…the Boulder Dam look like an egg cup!
La Cieca has just heard from one of her habitually infallible moles that the refitting of the Met’s stages for the Robert Lepage Ring began today.
In order to bear the weight of the (estimated) 42-ton structure that serves as the basic unit of the production, the main stage, side and rear stages, and Level C rehearsal space are being reinforced with massive steel beams at a rumored price tag of $50K per. The source also reveals that the estimated completion date for the renovation is July 31, at which time the installation of a new lighting system begins. The cost? Millions, surely, but how many?
Returning to the need for Wagnerian singer and the question ‘What makes one?’.
I can vividly remember a young tenor doing a Don Octavio in Mozart. Before a performance one night, he got into a discussion with a teacher / former singer about whether he would ever sing Wagner. The teacher told him to stand up :and to then inhale and exhale air while the teacher held his body. The teacher told him he had the right attributes of singing technique, body frame , and the air capacity needed….but to take it very gradually, indeed. Ten years later the man became a noted respected lead Wagnerian, as well as doing his Florestans’ and Grimes’ in some of the most noted venues of the World. So size does matter.
. . . which takes us back to my Modest Proposal, so pooh-poohed in some circles. Hear me out. The Old Ways Don’t Work Any More. The days are gone when The Noted Voice Teacher could sit grandly in her studio, occaionally welcoming into her presence some humble votive desiring to partake of her knowledge. Today she’s got to go out and RECRUIT RECRUIT RECRUIT and where better to find guys with the requisite size and stamina than in the athletic department? No, I agree, these guys have never thought of opera as a career. Thanks to our current state of arts education, they’ve never even heard of opera. Thanks to the current state of church attendance, they’ve never been in a church choir or an oratorio society. Those sources have dried up. If we’re going to have voices for the future, we’ve got to go out and find them and that means going to a hovel where you might find a Chaliapin, a turnip field where you might find a Nilsson, or a storefront church in East St. Louis where you might find a Bumbry. We can no longer afford to wait grandly for them to come in; it’s time to go out to them. Great voices almost always come from the hoi polloi, I hate to tell you.
But I like waiting grandly!!
Every single child in America should inspected at birth and again at the onset of adolescence for signs of incipient wagnerismitischlerosis (the ability to develop into a “real” wagner singer – as you might suspect far too many of today’s wagnerians did NOT suffer from this condition, alas).
If this new program works, then it’s on to verdiens tremens.
Bad operatic singing will one day be a thing of the past because of your generous donation.
A good diaphragm is a terrible thing to waste.