This week I started work on my roles for Ash Lawn: Colline, Benoit and Alcindoro in La Boheme; and nothing so far in Sound of Music, until they send me the score.
First of all, some general impressions on Puccini. The man writes brilliant music in this opera. I've always been amazed at the conversational style built into this show (witness acts I and IV). No other composer I know of wrote such natural, casual dialog into the music. In case you're not convinced, have a look at Act II, where the chorus joins in for a crowd scene that was revolutionary in opera composition.
Until Boheme, a chorus would typically sing as a unit. Crowd scenes certainly exist in prior works, but they are rather generic. The chorus acts as a chorus - almost like another instrument in the orchestra. In Act II Boheme the crowd is front and center, as much a part of the action as the main characters. One actually gets the feel of a busy marketplace, with different groups shouting one thing or another, and action all around you. The conversation between the four friends is woven into this active texture.
Also, I've always been blown away by the Act I duet. The music is gorgeous and catchy, in true Puccini style... but what really gets me is the juxtaposition with the words. Here they are, talking about the stupidest, most mundane little things, to the strains of the most dramatic love music imaginable. The music plays an incredible subtext for the scene, and the more the actors play against that the stronger the effect will be, I think. I imagine the two of them having no idea how deep this affection is as yet, just making small talk... but all with this incredible music underneath them.
Now, for some of those insights that you only get when you really study the music. The big one is, this opera is full of internal structure. It doesn't seem like it; in fact, most of the music seems so continuous as to become one shapeless mass... but the truth is, it's all just a handful of 8 bar phrases, in variations. Of course, these phrases and their boundaries line up beautifully with the text, so that the conversation shifts organically on the downbeat of the next phrase. I spent hours this afternoon with my coach, just counting through the music to find that structure, and speaking my lines.
Because, an ensemble part like this can be a complete bitch to learn. You have an individual line (or maybe two) every couple of pages. You have to know what everyone is saying, what comes next, and where you are in the music. Having learned one of these acts already without a structure, I can tell you - your lines feel like they come out of nowhere. You get very little sense of continuity; it's more like the act careens on, and you pray that you're in the spot you think you are.
Learning the first act with a structure is much easier. Now I have a framework of the music, on which to "hang" my individual entrances. I'm getting a sense of where I am in the act, and the more I work with it the more that sense will be in my body, rather than in my cerebral mind. That is to say, I can just feel the flow of the music and its natural progression, rather than constantly focusing on "where the hell am I".
Colline is a very good role for me to be working right now. Because of the ensemble music, I really sing a bunch of isolated lines, with good "reset and relax" time in between. To use a physical sport metaphor: it's like doing individual gymnastic tricks one at a time, as opposed to a floor routine composed of the same tricks.
And true to that metaphor, you can do much more impressive tricks in this kind of setting. This role has a very high tessitura for me - it sits in the top quarter of my range the entire time, with frequent jumps to the very top. There's no way I could manage this sort of tessitura if my role was singing clear through the opera, or even for significant lengths of time. It is only because of these wonderful gaps in my singing that I can keep popping back up to that E natural (or F, as the case may be - ulp!).
I've run through the piece with my teacher, and I can certainly sing it - that's step one. But I'm not sure how to deal with some of these phrases. My very first, for instance: an ascent to an Eb, and then a high F that appears in the middle of a row of C's. With the first half, how do I keep that sounding remotely conversational? An Eb is a big note for me, it's not like I can just toss it off lightly! But at least that note is approached by step. The F is just crazy. That's the highest note in my range, and it gets an eighth note. Very quick, just pop up there and back down. How do I make that sound at all legato? How do I make it even sound like one sentence? What's more, F's for basses are usually reserved for moments of the highest dramatic tension, because of their intensity. Well, this F sounds pretty intense. How do I keep it from sounding like I'm about to kill someone?
These are all half-rhetorical questions of course, but as always I welcome any help :) .
This week I had to turn down my first professional offer as an opera singer. I received a call with a great offer for the summer from New Jersey Opera Theatre - their artistic director is a bass, so I suppose he had particularly good insight into what kind of experience I could use. It was a lot of training specifically dedicated to roles that I could be performing now, as a young bass, and NJOT has a solid reputation as a young artist program. 
