Learning Your Role

Your music director tolerate mistakes and memory gaps and will take care to reinforce those sections that are weak. If you have not worked to correct those sections by the next rehearsal session, you are in serious trouble and could possibly have your contract terminated. That might seem hard, but those opera houses have arrived at that method of helping their singers learn new roles through many years of experimentation. You can never learn a role with a book in your hand. You are not using your memory. You are not exercising your memory. You are a musical stutterer.

Unfortunately, most young singers, not having been taught any other way, learn the music first, fit the words and then work out the vocal difficulties. After a while, they become emotional stutterers totally focused on their voice. They have no hope of ever making it on the operatic stage where they can seldom hear their own voice and get many distortions of external sounds. Consequently, the singer forever remains a beginner unless he/she can break that really bad habit of learning. Have you any idea what torture it would be for a Shakespearian player or a modern actor to learn his/her part, word by word, then line by line? He/she might as well learn the pages of a Telephone book. It would be just as hard as the way most singers learn. How many of you have tried to learn a language by studying the grammar, the syntax, the declensions, the conjugations and the block vocabulary. It is the school pupil's torture method and it does not stay in the memory. No, we learn a language by phrases, by association with action. If we are learning French we quickly find out how to say "combien?" or "combien coute-il" "How much", or 'what's it cost" or in Italian "che costa, quanto, quanto costa" or in German "wieviel kostet?" Now the image is strong and we remember it forever. It might always be associated with our first purchase but it will never be forgotten. However, if we learn by the torture method we will have to remember for instance :" Kosten! Ah yes, to cost! Now how do I say how much? what do I have to do with the verb?" That's torture. By combining words, we learn the language faster. We can see and hear the image in "Ah! quella bella voce mi piace molto" or "quella bella voce molto mi piace" or "quella bella voce mi piace bene" That beautiful voice really thrills me. (Literally that beautiful voice please me very much). Much easier than trying to remember bella, voce , bene , molto, piacere etc. But that is what you are doing to yourselves by perpetually putting your nose in your music. You are not conjuring a mental image or picture to help you remember.

The correct way is to read the words over a few times and form your own strong mental image that those words convey. Fortify the words , i.e. the mental image that arises from the words, with the music. Look at the words that are being said to you, the words you are reacting to. They reinforce your own words and for that matter , if the mental imagery is right, they indelibly etch your entries into your memory. That way the music makes far more sense and is quickly remembered. One could almost say the music etches the image deep into the memory. If the image is indelibly etched, the music will never be forgotten.