Repertoire Preparation

As we have swing roles to spread over several concerts, I would like each category of voice to learn the applicable roles for that voice. Do not persist in any role that does not sit well with your voice or does not feel right. There is a wide choice but learn everything that does sit well.

At the same time, let us develop a sense of overall approach to any role. First, what are the words your character is singing? Why does your character choose those words and what brought the character to this point? What has motivated you as the character to utter those words now? Just what is being said to you and how does that affect your reaction? For instance, if one was to say, to Lady MacBeth, the words, "this rose is blood-red", simply to describe the color without suspecting for one minute that she had blood on her hands, one would certainly be startled by her reaction. For each character you play, you must invent a life, a history, a real person whose character might be entirely different from your own day to day character. But believe me, all the traits that the invented person possesses are within you, you have simply chosen not to use them in our society. But on stage, you must use them. Just as you leave your own character behind at the door as you enter the theater, you leave the invented character behind on the stage as you come off. That does not mean that you think no more of that character. Quite the contrary, you keep honing that character. In a sense, you walk and talk with that character until you know the character better than you know yourself. The last thing these repertoire builders are designed to do is to teach you the music and libretto. That you can learn easily. No, these repertoire builders are designed to teach you THE ROLE. There is a vast difference between learning your lines and learning your role. Any school-kid can learn lines and most of them simply deliver lines when they are performing in school plays. When your audience goes to your concerts and your operas, they don't want to see and hear you delivering your lines to music. That would be no different than going to a school play. Even your parents would soon tire of that. No, your audience wants you to transport them to another time and another place and to show them a real person emoting. That's what we need to accomplish and we will keep working on it until every gesture and every word reflects the very heart and soul of the character you are portraying.

However, just as important as your role is to you, is the role or roles played by your colleagues. When Pimen, posing as a humble hermit, brings the story of Dimitri's spirit restoring sight to a blind man, he has already calculated the profound fear it will arouse in Boris' heart. Because he knows this it will color his delivery. He will utter his lines to provoke the greatest shock and will therefore inflect certain words over others. It is essential that you know all the roles beside your own individual role if you are to portray your own role with the greatest effect.

You are the theater. Theater is a collective effort. Chaliapin was an operatic star because he called for team effort and went to extraordinary lengths to creat a team for each opera. In fact, he was the only artist ever to sign a contract with the Met which gave completer artistic control to the artist, i.e. Chaliapin. Yes, you are stars so long as you work and react to each other and work as a team. Carry that into the theater and you have a chance of restoring opera to the popularity it enjoyed in Verdi's and Puccini's time.