| A
premier singer and master teacher here tells other singers how
to
get the most from 151 famous arias selected for thier popularity
or their greatness from 66 operas, ranging in time and style
from
Christopher Gluck to Carlisle Floyd, from Mozart to Menotti. "The
most memorable thrills in an opera singer's life," according
to the author's Introduction, "may easily derive from the
great arias in his or her repertoire."
This
book continues the work Martial Singher has done, in performances,
in concerts, and in master classes and lessons, by drawing attention "not
only to precise features of text, notes, and markings but also
to psychological motivations and emotional impulses, to
laughter and tears, to technical skills, to strokes of genius,
and even here and there to variations from the original works that
have
proved to be fortunate."
For each aria, the author gives the dramatic and musical context,
advice about interpretation, and the lyric—with the original
language (if it is not English) and an idiomatic American English
translation, in parallel columns. The major operatic traditions—French,
German, Italian, Russian, and American—are represented, as
are the major voice types—soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone,
bass-baritone, and bass.
The dramatic context is not a mere summary of the plot but is a
penetrating and often witty personality sketch of an operatic character
in the midst of a situation. The musical context is presented with
the dramatic situation in a cleverly integrated way. Suggestions
about interpretation, often illustrated with musical notation and
phonetic symbols, are interspersed among the author's explication
of the music and the action. An overview of Martial Singher's approach—based
on fifty years of experience on stage in a hundred roles and in
class at four leading conservatories—is presented in his Introduction.
As the reader approaches each opera discussed in this book, he
or
she experiences the feeling of participation in a rehearsal on
stage under an urbane though demanding coach and director.
The Interpretive Guide will be of value to professional singers
as a source of reference or renewed inspiration and a memory refresher,
to coaches for checking and broadening personal impressions, to
young singers and students for learning, to teachers who have enjoyed
less than a half century of experience, and to opera broadcast listeners
and telecast viewers who want to understand what goes into the sounds
and sights that delight them. |
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| Martial Singher was director of the voice
and opera department at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara,
and served on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music, Chicago
Musical College, Mannes College, and the Aspen and Marlboro Festivals.
He performed with the Paris, Metropolitan, Chicago, and San Francisco
Opera Companies and the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. |
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