three tenors
La Cieca just returned from the HD of The Audition, a documentary about the 2007 Met National Council Auditions. The film puts her in an optimistic mood about the future of opera performance, or at any rate opera performers. Focus is on three young tenors who (spoiler) all end up winning the competition.
The very cute light tenor Alek Shrader gambles on “Ah mes amis” (a piece he hadn’t planned on bringing to the table) and certainly nails as many of the high C’s as we get to hear. The underdog of the contest is Ryan Smith, who starts out unsteady but then pulls it all together for a happy ending. (Temporarily, at least: Smith died of lymphoma last November.)
But the most interesting character among the group is Michael Fabiano, who is cast as the Brandoesque “angry loner” role by the film’s editing: everyone else is just so nice and so polite, and Fabiano tends to shoot his mouth off. The cuddleability factor aside, this is a dynamic young artist who (as one of the judges for the competition says during deliberations) is in a few years either “going to be a superstar or else dead.” It’s hard to tell vocal size from the sound engineering in this film (everyone is so reverbed that the lightest voices sound like Corelli at least) but Fabiano seems to have a quality instrument and (maybe rarer than that) projects the electric temperament that makes opera exciting.
After the film proper, there’s some yakking among Renée Fleming, Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson about making it in the business and such. The highlight of this segment is a glimpse of photographs of the two divas at the 1988 finals, in matching royal blue padded-shoulder bridesmaid dresses and brunette upsweeps a la Joan Collins.
These singers’ visual evolution over the past quarter century offers some hope for the standout women singers of this competition, Amber L. Wagner, Jamie Barton and Angela Meade. They’re all impressive artists with a strong vocal message, but also with full figures that are not so easy to swathe in evening gowns. La Cieca is not saying they need to achieve the sleekly angular silhouette The Opera Milf currently has on display, but their long-range planning should probably include some work on weight management.
Your doyenne is sorry she didn’t preview this documentary for you, but she definitely recommends you seek out a reprise.
I was discouraged by the bad reviews I read but now maybe I will seek this out… what kind of rep do the bigger girls sing? Is it something that could be circumvented by sensible casting and a sympathetic costume designer or is it “if you want to work, you need to work on this” kind of situation?
#10, Having heard Shrader at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco which (I believe) is comparable in size to the Met I don’t think his voice is too small for the Met.
I noticed he’s scheduled to sing Count Almaviva in Barber in Munich next season. That’s a pretty big gig for someone so young…
After watching the Audition my friend and I had the same thought… wouldn’t it be cool to hear him sing a Tonio in SF next season. SFO is doing the Pelly Fille du Regiment production with Juan Diego Florez and we are assuming that Shrader will be his cover. I never thought I would hope for Juan Diego to cancel (big fan here) and I don’t want him to, really… well maybe just one performance, so we can hear them both.
Ian (#41), since there was so little voice time with the big girls, we can only report the snippets they were shown singing. Meade did “Casta diva” (well, too), and I don’t see why she couldn’t be counted on for a great “stand up and sing” performance — nobody cared what Joan Sutherland looked or acted like in this role, either. Wagner sang Wagner (but I don’t remember what, I’m sure others will), and all we saw Barton do was the witch from Hansel and Gretel. So again, these hardly seem insurmountable obstacles to my mind.
Amber Wagner sang “Dich, teure halle” from Act II of Tannhäuser, which many a large-boned lady has sung: a once0large Debbie Voigt and Jessye Norman, to name a couple. Those two voices she is not, but of course she’s young.
Alek Shrader is a very good friend of mine and I can tell you that his laid-back attitude is not any sort of personality disorder. He is a very reserved person and actually quite shy. In the right company, well, I should say in familiar company, he is absolutely hilarious and a ball to be around. I remember talking with him during the semis and finals and he mentioned that a camera crew had been following everyone around and he often went out of his way to avoid them
He was actually put off by many of the other singers’ sharp change in personality once they were in front of a camera. He also said that Ryan Smith was the one of the most humble, down-to-earth, and nicest people he had ever met. A person truly grateful for the opportunities he had been given and extremely supportive and happy for his fellow colleagues. All us singers in this forum can learn from that example…
Any news of an encore presentation of ‘The Audition’? I wasn’t able to catch the original date and really want to see it.