During a master class, when I was a young soprano, learning to convey feeling without choking the voice, the great Blanche Thebom, (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Thebom), stopped me. I was obviously, going to screw myself royally as I approached my highest passage. She asked me what I was doing. I told her what I believe the protagonist is feeling, why the phrase climbs to end with nothing more than a gut-wrenching Ah! and she told me I couldnt allow myself to feel that much. I was baffled, how else? how else can I convey, can I become....? On several other occasions in my life as a student, I was told I had to have a thick skin or had to re-arrange my gestures to accommodate what the voice would require of me. And the whole time I was thinking that I would rather sacrifice the beauty of a note, to make it real. Real has always held a higher place in my esteem than beauty. All these thoughts fill me as I find myself is arguments about whether Robin Williams was mentally ill or just unable to shut out the suffering and go enjoy his lunch. And I come back to the passage in The Fever, the Wally Shawn play I mention over and over and over. Where he talks about how we remove the ugliness until we can ignore it. Hes in a Latin American country and, at first, they ask the people being tortured to move to another room, but the party is still being interrupted by screaming. So, they move them across the street but its hard to concentrate on fun when you look out the window and know whats going on there and so, we move the ugliness, the pain further away so we can Dont worry, be happy and we call THAT healthy. And, we call those who la la la! no worries....we call them happy and well-adjusted. How bizarre it is to me. When I was 23, both my parents had recently died within two years of one another. It was a big audition for what was to become the Opera Pacific. At the time, Henry Holt was being wooed to take the helm. Orange County was really coming into its own and, while I was very young, I had considerable talent and felt ready to sing for him. I was backstage and a former Miss Fullerton, approaches me. She had just sung Laltra notte from Mephistopheles. In the aria, the woman in hell, basically. Her mother and baby are dead and she has been accused of killing them and she is going insane. Miss Fullertons said to me TO ME: I have a hard time singing that aria because Ive never known anyone thats [sic] died. And on that note, (if youll excuse the pun), it was my turn to go out there and sing. I hyperventilated because, well, you see, I had known people who had died and suddenly, I couldnt bear the idea that I was singing and I started gulping breath. This is not mental illness. Mental illness is not being sad when mans inhumanity to man is plunging us all into warring factions and clubs pointing fingers at one another, making each other enemies--the healthy happy people vs the mentally ill depressed people. I put forth that being thick-skinned and saying I dont know anyones whos died is kinda wacked and saying I am bereft at what is becoming of us is sane, thoughtful, empathetic, compassionate, human. If any one among us is not shocked and afraid at the increasing horrors in the next room, across the street....in another town, I posit, thats not right in the head. But, I suppose that, just as in singing, we must re-arrange our bodies, hold back the tears and do the work, deliver the music, even when it calls for less of what we feel as real.
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 16:55:22 +0000
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