Know All Parts

If we were on tour, you would have to know your work or you would be on the next plane home. This is really good practice which will help you to obtain a professional attitiude.

Remember, choreograph your work before you are even blocked. It helps you maintain the whole image of the piece and helps you to commit the whole piece, not just your role, to memory. Know your words as if you were speaking your own language. If the words don't mean anything to you, they certainly will not mean anything to the audience. Know every word that is being said to you. It's important that you and your partners act with each other, not as soloists who have no relationship to each other. You are going to have some audience that has never seen an operatic scene before. You have to convince them so that they want to come back. There is a movement in Europe, which is growing stronger by the day, for opera houses to cast young singers who are confident, can act and have excellent stage presence. Young for a singer is anyone who can pass for under 40. By and large singers haven't really reached the full potential of their voices until they are in their thirties. But, if they can look like they are in their twenties, it doesn't matter whether they are fifty or nineteen so long as they look the age of the part. Older singers are being used more and more as the mother, father, senior and wicked roles such as Germont, Scarpia, Nurse in Boris Goudonov, Amelia, Principessa, Zita, Contessa in Pique Dame, Witch in Hansel & Gretel, Suzuki, Sharpless, Don Phillipe, Marcellina, Don Bartolo, etc.There are enough roles in opera for every age but the bulk of the most played operas call for stage presence and fine acting. The stress is more and more on acting because opera houses now have to build up box-office revenue as government subsidies have diminished. They' ve really come to the conclusion that Puccini reached some 100 years ago as he was first creating a sensation, that they are in show business and have to compete for backsides on seats. So if you want to sing opera and keep it alive, know every single word of your ensemble, your words and your partners' words and the effect your words have on them and their words on you.