Musical Theater = that which causes post-play depression

My last gen ed class of college is on a very familiar and special subject for me: Musical Theater. Having grown up on Broadway music and occasionally indulged in the theater bug at the local Village Players Theater, this is a class I love despite the distant aspect of it (like my statistics class, THDA 440 is online this summer). For the first assignment, I had to describe what "musical theater means to me:" which is to say, the dual association of the classic Broadway shows and Andrew Lloyd Webber 1980s hits which my parents enjoyed, and the offshoot of the tradition of opera, my favorite discipline in the arts. My dad was an avid amateur musical actor and some of my earliest memories are of him learning lines, going to rehearsals, and watching “old” musicals on VHS. My start on the stage was with him (Mr. Bumble, in an impressive costume he handmade) in "Oliver!" - my brother and I were 2 of the 3 smallest orphans in the cast, and I learned just how bad I am at choreography and how depressed I get when a show ends! There is something so engaging about working on music, dance, and words collaboratively. The interaction with the material and your fellow actors, not to mention the audience, is compelling and consuming enough to leave a vacant space in your life when it is completed. I probably won't do much musical theater in the future, but the teamwork and the music/words interface are two of "my favorite things."

Opera blog : Likely Impossibilities

http://likelyimpossibilities.blogspot.com/ A great read about all things opera- thanks for posting!

Prima la musica, dopo le parole; or Opera and Acting

Wort oder Ton: the great question at the center of Strauss’ last opera “Capriccio” beckons us to consider which is of greater importance in an opera – the words or the music. Even when not directly attempting to answer this question, opera singers confront it in their interpretations for the stage. Should the demands of the score take precedence over those of the script? Some of my favorite singers have weighed in on this question.

My portrayals are based entirely on the musical score. I cannot go beyond, or outside, what the composer has written because I feel a character right from the opening orchestral bars…[the music] immediately suggest[s] what lines your interpretation should take.  – Nicolai Ghiaurov, in Helena Matheopoulos Divo: great tenors, baritones, and basses discuss their roles.

Ghiaurov hailed from Bulgaria, as do so many other fantastic opera stars, and his voice is my #1 favorite of all basses (Rene Pape is my favorite living bass). His philosophy of acting is drawn organically from the score, painting his character with the colors of the instrumental and vocal writing provided by the composer. Ghiaurov sang most of the great bass roles and is best known for Mephistopheles (Gounod), Boris (Mussorgsky), and Filippo (Verdi). http://www.ucis.pitt.edu/opera/OFB/stars/ghi01.htm This site has several samplings of his long career – check out the Rachmaninov excerpt from 1956!

What [Tullio Serafin] said that impressed me was:  "When one wants to find a gesture, when you want to find how to act on stage, all you have to do is listen to the music. The composer has already seen to that. " If you take the trouble to really listen with your soul and with your ears — and I say soul and ears because the mind must work, but not too much also — you will find every gesture there. And it is all true, you know. – Maria Callas, BBC (April 1968) on Maria Callas : The Callas Conversations

Callas is of course renowned for her acting as much as for her voice. Her philosophy agrees with that of Ghiaurov, basing the interpretation of a role on the expressive content of the music. She stands in great contrast to other sopranos who shared her repertoire of bel canto music, who allowed the “beautiful” part of bel canto to carry the interpretation of roles such as Lucia or Anna Bolena. Callas knew the dramatic power of these operas could be tapped through a close look at the music and that a great opera singer is more than a songbird.

There are other theories of opera acting which rely more on the physicality of the actor than on the music. I personally agree with Ghiaurov and Callas, because their approach can be extended past vocal music into the instrumental repertoire. Not every composer has coded a dramatic interpretation into his or her non-vocal music, but observing what clues the composer leaves us and remaining faithful to them is a good philosophy for pianists and singers alike.