Campbell Vertesi

It's the question everyone's asking me by email. The answer is: great. Really great. Opening night in particular was a huge hit, and everyone sang beautifully.  The audience was great, and I could really relax and engage in some audience banter.   

The only down side: there was no program!  I don't know why, but somewhere between the producer's computer and the printers things got fouled up.  That means that the audience may have enjoyed the show, but they have no idea who we are!  I was actually stopped on the street by the reviewer from the local paper, to ask for names of the cast!  I'm happy I ran into her... otherwise we would have been a bunch of nameless awesome singers in the review.

The Sunday Matinee wasn't as good, from our perspective.  Matinees are always a pain - as our Countess Alex Rafallo put it, "who wants to see opera while the sun is out?"   Hell, who wants to SING opera while the sun is out?  The audience was quiet and slow to get going, and that affected our energy big time.  I wasn't happy with my own aria... I was stupid and had coffee when I shouldn't have, and I got jumpy for the first half of the opera.  In the end it was still a good show and the crowd had a good time, but the overall spectacle wasn't on the same level as the night before. 

Sorry for not posting about this sooner, but there really isn't much internet access in Mendocino. Plus, I've been spending some quality time with my parents, and blogging just doesn't get very high on the priority list next to family.

Today I'm in San Francisco, hanging out with friends and relaxing.  I can't wait... this is really my last day to relax for awhile.  Between auditions, my graduate recital (ugh) and Masters' finals, I've really got to put my nose to the grindstone...

Today is our dark day before the performance weekend.  The show will go just fine... I'm narrating an incredible amount of text, but i guess that's just the way it goes when you want to present Figaro without surtitles!   My aria is fine, but not where I want it to be.  We'll see... they say one performance is worth 10 rehearsals.

The cast and directors had a little meeting this morning.  It was discussed that although we all had concerns about pulling off a project of this magnitude in the time allotted, we could do a really fantastic job of a more limited production.  Today's rehearsal is a "cutting board" rehearsal (my term, not an industry one).  We sing through the entire show, and decide which recits etc can be cut.  We'll have a limited narration to fill the audience in on the happenings they missed, but it will essentially be a normal cut production of Figaro.  

And I'm relieved.  At the very least, 4 hours of Italian without surtitles is a lot to ask of any audience.  2 hours and a bit is much more reasonable.  

My part is not a large one, but my biggest problem is a common one - how to keep vocally warm in the long break between my scenes!  My first scene, at the beginning of Act I, includes my big aria.  I have to be warmed up for that.  But my next entrance isn't until the Act II finale!  In rehearsal at least, there's about 2 hours in between those scenes, where I'm sitting quietly studying music.  That's a lot of fallow time... and so far, by the time I've come on for the rest of my singing, my voice is cold and even a bit tired.  More on this later...

Today was the second rehearsal, and I have to say I'm starting to look for the panic button.  I'm not ready to push it yet, but I want to know where it is, just in case.  For those who aren't familiar, Figaro is a long opera.  More than 4 hours at full length, and our production has only the barest of cuts.  A lot of it is recitative, which is brute memorization work.  The rest is arias and ensembles, each of which can stand a surprising amount of musical work to get "performance-ready".  Putting on a show like this in 2 weeks is a difficult task, to say the least.

The entire cast has arrived knowing their parts, but I'm learning about the special requirements of Mozart.  This isn't like Boheme, where the parts all interlocked, but the piece keeps moving if someone messes up.  In a Mozart recitative or ensemble, if one person trips up the whole beautiful construct comes crashing down.  And though we all know our parts individually, the moment we put down our scores and try to sing together, it becomes very easy to trip up.  Frighteningly easy.

This would not be such a problem, if we had some more time.  The plan is to stage the entire opera in two days (!), and have a staged concert version ready for performance by a week Friday.  I consider myself an optimistic guy, but this is looking dicey.  The music is good, but it needs a lot more work to be ready... and we're about to add staging?  I just don't know, but I don't like the look of it.

In the end though, this isn't my lookout.  My job is to do the best I can at my (small) part.  If the rest of the production crashes and burns, at least Bartolo will be scintillating, I guess.  To be honest, I'm not sure what do do.  The director is a friend to me as well as a colleague, and at some point I think I have to say something, even just in private.  I just want a plan B, in case this ambitious project proves to be as difficult as I think it is.

I arrived in California today, and met the rest of the Figaro cast at our residence. It's one big house, apparently usually used as a Christian retreat. Just imagine the Real World, Opera style. The cast is great, the house... well it needed some work.

I guess you can call it a teambuilding exercise: we all pulled together, and cleaned the place from top to bottom. When we got there, the kitchen was sticky, the walls and ceilings were cobwebbed, and the laundry room was inaccessible. By the end of the night, the place was clean enough to walk barefoot, the laundry machines were great, and even the hot tub was filled, warming up and filtering as it should. I can't say we weren't a little miffed at having to do basic cleaning and maintenance first thing when we got there, but in the end the house should be just great.

The cast, as I mentioned, is very cool. I don't know anyone's last name yet, so I'll have to write about them later... but trust me, all very nice, friendly people who will be fun to work with. Tomorrow, we have our first rehearsal...

Interesting tidbit - it bothers a lot of singers that whenever a Mozart bass sings in an ensemble, he doesn't get to sing the bass line. Rather, he often sings above the baritone parts! In fact, in modern productions it's customary to switch the bass roles' part with one of the baritones, so each voice can sing in their more comfortable register.

A perfect example is in Nozze di Figaro, with Dr. Bartolo. In the first big ensemble number (the Act II finale) the original score has the bass Bartolo singing the entire time in the upper fifth of his range. Meanwhile, the baritone Count sings an octave below, keeping the bassline. In authoritative scores, the parts are written this way, and it gave me a heart attack when I tried to learn the part. But ask a working bass-baritone if he's ever sung that part. Everyone switches the Count and Bartolo's lines. It's so common that in the Schirmer score, they do it for you as an editorial decision.

Why would Mozart, who knew the voice so well, make such a mistake? Is it a problem with the originals? A publisher's messup from the first printing run?

My friend (baritone) Mike Krzankowski enlightened me on the subject yesterday. Apparently the bass who premiered so many of these roles, Bussani, had a lot to do with it. It turns out that he sang these roles as an older singer, when his low range had lost a lot of its lustre. He was much more comfortable in his high voice, and the parts were written accordingly.

And he ruined it for the rest of us.

Today I started working on the physical life of Bartolo.  Unfortunately, without a cane in Cincinnati I'll have to wait until I get to California to work on the "walk."  But there is much more than just a walk to a character!  My favorite is figuring out the nervous tic.

Most people have a nervous habit they do, something they do when they get emotional, or angry.  If this action is consistent throughout your character's physical and emotional life, it will help make the image of this person appear real in the audiences eyes.  Unfortunately, it's easy to go overboard with this.  If you're always doing your nervous "thing", it becomes pretty transparent and fake.  The balance is a careful one.  (think about Indiana Jones' little smirk, or any of Chris Farley's character's nervous physicalizations.  These bring some color to the character, and an easy physical cue for the audience of his state of mind)

I decided that Bartolo's nervous tic will be with a pencil, or a pen perhaps.  A little twirl, or some funny trick he does almost without thinking.  I like this idea because not only does it give me a very personal prop to work with, not only does it give me a physical action that can keep me occupied while Bartolo thinks, but it's a very distinctive sort of action too.  Plus, the possibility exists of Bartolo getting particularly worked up and breaking the pencil - that's good for effect, depending on how you play it.

 Some other examples... my Colline folds the lapels of his coat obsessively, and I've always wanted to learn a few knife twirling tricks for Sparafucile.

Anyways, I'm spending quality time at pentrix.com - a very good place to waste an afternoon if you want to learn tricks with a pencil. :) 

Well well well - it seems that one of my favorite fellow bloggers, ACB, is working on Figaro as well!  Talk about worlds apart though: hers is for the Met, mine is for a tiny company in CA. :)

Anyways, her posts on the subject of Barbarina are fascinating to me.  She goes through some similar processes to what I do to get this kind of role prepared.   It's interesting to see the way she works on a role... not only do you get some insight into the differences in the way two performers prepare similar material, but you also get it on two very different levels of the profession.  This is how a beginning singer does it, and that's how a much more accomplished one does it.

I want to point out in particular the way she does her translations.   

"I find a copy of the libretto online and cut and paste it into a Word
document. After playing with the formatting a bit and getting my tabs
worked out (dork!), I type the translation, again paying attention to
the language. I’m not just typing English words at 70wpm; I’m watching
each word and it’s Italian counterpart, making them match up in my
mind. I do this for the entire opera, not just my parts"

 I had my opera characterization prof make us all do this last year.  We hated it.  But it makes you learn the show REALLY thoroughly.  I've always done this for my parts, and read the Italian, an English translation, and a Castel translation for the rest.  There's something to be said though ,for actually doing all the translation yourself.  You stand a much better chance of really remembering every obscure poetic word you encounter!

Anyways, go and have a read of ACB's posts about this.  Veeeeeery interesting.  I have pages of notes of the things I've learned about Bartolo, but you'll have to wait until I condense it and pare out the crap.