Campbell Vertesi

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!"