The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (10 page)

Several different talents contribute to making a great teacher. Diagnostic skill is the first and most complex. Analyzing a voice and discerning why it isn’t functioning freely, beautifully, and artistically are like trying to dissect a snowflake. Each instrument is entirely different from all the others, because each mind and each body that produce it are different. Because the instrument itself can’t even be seen, one can only guess at the underlying faults by reading signals of tension, hearing fine gradations in use of resonance, and unlocking inhibitions and creativity in each young mind. The second major requirement is the ability to prescribe solutions for whatever these vocal issues are. If a singer cannot, say, descrescendo without the tone’s cutting out, or if she cannot sing above the staff at all, a teacher must have at hand the relevant exercises, images, and physiological explanations that might address the problem. And the solutions for one singer may not work for another. Among the important realizations I had in my own days in the practice room was that if one route to any one phrase didn’t work after days of trying, then the exact opposite route should at least be explored, as well as every alternative in between, as counterintuitive as that often seemed.

I sometimes think it’s a miracle that anyone learns how to sing well, given the complexity of the instrument. It’s not surprising, for example, that most great singers do not become great teachers. Some will openly admit that they haven’t a clue how to explain what they do, and some can explain
only
that, without being able to apply it to other voices. The greatest barrier between the teacher and student is the involuntary muscles that produce the voice, muscles that have to be coaxed into fine coordination so that they can produce an even, beautiful sound extending through a singer’s full range. But another hurdle to overcome is terminology. It can take six months to develop a common language between teacher and student. What does she really mean when she says she wants me to have “higher resonance”? What does anyone mean by “more support”? Someone can tell you that you need to relax, but relax where? Relax
what
? Oh, and now you want more energy at the same time? When I feel energized I also feel tense. How am I supposed to reconcile those demands?

A third requirement is the interpersonal factor. A teacher needs to be able to read her students. She has to be able to know who is sensitive and who is thick-skinned, who is bullheaded and who is stubborn. She has to teach differently for different personalities and for different stages of development. She must also have a keen sense of how she is being perceived. If she is so aggressively negative with a young student that he begins to shrink into a little ball at the side of the piano, singing smaller and smaller, and worse and worse, then the teacher should have the sensitivity to know that her approach isn’t working. She’s going to have to try another approach, which may simply mean being encouraging on that particular day. Some teachers have achieved enormous success by doing nothing more than stroking egos and holding hands.

And lest you think that the students are absolved of all responsibility, they face a challenge as well. Some of the greatest talents have the most fragile egos, unable to accept even the gentlest criticism and explaining away every fault. Needless to say, these singers don’t go very far. The student’s job is to stay open-minded, to quell the knee-jerk defensiveness we all possess in the face of suggestions for improvement, and to maintain patience when faced with a process that is often slow, confusing, and frustrating. On top of all that, the student must possess an unerring intuition about whether the instruction fits his particular needs. If not, he must be able to risk the necessary confrontation and move on to another teacher. Many young talents enter a studio, only to emerge three or four years later singing worse than when they began. A singer colleague of mine who had more drive and energy than I ever dreamt of having, not to mention tremendous vocal ability and intelligence, just didn’t have the right intuition about what sort of teaching would benefit her most. She gave up after ten frustrating years, several teachers, and an enormous expenditure of money and hope. If singing were easy, that would never happen. Perhaps it’s not intuition that guides a student but luck, or most likely a combination of both. Why did I have the good fortune over a period of ten years to keep finding the right keys to the doors, while my colleague failed? Although I used to joke that if I wasn’t born with a particular vocal flaw, I would do my best to seek it out and try it on for size, eventually I found my way. Ultimately, it’s the student who has to stand alone in the practice room and explore, using her creativity and imagination to flesh out the teacher’s suggestions. In the end, singing isn’t a science, but a highly cultivated, almost perverse use of our natural voices, and it requires persistence.

Sitting in my hotel room at two a.m. after a recital and perhaps a CD signing in which a hundred fresh young faces waited to meet me, after flipping through the 169 cable channels at least five times to wind down, I often wonder just what will become of those bright talents when their dreams of a life on the stage aren’t realized. A conservatory director recently related to me the story of a young New York City taxi driver whom he complimented on the music she was playing on the radio. After he introduced himself, she burst into tears and said, “I’m a Juilliard graduate, and this is the only work I can get with my degree!” He rightly commented to me that her talents and top-flight education would have been put to better use helping our dwindling audiences grow, so that she could indeed at some future time have a chance to perform. One major study observed that in recent years, we have done a magnificent job of turning out fabulously trained performers with no place to play. More encouraging news is that employment options and a real strategy for developing the arts are becoming part of many conservatory curricula. My young singer friend eventually moved to Colorado Springs and started her own music school, using her vitality and drive to produce a new generation of starry-eyed musicians and, more important, providing a wonderful service to her community and, just perhaps, a new audience for the future.

 

 

 

 

H
AVING FINISHEO my Fulhdght year, I tried to stay on in Germany and auditioned for
La Traviata
at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich. I couldn’t quite sing Violetta, but in my typical fashion, I rolled up my sleeves and tried out for everything. This time, no matter how hard I worked I couldn’t get hired anywhere. One morning I was just about to head for the train to audition for a small opera company in Bern, Switzerland, when they called and canceled, leaving me standing with the phone in one hand and my ticket in the other. At another audition for a small theater in the far north of Germany, the intendant said, “I’m terribly sorry, but your G is wrong! You need to fix your G. Don’t even
think
about having a career until you fix that pitch!” That was certainly the most original complaint I had ever received.

Starting out as an opera singer, you have two ways of establishing a career: one is to get management directly and begin the audition process, and the other is to get exposure through winning competitions. Managers were not beating down my door, so I entered as many competitions as I could. During my time in Germany I had two incredibly fortunate opportunities. First, I was chosen by Eastman to represent the United States in a competition in Chile. I went to Viña del Mar, which is on the ocean, not too far from Santiago, where I lived in a hotel for a month and seemed to have one extraordinary experience after another. I was chased by Gypsies in the park and later befriended an American astronomer and his Chilean wife, who lived at the top of a cliff that hung directly over the Pacific. The other international competitors and I all ate together at my hotel every night, and we had a ball, even surviving an earthquake, which hit during one poor tenor’s audition. I often wondered if that prompted him to move on to another career or if he is the reigning Pavarotti of his country. I performed to the best of my abilities and won second prize.

I was, in fact, the greatest second-prize winner of all time. More than Manon or the Marschallin, the Underdog has always been my favorite role. I loved the comfort of being number two—just high enough to make me feel validated but not so high that I felt the air getting thin. Being number two was a powerful incentive to keep me continually working and striving. I’m so goal oriented that I don’t know how my career would have turned out if I had found real success at such an early age. I felt as if the jury was saying to me, “You have promise,” rather than “You’re ready to have a career.”

Not long after that, I was asked to represent Juilliard in South Africa. I had a lot of doubts about going there during apartheid, but I wanted to see things for myself. I lived in Johannesburg for a month with an Afrikaner family while I sang in Pretoria. There was political struggle and unrest in the country, yet at the same time it was an absolute paradise of physical beauty. The trip broadened my experience in a way that makes me believe strongly that all young people should travel if they possibly can. In South Africa I had the opportunity to reprise my role as the Underdog, coming in second to Marion Moore, an African-American soprano. Her victory made an enormous statement, and I was grateful that I was there to see her win. It was a rare meeting of music and politics.

Even though I relished second place, I was not above taking some pleasure in a win. I finally landed first prize in a competition in Verviers, Belgium, at the end of my Fulbright stay. Rodney Gilfry, the wonderful American baritone, and I were there together, staying with a family who didn’t speak a word of English, and between the two of us we managed about three sentences of French. Rodney was hysterically funny, and for the two weeks we were there I never stopped laughing, which I’ve always thought was the reason I won. We saw one contestant faint dead away two phrases into her aria and wondered how much of a deterrent this would be to her, like the tenor who suffered the earthquake in Chile. Years later Rodney and I premiered Stanley and Blanche in André Previn’s
A Streetcar Named Desire;
he still makes me laugh.

I went on to sing in several competitions in Germany, but I never got very far, which once again proves the theory that my greatest victories were often in losing. If I had won first prize in a major competition in Germany, I most likely would have stayed in the German system. Looking back, I’m sure my voice would not have withstood the rigors of a
Fest,
or fixed contract, with demands to sing many different roles, sometimes back-to-back, because my technique simply wasn’t secure enough. The German network of theaters functions quite differently from those in the United States and the rest of Europe in that it is somewhat insular. Unless one is fortunate enough to break out, one rarely has an international career. The trade-off is a civil servant’s security, great benefits, and the only place in the opera world where a singer can practice his art full-time, and in one country. It is a great foundation for raising children and a fulfilling home life.

During my Fulbright, I sang in the Munich competition, which is a high-flying operation with television coverage, contracts, and prize money. I made it, I believe, to the third round. The following year I went back and was released in the first round. The only one as disappointed in my performance as I was, was my pianist, who said, “You know, Renée, just go. Don’t do this anymore, just go work.”

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, a big part of my problem wasn’t
how
I was singing but
what
I was singing. I was still being far too ambitious about the arias I chose. There was no such thing as a career adviser back then, so I didn’t have anyone guiding me on how I should be presenting myself. I thought I would impress people by performing extremely difficult music, so I sang Lulu’s aria by Alban Berg, the first-act scena from
La Traviata,
Constanze’s arias, and other music that was simply beyond me vocally at that time—not to mention obscure Wolf lieder. I feared I would fail to attract any notice if I sang simple pieces, but really, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. If I had sung a soubrette aria—say, “Deh, vieni, non tardar” from
Le Nozze di Figaro
—and shown that I had mastered it, just presented the sound of my voice, then I think things would have come together for me much sooner. Still, I’m glad success didn’t come quickly, because I really couldn’t count on my high notes yet, and sooner or later anyone who hired me was going to find that out. It took a few more years of struggle before I could approach a high note without a creeping sense of panic. Was it going to come out this time, squawk, or abandon me altogether?

 

Since there was nothing left for me in Germany, I came back to New York for another semester at Juilliard. By now I was completely confused. Of the many vocal souvenirs I’d brought home with me, one was Schwarzkopf ’s covering, a technique Beverley didn’t believe in and wouldn’t teach. She was adamant that I give up the concept altogether, which sent me into a complete crisis. Being someone who likes to take polls, I was forever going up to people and saying, “Okay, covering sounds like this”—then I’d sing them a line—“and not covering sounds like this”—and I’d sing the same line again. “Which one do you prefer?” It was all about sound, tone, and projection: What’s more beautiful? What works better? Ultimately, I realized that Beverley didn’t mind covering per se, but had been urging me to avoid it because she didn’t want me to
over
cover. It all goes back to teachers’ and students’ finding a way to communicate about the voice. It’s a bit like talking about God: you almost have to talk around it, because there is no exact language for the thing itself. And the lack of an exact language is always going to cause a great deal of misunderstanding. The frustrating thing is that while I’m perfectly capable of making a decision by myself on most subjects, I can’t remove my ears from my body and place them in the back of the room for a vocal check. What we hear while we’re singing just isn’t true, so we are always dependent on someone we trust to take the role of our “outside ears.”