piece of music?  We're all expected to arrive at every gig "off-book", so the work definitely begins before you arrive in town for rehearsal.  In the case of "Jack and the Beanstalk," (which is entirely music from Faust, with different text) I had actually been working on Faust for a couple of months before I even got the Beanstalk score.  So did the work begin then?  But I've been singing the featured arias for a couple of years... and I've been using the hard parts to help with my technique for at least 4 years.  And really, I've been doing the work that was necessary in order to be CAPABLE of singing this piece since I started singing opera.  And I've been listening to the opera and imagining myself singing it since the first time I saw it.

I came to the conclusion that it's essentially meaningless to try and pinpoint a "start time" to a particular piece, if only because individual works and artistic/technical development as a musician are so closely intertwined.  I can imagine a singer who maybe did vocalises his whole life, actually having a nice defined "start" for working on a piece of repertoire that he'd never heard before, but that's a pretty rare case.  Certainly for me, I've done most of my learning through productions and performance.  Every production I've done has been one step closer to the productions I'm doing today.

 And this is relatively simple for me, because I've never performed Faust before.  How would someone like Renee Fleming answer "how much practice did it take to sing the Countess in Nozze?"  Hard to say, but certainly every previous appearance in the role has to count towards the total.  Her performance at any given time is the result of all her years of study, dedication, and performance.  Characters and interpretations are rarely static things, they grow and change with the artist and his or her capabilities, even before they ever set foot in rehearsal.

I really wanted to answer that question for the little girl, and say "When I was 14, Faust was the first opera that really grabbed me and got me excited about singing classical music.  In some way, my whole life since then has all been practice to be able to sing this for you.  And when I'm up here singing for you, I'm really practicing for a few years from now, when I'll be on a different stage singing the whole opera, practicing for the next time.  So how much practice did it take? A WHOLE LOT!"

 I don't normally like to write reviews of my colleagues.  This is made easier by the fact that I almost never get to sit in the audience for a performance.  Last night was an exception though, and since I'm not directly involved in the production, I feel OK telling you all that Opera Memphis' Faust is a good production, and worth seeing.

Last night I saw the opening performance of Opera Memphis' Faust.  I love that show.  It's the first opera that really got to me, and I still remember walking away from the theatre thinking that Mephistopheles was soooo cool. 

This was a great rendition, that really shone in the places where most productions fall down.  The Walpurgisnacht ballet for example, is usually hard for companies to pull off.  Not in terms of technical difficulty; I mean in terms of keeping the audience's attention, and maintaining the flow of the plot through what is essentially a character development dead spot.  In the Opera Memphis production however, the dancing was one of the highlights of the evening.  It was a mesmerizing combination of lewdness, sensuality, and beauty that had me, at least, spellbound.  It struck what seemed to me to be an excellent balance - dirty enough to shock at times, without being offensive or graphic.    

The other normally-weak scenes that stood out were Valentin's death, the church scene and the finale.  All of those seem difficult for directors; maybe it's the abrupt change of focus to Marguerite, or maybe it's some dramatic ambiguity in the score, but somehow people have a hard time making these scenes connect.  In the Opera Memphis production, they were incredibly effective.

 No question that soprano Caroline Worra as Marguerite had a lot to do with selling those particular dramatic moments.  She was utterly convincing as the fallen woman, and had me on the edge of my seat . Baritone Mark Walters as Valentin produced a huge, rich sound that filled the hall.  It was a pleasure to hear every note.  His dramatic and vocal intensity onstage carried the death scene, and for once I didn't question why a dying man would take the time to sing an aria. 

Of course, the traditionally strong parts were strong as well.  Bass-Baritone Darren Keith Stokes was an excellent Mephistopheles - totally comfortable in the tessitura, his voice was colorful and even from bottom to top.  He sold Le Veau D'Or particularly well, and seemed comfortable all through that difficult aria.  I won't lie, I am obscenely jealous of anyone who gets to play Mephistopheles - but Mr. Stokes did a fantastic job.  Tenor Adam Klein sang the title role - his is probably the only performance I've seen where Faust's instant-love-just-add-water for Marguerite was actually believable.  This man knows how to turn on romantic tension, and the pull between the lovers was a driving force whenever he was onstage.

I really enjoyed this show, and I recommend it to anyone in the Memphis area.  Some excellent singing, a great production, and dammit - more than a decade later, Mephistopheles is still soooo cool.  

This is an article I wrote in 2005, about copyright and the Internet.  I never published it because I thought so many people were "getting it" already, but four years later it seems that these debates still rage.  For anyone who is concerned about the fate of musicians on the Internet, or the calls for an end to copyright: you may find this essay clarifies the debate a bit for you.

Communism, Copyright, and the Internet

or:
What a Difference a Command Makes

by
Campbell Vertesi

Copyright on the Internet is a contentious issue, to say the least.  Everyone seems to have an opinion; everyone shouts that they are fighting for progress, and for the good of society as a whole.  They shout, without ever clarifying just what the issue is in the first place. Music companies and their advocates would have you believe that it is a battle between piracy and ownership rights, and place the future of the free market and quality entertainment as the stakes.  File sharers and their ilk insist that it is a fight between freedom and the greedy music industry, with the future of the Internet and free expression at stake. Why, complains the business world, can't the online community understand the reasoning behind strong copyright law?  Why, protests the file sharing world, don't the companies just “get it?”   Both sides have their rhetoric, but so far no one has managed to really define the base issue at stake here.  How can we ever hope to reach a consensus, if we cannot even agree on the question we're arguing about in the first place?  The only thing we can agree on, it seems, is that digital copyright is somehow a critical issue in the new medium of the Internet.

The trouble is, it is not really the question of digital rights that these people are fighting over.  Rather, this is a classic clash of paradigms; a conflict between two competing views of the world.  A big tip off should be that neither side is arguing rationally.  Both are so entrenched in their own view of the world that any alternative poses an enormous threat, and provokes a strong defensive reaction.  This essay will help to clarify exactly where these two paradigms conflict, and in doing so will offer new perspective on the battle at hand, and on some possible solutions.

“CP”:  THE REVOLUTIONARY COMMAND
There is at least one fundamental difference between the computer world, and the “real world”.  This difference completely remodels our perspective on the universe, and yet it is embodied in a command so simple that even the most novice computer users take it for granted. This command is “copy”.  

The Copy command makes your computer a radically different place from the real world.  Suddenly, everything is by nature abundant.  A computer could care less if one person has a picture, or if a dozen people each have their own copy.  The cost of duplication is so low as to be practically nonexistent, and each copy is a perfect duplicate of the first.  

Imagine for a moment what life would be like in the real world if we all had the “copy” command –  it would be something like on “Star Trek,” where every household has its own “replicator” to satisfy the needs of the inhabitants.  We all remember watching Captain Picard approach a computer panel, commanding “Tea.  Earl Grey.  Hot.”  On his command, the computer would recall a pattern for this sort of tea, and produce a copy – a “replicate” of this perfect cup of Earl Grey tea. Such a world would mean an end to famine and poverty.  Everyone could have anything they ever wanted, without any consequence. This is the world inside your computer.

The Internet was designed to take advantage of this “copy-ability”. The ability of computers to make infinite copies is central to the way the Internet works.  For example, every time you look at a web page, your computer is actually showing you a copy of the original.  Every time you read an email, you are actually viewing just a copy of what was sent.  Whatever the content, the only way anything is ever transmitted on the internet is through copying.  It is almost impossible to keep a true “original” single copy of anything on the internet.

This fact can be hard for many people to understand.  Most of us can think of some kind of Internet content that certainly seems to keep only a single copy. There is an entire software industry out there that specializes in this exact ability.  Real Networks, of RealPlayer fame, is an excellent example.  When you watch streaming video on RealPlayer, it seems like you’re viewing the single original copy.  After all, you can’t save the movie to your computer, and it makes a big show of transmitting the video as you watch it.  What is actually going on however, is more complex.  As you watch your video, a copy is actually being made on your computer.  The RealPlayer program is designed to delete each second of that copy after you view it, so only a few seconds of the video are actually present on your computer at any given instant.  This creates the illusion of a unique copy. There are many programs in existence (called “stream rippers”), which are simple modifications of RealPlayer, to remove that little “delete” instruction.   This leaves a complete copy of the video on the user's computer.  In the end, even companies that specialize in protecting content can’t keep anything as a unique copy online.

At least, an individual program can't preserve a single, unadulterated copy online.  Perhaps we must put our copy-protection scheme deeper into the computer, into the Operating System itself, perhaps.  What if Windows itself were designed to get rid of this copy-ability?  Microsoft, the biggest of all software giants, has been tackling just this problem, and even they have given up.  This Goliath of the computer industry now works under the assumption that it is impossible to preserve a single copy of anything n line.  They are instead focusing on so-called Rights Management technologies – software to ensure that although there may be millions of copies of a file, only an authorized user can use those copies.  If you can't make sure that the information won't be copied, at least make sure that it can only be read by the appropriate authorities.  Apparently, this “Copy-ability” is a powerful enough force on the Internet that even the largest software giants surrender in the fight against it.  

Clearly, there is a strong bias towards copying (which I call Copy-ability) built into computers and the Internet.  This bias is so strong that even the most powerful software companies cannot design a way to combat it – they must treat it as a force of nature instead.  But what difference does this make to businesses, and the real world?  More importantly, what does all this have to do with the copyright debate?

CORPORATE COPIES – CP SUCCESS STORIES

Copy-ability is so fundamental to the way computers and the Internet work, that it is apparently impossible to fight against it.  We can think of it as a sort of “ocean current” in the Internet.  It seems that no matter what sort of boat you have, you cannot fight it.  Rather, companies have had to deal with the consequences of Copy-ability as if it were a fact of life.  But what if, instead of fighting against Copy-ability or finding away to grudgingly  live with it as Microsoft has, you could use it to your advantage?  What if you could harness the power of the Copy-ability current to drive your business?  A business that could sail with the current would be very successful indeed.

There have been at least three major examples of attempts to use Copy-ability to drive business, and every one of them has been the roaring success we would expect it to be. Not all of these people were conscious of what they were doing at the time, however.  

The first example is everybody's favorite company, Microsoft.  How did a small garage-based company in the 80's become the world's biggest software vendor, in less than a decade?  Through Copy-ability.  Bill Gates' key move was to allow his operating system, MS-DOS, to be easily copied. Though most software vendors were heartily investing in copy-protection schemes for their applications to make sure there were no illicit copies made, there was no protection on MS-DOS.   People were tacitly ENCOURAGED to give it away illegally to their friends, and that's exactly what they did. Soon enough, everyone was using MS-DOS to run their computers. In this way, Microsoft used even the limited copy-ability of pre-Internet computers to gain market share. And it worked, possibly better than they had hoped. Their rival at the time, Apple, was selling more powerful computers with an easier interface, and were were first-to-market with the Personal Computer concept.  In a traditional market, such an advantage is almost insurmountable – but this was not a traditional market.  Apple was using the old methods of distribution, putting their best protection on their software.  Because of this fact, Apple was all but obliterated by the Copy-abled Microsoft in the 1980's.    As we all know, Microsoft went on to gain a monopolistic control of the PC market, simply by allowing people to pirate their software.  This was a Copy-ability driven business model.

Microsoft had incredible success using Copy-ability to distribute their Operating System, but that was before the age of the Internet.  Where regular, disconnected computers simply have a bias towards copying, the Internet has an all out mandate.  As the second example, Netscape was the first company to leverage the increased Copy-ability of the Internet to sweep market share, in an imitation of Microsoft's earlier success.  By making their Netscape web browser a free download from the Internet, the company found themselves in complete control of the browser market almost overnight. Because anyone could download a copy for free, everyone did – and it didn't cost Netscape a penny.  Just like Microsoft before them, Netscape found that by allowing their customers to freely take copies of their software, they could dominate the market.  Copy-ability granted Netscape such total control that even when Microsoft resorted to illegal, anti-competitive tactics, it still took years to reduce Netscape's market share to 50%.  The Copy-ability of the Internet helped Netscape take on one of the world's most powerful monopolies, and wage a war of attrition that lasted for several years.  It seems safe to say now, that Copy-ability is a major boost to any company’s software distribution.

Eventually though, Netscape was bought by AOL, and stepped down from their fierce competitive stance against Microsoft.  With total control of the Operating System and web browser markets, the latter company did an about face.  Microsoft has no more need for Copy-ability in their distribution; they have all the market share they need, thank you very much.  Instead, Microsoft is  now trying to make good on every copy of their software in use, through extensive copy-protection measures.  Bill Gates should have learned his own lesson; this was exactly what his competitors were doing in the 1980's.  Now Gates is faced with the significant challenge of my third example of taking advantage of Copy-ability: the Open Source community.

Linux and the Open Source world have taken the use of Copy-ability to a new level.  Where previously, software vendors have used Copy-ability to power the distribution of their programs, the Open Source model uses Copy-ability to create their software as well. This concept takes some explanation for the uninitiated.

In a copy-enabled world, a group project is defined differently from in the real world.  In the real world, if ten people work together to build a car, they will all have to share one car when they're finished.  There is therefore a limit on the number of people who will be willing to work together in that way, since the reward seems to decrease the more workers are involved.  After all, who wants to share a car with 100 other people?  But what if we had the Copy command at our disposal?  We could all contribute, and each get our own entire car in exchange for our small amount of labor.  Heck, we could give cars to everyone we know and ask for their feedback.  Any feature that anyone adds to their car could be likewise distributed to the rest of us, at no cost to anyone.  In the end, you could build a glovebox and get an entire car in exchange – simply for giving away copies of your glovebox.  Group labor is incredibly efficient in a Copy-enabled world.

This is the Open Source method of software development.  You can take the result of thousands of programmers' efforts, all for free.  The only price is the expectation that you will contribute what you can back to the community – even if all you can contribute is your feedback.  If you have any problems with it, you can fix it yourself and share your results with the world, or let a programmer know and they will help you do it, or perhaps take care of the problem themselves.  Once one person has solved a problem in this way, no one else will ever have that problem again, because it has been repaired in the original program itself.  Imagine if your car's carbeurator bit the dust, and by replacing it yourself, you prevented the same problem for every other car in the world.

Open Source software is driven by copy-ability.  Although most people only contribute a small amount to the community of  developers, they each get their own copy of the sum total of the group's labor in return. Because computers and the Internet are designed for this kind of copying, it's easy for me to contribute even something so small as an email with my comments on a program, and get exponential multiples of my work back. I can't program my way out of a paper bag, but the Copy-ability of the Internet allows me to reap the rewards of millions of hours of talented programmers' work.

Open Source projects use Copy-ability to power not only their distribution, but also their development processes.  In an analysis of Open Source projects then, we should expect products with superior distribution to those under “traditional” licensing.  We should also expect to see the effects of a Copy-enabled development process in superior, or at least highly competitive products.   

These expectations are borne out by many popular Open Source projects.  Superior distribution is evidenced by projects such as Apache web server, which runs 67% of the world's web sites –  more than every other brand of web server combined (According to Netcraft.com's 2003 survey). Their leading competitor is Microsoft's web server, under a development model that is not copy-enabled.  Microsoft runs only 23% of the world's web sites.  Open Source email agents such as Sendmail run a similarly large proportion of email servers.  Though email servers are more difficult to profile, a common estimate puts Open Source email servers at more than 70% of email infrastructure for the entire Internet.  Both Apache and Sendmail compete against many other professionally developed products.  That projects with zero advertising budget have taken such powerful command of their markets should be strong evidence that the Copy-abled distribution system is working well for the Open Source model.  

Proving that Copy-enabled development creates superior products is more difficult.  After all, how do you rank quality objectively?  One can glean a reasonably objective view of the quality of a product by analyzing its stability; in other words, how often does this program crash?  The Netcraft survey quoted above found that the 50 most stable web sites (as judged by average uptime) were all running operating systems with Open Source development models.  Furthermore, 94% of these most stable servers were using the above-mentioned Apache web server software.  

These numbers go well beyond statistical significance.  They overwhelmingly favor products developed through Open Source methods as vastly superior to their traditional counterparts.  Even Microsoft admits openly that they cannot match the sheer numbers of developers – and implicitly, the quality of development – of Open Source projects such as Apache.  Apparently, Copy-ability is a very powerful force in software development as well as distribution.

These numbers are astonishing to a traditional market mindset, and probably appear doctored.  Consider though, what we have seen with Copy-enabled distribution.  When the small upstart Microsoft Copy-enabled their products, they wiped out everyone else in the market.  Apple had every possible traditional business advantage on their side, and the simple fact of Copy-ability tore them to pieces practically overnight.  Netscape Copy-enabled it's distribution, and without ever charging a penny to their users, held their ground against flagrant violations of anti-trust law, and all of the might that one of the biggest companies in the world could throw at them.  Seeing the effect that Copy-ability has on distribution, perhaps the success of a Copy-enabled development model is not so shocking after all.    

The existence of a copying “current” on the Internet should now be proven to the reader beyond a shadow of a doubt.  By harnessing this power, businesses have leapt from obscurity to stardom.  This power has allowed a group of volunteers to produce a product that appears to outdo many professionally developed products.  But what does Copy-ability online have to do with copyrights?

THE CONFLICT

So Copy-ability can make monopolies out of nobodies, and make a thousand separate geeks produce some quality programs.  Who cares? If you have ever used the Internet, then you care.  Copy-ability is not limited to use by companies or programmers.  Most everyone on the Internet interacts in some way with some sort of Copy-enabled community, not altogether unlike the Open Source community.  Every time you view a website, you are participating in a small way in a Copy-enabled universe.  Every time you post to a message board, send a virus warning to your friends, or leave a comment on a website, you are contributing in a much more significant manner.  When you do any of these things, your thoughts, your comments, or information – what the real world calls your “intellectual property” – may be freely copied by anyone in the world in the form of email forwards and web searches.  Anybody can see your contribution to the Internet. What's more, this probably doesn't bother you.  In fact, most people contribute in this manner because they have already received so much in return, and they feel that it is morally right to contribute.

This is a little bit hard to believe.  How can you be contributing to a Copy-enabled world that you don't even know about?  A good example can be found in the rating systems employed by so many Internet vendors.  My mother buys all sorts of things on Amazon.com, but not before she has read a product's user reviews through to the end!  When she receives her product, she typically adds her own this thoughts to the site.  In this way, she is contributing her intellectual property to a Copy-enabled community.  My mother also refuses to trade on Ebay without seeing someone's buyer or seller rating first.  This is another Copy-enabled community in which she is participating.  Almost any community on the Internet is Copy-enabled, simply because it must be to survive.  Mailing lists, public forums and job-search sites are all Copy-enabled communities.

Have you ever interacted with the Internet in this way?  Have you ever posted a product review, rated an Ebay seller, or participated in an online chat session?  Have you ever forwarded an email joke to your friends, or subscribed to a mailing list?  This sort of information sharing activity is ubiquitous to the Internet, and is eventually encountered by anyone who “surfs the web.”  

Social psychologists will tell you, that anyone who spends a significant amount of time interacting in a particular community gradually develops the mindset of that community.  According to the mindset required for participating in the Internet, sharing information is good, and is to be encouraged.  If you spend a significant amount of time interacting with the Internet, chances are that you feel good when you post to Ebay warning about a fraudulent seller.  If you receive a virus warning, it is the right thing to do to pass it on to your friends.  You might even get excited when an essay you wrote is published on a well known news site like Digg.  The fact that sharing information – your intellectual property – is a good thing in your mind is a dead giveaway of the Internet paradigm.

The Internet paradigm is essential for the functioning of most every Internet community, from Ebay's seller rating system to more complex communities such as bittorrent.  Unfortunately, in the real world, this mindset is not only counter-intuitive; it's completely non functional.  In the real world, intellectual property is very highly valued, with everything from college tuitions to copyrights as obstacles to various types of information. Scientists working for private companies rarely, if ever, publish their work in academic journals (a form of information-sharing community).  In fact, in the United States, everything you record in any way – with typewriter, tape deck or scribbled napkin – is automatically copyrighted to you. Information sharing is anathema to many real world communities.  So, if information sharing works so well on the Internet, then why don't companies publish their information publicly?  Why is it a good thing to give your programming away a la Open Source, but a bad thing to publish your pharmaceutical research?

Remember, we’re talking about the real world now, without the Copy command.  In the real world, everything is by nature scarce.  There are only a certain number of cars in the world, and so it is important to determine exactly who owns which cars. Or carrots, or CD players, or chairs.  Property is an essential part of our interaction with the real world, because scarcity is a fact of life out here.  We use property as a measurement of value and of wealth, and so we apply the same rules of physical property ownership to intellectual property.  In a world without Copy, it makes no sense for a research corporation to publish their results, since the value of those results is directly related to how few people know them.  If they told people what they discovered, research companies would be out of a job, the same way a farmer would be out of a job if he gave away all of his carrots for free.  

In the real world, everything is by nature scarce.  You deal with it or die.  This fact is a cornerstone of every culture and economic perspective in the world.  It must be, because scarcity is a fact of existence.  Even under communism, where everything belongs to the community, in the end food and objects must be portioned out to individuals.  After all, even if everyone owns the last cookie, only one person gets to eat it.

In contrast, on the Internet, everything is by nature abundant.  Try as you might, you can’t keep a single copy as just a single copy.  Communities have arisen out of this copy-ability, and anyone who interacts with these communities is used to sharing their intellectual property freely. Of course these two perspectives are in conflict! Companies are used to functioning in a world where scarcity is a fact of life.  Their business models are built around that fundamental assumption.  They are therefore struggling as hard as they can to limit ownership of their on-line property, using fees and copy protection schemes. These are methods of artificially imposing scarcity on the on line world, where scarcity does exist the way it does in the real world. These methods work to a certain degree, permitting real world business models to operate with some success online, but they are not complete solutions.  They rely on forcing the Internet world to mimic real world behavior, and therefore they are fighting upstream against Copy-ability.  And if there is one thing we have learned, it is that you cannot fight Copy-ability on it's home turf of the Internet.

If you are used to the Internet perspective, where sharing your knowledge and experience is a good thing, measures like copy protection are frustrating, and don't make sense.  Why don't the companies just “get it?”  or “information is free!” you may cry.  “We have a right to information!”  It is very difficult to build up a concrete argument for exactly why information should be free, you just “know it.”   This should sound very familiar to many supporters of music download services such as bittorrent.  If you participate in an advanced sharing community like a peer to peer network, chances are you are operating quite firmly in the Internet's sharing mindset.  This paradigm has Copy-ability as it's foundation, and is steadfastly rooted in the online world.  This perspective is perfectly legitimate, as long as you are used to sharing information and are operating on the Internet.  It makes no sense whatsoever though, if you are used to working in the outside world.

If you are used to working with the real world, your perspective is necessarily built on ownership. Especially in a capitalist society, possession is critical to your understanding of the world.  If you are used to thinking in terms of ownership and property in this way, then copying on the scale for which the Internet is designed is an immensely destructive and threatening force.  Reactions to it have been predictably strong.  “A machine in every house, all designed to copy everything that comes in contact?  It must be stopped by any means possible!” Though these responses may sound exaggerated, they are typical of many of the defensive reactions against the Copy-ability of the Internet. In their efforts to curb Copy-ability, companies and lawmakers are proposing laws that border on the ridiculous.  One bill calls for the legalization of hacking into computers suspected of sharing copyrighted material.  Vigilante justice at its best!  Another proposal (on the Senate floor at this writing) seriously advocates explosive devices in computers so that file sharers' computers can be destroyed remotely by content providers. These reactions are so over the top as to seem comical.  They are real, however.  Remember, Copy-ability threatens the foundations of possession-oriented thought.  Extreme reactions should be expected.

Both sides feel personally threatened in this debate.  The real world is watching capitalism be torn apart by on line economics.  How does supply and demand work if scarcity doesn't exist?  On the Internet, supply is infinite, so cost should be zero.  How do you make a profit on that?  Furthermore, how do you have incentive if there is no property?  These questions strike at the heart of our Western economic philosophy, and it is critical that they be answered.

On the other side, the Internet community is watching everything they value get torn down by these real world intruders.  Record companies are suing 12 and 15 year olds for participating in an information-sharing culture.  Websites are subpoenaed to be taken down for exposing information that companies don't want the public to see.  This does not encourage information sharing!  Everything that tells us that posting reviews to Amazon is good, tells us that this corporate behavior is bad.  As more and more sites “go commercial,” the free information-sharing culture that makes the Internet such a fantastic place is being eroded.
How can this issue be solved?  How can the property-less, practically communist world of the Internet interact with the necessarily property-centered real world?

CONCLUSION - HOW DO YOU SELL TO A COMMUNIST?

We can now redefine the debate over copyright on the Internet.  It is not a battle over the nature of ownership on the Internet, after all.  Rather, it is a conflict of two opposing paradigms.  One of these paradigms lives within the Copy-enabled world of the Internet, where freedom of information is expected.  In this worldview, ownership is a moot point.  This perspective cannot understand why the companies don't “get it” that ownership doesn't make sense here.  

The other paradigm lives in the “real world,” and cannot fathom why the Internet community has such a hard time with perfectly natural property rules.  The Internet paradigm makes no sense in real life, and similarly the real world paradigm is non-functional in Cyberspace. Both sides fail to understand that their problems are reflections of fundamental differences between the real world and the online one.  The Internet is radically different from the “real world” in that it is specifically designed for freedom of information. The Internet is designed for Copy-ability.  This difference is what makes a connection between the two worlds so difficult to create.  With our new perspective in mind, the real problem that we discussed in the introduction becomes clear: how do you sell to a communist? How can someone who doesn’t understand the concept of property participate in a capitalist business model? How can a single good (a recording, for example) exist in both worlds at once, without success in one meaning failure in the other?

Our new perspective allows us to consider many new possibilities for how the business world can interact with the online world.  The problem of incentive for example, can be approached with the currency of authorship.  This means creating rules to give authors credit for their work.  The Open Source movement relies heavily on this method, as does the popularity of weblogging (aka “blogging”).  Authorship is also a proven incentive model in the real world, where universities and academia in general form highly successful authorship communities.  In academia, just as in Cyberspace, normal market rules do not apply. No Physics professor is in it for the money, but every one would kill to be the next Einstein.  Perhaps industry can interact with the Internet using templates from existing business-academic relationships. At the very least, existing academic communities can provide some framework to help real-world rooted models cope with the Internet paradigm.

There are also some existing business models that already work on the internet.  Advertising has found a comfortable niche in the trafficking of website “hits.”  The online adult content industry, for example, is completely self-sustaining, and is one of the most profitable areas of the Internet market today. Most of these websites never charge a cent to the end user, instead receiving payment from other websites for advertising placement and “click-throughs” on banner ads.  Although it’s true that many websites have had only limited success with this method, it is clear that innovative and targeted marketing have great possibilities as moneymakers on the Internet.

Service industries too, seem to function perfectly well in Cyberspace.  The travel booking industry is an example that has migrated almost entirely to the Internet.  Vendors of Open Source software such as Red Hat Linux post solid profits by selling technical support and updates to business and academic clients.
Unfortunately, industries that are based on information supply are still stuck.

Publishers for instance, are acutely aware that there must be tremendous opportunity for them in the Internet, where information travels so freely.  No one has come up with a satisfactory model, however.  The record and movie industries are more widely publicized instances of the same problem.  So far, the best they have done is to offer costly online versions of existing record stores, offering lower than CD quality music for the same price you pay for a disk in a store.  In the end, how can you sell your product to someone who can get it for free?  How do you sell to a communist?  

What many companies are learning, is that you cannot.  It is impossible to sell a product to a communist.  Companies must learn that online, value comes not from the product itself, but from the associated services.  Itunes is an excellent example of a model that is (perhaps accidentally) enjoying some success online.  Although most everyone knows how to download music for free from peer to peer networks such as bittorrent, Apple is selling songs at premium prices, mostly because they are not actually selling songs.  

The reality is that with Itunes, no one is paying for music – they can get music for free from networks like Gnutella and bittorrent.  Instead, customers are paying for the quality of service.  For 99 cents per song, you get a guaranteed, high speed download of any song or album you want, with all of the correct labels and filenames.  The store is integrated with your music player, which guarantees the ultimate in convenience shopping.  As an added bonus, you get information about the artist you like, and recommendations of other music you might enjoy.  Itunes is successful in competing with free, because although peer to peer services offer a free product, their downloads are often slow, and mislabeled.  Furthermore, bittorrent certainly doesn't supply album and artist information the way Itunes does.  As it turns out, many customers think that the extra services and convenience are worth the 99 cents.  

It is clear that the debate over online copyright is not a black and white issue, as the rhetoric would have us believe.  Rather, it is a clash of paradigms, two incompatible views of the way information and property operate.  In trying to apply the real world paradigm online, we have in some ways been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.  Though that peg has worked perfectly well in all of the square holes we encounter in the real world, it is completely nonsensical in the round pegged world of the Internet.  

That being said, there is still hope that the two worlds can interoperate.  There are definitely similarities between the square and round pegs that we should note.  The currency of authorship and the value of services are tremendously powerful tools for forming business models.  Likewise, there are enormous advantages in the round peg world, such as copy ability, and the unparalleled access to grass roots support.  Clever and adaptive businesses are certainly capable of operating under business models that work on these principles, and many of them are well into that transition already.  As for information supply industries such as the movie and recording industries, there seems no choice but to change drastically.  Perhaps they should heed the example of Itunes, and sell their products as cleverly packaged services.  Even the communists would buy that.

This week marks my return to opera singing full-time... and what a wonderful feeling that is!  I feel so much more in my element in the musical world, it's felt like a real release.

 I arrived in Memphis on Sunday night, for a Monday start of my contract with Opera Memphis.  I'm one of the young artists here, basically we're here to do a children's opera tour in schools, with the occasional concert or audition thrown into the mix.  I know when most people hear me say 'I'm a professional opera singer again', the last thing they imagine is Jack and the Beanstalk for 3rd graders!  But fundamentally, we're telling a story through music and good singing, and that's really what gets me pumped. 

Having just recently finished a couple of concerts, I can say from a direct comparison: I like this so much more.  Even just rehearsing the first few days of a funny kid's show, there's something about this that really gets me going.  I'm sorry, all you art song enthusiasts, the majority of that stuff just isn't fun for me to sing.  I'm not sure if it's having a plot that I enjoy so much, or the physical challenges of singing opera, or what... but there's a difference between the experience of singing song and that of singing opera, and in the difference seems to lie my passion.

This Jack and the Beanstalk is a re-setting of the music from Gounod's Faust, to a completely different plot (obviously) scripted for kids.  As silly as the text can be sometimes - actually, there are bits that are downright hilarious - the music is very serious stuff for me at least.  I get to sing both of Mephistopheles' arias, and neither of them is a cakewalk for a low bass.  In fact, the whole role is pretty solidly in bass-baritone territory, so for me this is a healthy stretch for my voice.  Actually I feel like the role fits my instrument very well, but that doesn't make it much easier to sing!  In any case, this is exactly the direction I want my voice to move, so I'm thrilled about the opportunity to grow this way.  

The big downside - two performances a day, for three weeks. One of those performances will be at 9 or 10am every day.  That's not exactly an easy time to sing challenging repertoire!  I'm thinking of it as a challenge.  If I can successfully sing those two arias with good technique at 9am for 3 weeks... that will be a great accomplishment for me, and very good training for my voice!

Since it's been so long since I've updated, here's the plan for the next few months:  Memphis until May 16th, a concert with Bryn in Indianapolis on May 21st, hopefully a couple of auditions, then covering Escamillo in Carmen with Utah Festival Opera from the end of May till August 8th (talk about a challenge!).  From Utah Bryn and I will fly directly to France; we've signed a lease to live in Paris for a year at least. With any luck I'll be flying back to the 'states a few times for gigs, and making occasional audition and performance excursions in Europe.

 In short, happy days are here again! I'm a singer again, I'm happy to be here, and dammit things are looking up!

Interesting point brought up recently on Greg Sandow's blog: how important is silent listening in Western classical music?  Some people were offended by his idea that opera companies might twitter ("tweet") interesting tidbits out to audiences during a performance, for fear of distraction.

Mr. Sandow's point is that a little distraction can help people focus, and that 90% of the repertory was written for audiences that didn't sit in rapt attention anyway.   Fair enough.  

For me, the issue is simpler.  Never mind anything else - sitting in silence trying to focus is BORING.  It's a BORING way to listen.  I much prefer when an audience is really involved in the music, shouting bravos at great high notes, applauding in the middle of scenes and the like.  Personally, even when I listen to great opera on recording I end up dancing around, waving my arms like a madman, or yelling at long-retired singers. How can anyone listen to the Faust waltz and NOT get up to dance?  How can you hear Di Quella Pira without wanting to shout "all'armi!"   I think that's part of what makes Opera exciting, is the football-game atmosphere of watching singers perform Great music, achieving something that is truly pushing human capability to the limits.

Maybe you think I'm crazy.  What kind of a performance would it be if audiences allowed themselves to get SO excited by the music that they would interrupt movements?  It would be a THRILLING performance, that's what it would be.  My favorite example is from the Youtube:

I'm sure some people would prefer to sit in stony silence, but personally I prefer a crowd that is awed or hushed into silence by drama and music.  I support efforts like tweeting updates during shows, because I think it makes people's brains act more "alive"  during "live" theatre.

Monthly update on events in my life:

Bryn and I are saving to move to Paris, to pursue some contacts she made while grantwriting. I don't remember if I posted about this before, if I did forgive me, if
I didn't...feel free to ask me about it.  Here's the skinny:  She'll have access to the archives at the Paris Conservatory, and basically a sweet setup to become a real French Opera specialist.  There's not a lot of French Opera for me; I'm just excited to move to Paris and to help my wife grow artistically into this genre. Of course I'll be singing auditions while I'm in Europe - I'd like to see what the EU opera scene is like with my own eyes, rather than relying on rumor.

In the meantime, I've signed a contract with Opera Memphis for May 2009 - my first Faust!  It'll be an outreach/promotional tour scale production, which is perfect for a first.  I figure after a month of singing Mephistopheles' serenade at 9am, I should be ready to put it on my audition package.  Of course I'm taking the opportunity to learn the whole role of Mephistopheles, which entails a lot of study.  Starting now, actually...more on that at the end of the post.

December also saw an offer for me to cover Escamillo in Carmen for the summer!  No particulars 'till it's on paper, but they've made Bryn an offer too (so we'd be working together), and we considered it a good enough opportunity that we've postponed our Paris move to the end of the summer because of it.  So far I've sung the Toreador aria, which is hard but fun, in practice sessions... it's the Act III duet that looks really daunting.  I'll get back to you on how that goes. :)

 So now I have some role preparation to look forward to - I can't wait!  For those who may not know, I kind of go crazy on character and musical preparation for roles.  I'm starting now for a May contract, for instance.  So sue me: I think it's part of my job.  That's why they pay me the big bucks.  Well, it's why they pay me the little bucks, anyways! You can't imagine how much brighter my world is with a role to prepare.  It's like I have a purpose again!

First up is Mephistopheles.   I've already jotted down a lot of my preconceptions about him, and a basic idea for a physical life for the character.  I've listened through the opera a few times with a score, making notes along the way.  By the way - can anyone recommend a good Faust recording?  The only one I have is Ghiaurov, which is fine, but I'd like to expand a bit to some more elegant basses like Siepi or darker basses like Hines.  Recommends?

Next up is the reading list.  So far I have

• Goethe's Faust (anyone know of a good first-timer's Goethe translation?  I keep hearing about Atkins, but I'm open to suggestion)
• Memoirs of an Artist, Gounod's autobiography
• Paradise Lost, Milton

 I'll probably also cut out whatever satan-related segments I can find from the bible.  I'm trying to get an idea of what the character of Mephistopheles/Satan meant to Gounod and to popular audiences in the 1850s. I'm happy to expand on that with my own vision, but it has to be based in the cultural reality of the time - at least for my first foray.  

So I'm ending this post with three questions for you, dear reader:  What's your favorite recording of Gounod's Faust? What's the best beginner's translation of Goethe's Faust?   And can anyone think of anything further to add to my preparation reading list?

... while he's away from singing.  Irony.  Well, here's the pic, in an article about the San Francisco Lyric Opera company, with which I did Aida this year (pictured).

 (Click on the picture for a larger version, or check through the "Images" section of the website for the original)

 So while I'm spending my time waiting tables, saving money for a big move, I get a nice featured spread in a major opera magazine.  Ah well, timing's a bitch.  

In other news, I'm happy with the direction my singing is moving.   It's nice to have a low-key, low-stress venue to sing almost every day... I'm using it to try out all my dream arias, and all the pieces that I'm hoping to drop into my audition package this year.  It's a nice way to get over my fear of pieces, even if sometimes the audience is unappreciative of what I do for them.

Sorry (as always) for not writing very often.  Truth is, I don't have that much to write about.  I live a "normal" life lately, that is to say, I go to work, come home and go to sleep.  Sometimes I get time to practice in between, but more often work IS my practice time. 

I'm making good money, but I'm not auditioning anywhere, I'm not really performing, and so... there's just not much to write about in this space.  I considered retiring the blog altogether, but in the end I do still use it, occasionally.  And I intend to use it a lot more again, once I re-enter the singing world.  So it's just gonna be a cobwebbed space for awhile.