The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (29 page)

 

There is a fine line between pushing myself creatively as an artist, by taking on new roles and by trying to find greater expressiveness in singing, and pushing my voice too hard, which means agreeing to a role that will ultimately be damaging. It is essential for any singer to know her own voice and abide by what she knows. It can be very flattering when impresarios tell me that I would make a perfect Salome or Isolde, and yes, I could most certainly sing all of the notes in those roles without any difficulty right now—but only without the orchestra, without emotion, without the stentorian colleagues I would share the piece with, and without the little voice in my head telling me I’d better live up to great past performances, so I’d better “sing out, Louise.”

The greatest challenge I have faced vocally is without a doubt the bel canto repertoire, the roles composed for virtuosic singers in the nineteenth century by Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini. When choosing arias for my
Bel Canto
recording, I was surprised to realize that I had already performed so many of these roles, most of them early in my career, and each of them was an education in vocalism and dramatization: all of the requisite perfection of tone and style of Mozart with a greater range, real coloratura fireworks, trills, and expressive bravura. Add to that the spare plots and my least favorite conceit—the heroine as victim—and only true dramatic commitment will sell these works. However, what attracts me most about this repertoire is the freedom of the cantabile line, which really does hearken back to jazz in my taste, and back to William Christie’s maxim that nothing but the entire expressive gamut will do. One can veer away from the often minimal contribution of the orchestra and stretch and pull the melody to one’s heart’s content, as long as it doesn’t stray too long and the underlying pulse remains. The composers themselves indicated few expressive markings, so what is left? Imagination! How would Amina sound if she was asleep, or awake, in my favorite scene from
La Sonnambula
? What does heartbreak sound like in a voice? Despair? How can tears be expressed vocally? Can the voice speak directly from the heart, without the slightest intermediary? This is the freedom of bel canto, and this is why the recitative of “Ah! non credea” on my
Bel Canto
recording is the work I’m proudest of to date. The late, great producer Erik Smith and I spent hours in the studio finding the most expressive takes, so that we could most artfully flesh out those scenes.

For a soprano bel canto also requires a mastery of singing in the passaggio, the stamina to sing long, dramatic scenes without interludes—six of them in the case of
Il Pirata
. The last page is, of course, always the most demanding, and just when one’s larynx feels as if it’s risen to eye level. It is uncomfortable, to say the least. I always tell young singers to have a sense of leading their tone and not pushing it, using those small points beside the nose, and to keep their sound slim, with as much head voice as possible. (Just as with a piece of luggage, it works better when you pull rather than push.) When the voice is pushed, chances are too much breath pressure is being applied through too small a space. In early lessons, a yawn is usually used to indicate the needed space, but it’s important not to “yawn” too aggressively and push down on the larynx, either. Finally, this must all be executed with enough support to keep the sound buoyed, but not pressed. I stay constantly involved in regulating the airflow as I sing a difficult passage. The process is practically unconscious at this point, but the effort persists: “No, the sound has just turned a bit grainy. Ease off on the breath now,” “Stop pushing,” “Maintain support,” “Lift your chest and relax the back of your neck and trapezius,” “OK, feed a little bit more breath,” “Keep the resonance high.” This is the type of technical attentiveness that will also get me through passages like the final scene of
Capriccio
. The goal is always to have singing be as effortless and as efficient as possible. This requires attention to both how the voice feels and how it sounds. The difficult thing to understand is that harm from faulty technique doesn’t show up immediately, and it might even be the case that it doesn’t feel wrong at the time.

 

Protecting my voice doesn’t mean seeking out undemanding roles, but rather singing roles that are a perfect fit for me. Often what is right for me would be nearly impossible for someone else, and vice versa. I only discovered halfway through a rehearsal period in Paris that I could indeed sing the rangy and very long Manon of Massenet. Until then, I had visions of myself apologizing to the audience on opening night before the Cours-la-Reine scene, delivering a humble speech about not knowing my limitations, and assuring them that they’d never have to see me again, as I beat a hasty retreat. Fortunately, I discovered instead that I had grown into the role, and it would soon become an absolute favorite. What a feast! Manon and I met during a long period of exploration of French repertoire: Marguerite, Thaïs, Louise, Anna in
La Dame Blanche,
Salomé in
Hérodiade,
as well as roles in
Platée
and
Médée
. After English, French is the language I most enjoy performing in, for its nasal vowels help me to maintain the high placement that is safest for my voice, and the fluidity of the vocal line lends itself especially well to singing. I also find myself continually intrigued by the complexity of Manon’s character. Her ability to acknowledge her shallowness and then to go on blithely being shallow is a somewhat refreshing change after all of the archetypally virtuous heroines I usually play. I’m also challenged by the enormous journey she takes, from innocent coquette to runaway adventurer, from fame-seeking gold digger to repentant lover, who finally boldly decides she should have it all, and is punished with imprisonment and ultimately death.

Once I could manage Manon’s vocal hurdles, stamina became an issue, which meant carefully gauging the use of my energy and voice in the early scenes. The first season in Paris, I almost didn’t make it through the final scene in the first few performances and had to drop a few pitches just to survive. I eventually found my stride, as I did during one of my first performances of this role at the Met, when I discovered that I was in an unexpected duet. I made my entrance for the grand Cours-la-Reine scene in the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production’s enormous red corseted dress with wide pannier. As I began singing I heard what I thought was someone joining me from backstage, but in a mocking way. It was a man’s voice, and I thought that it must have been some new stagehand who hadn’t yet been indoctrinated in the distinctive sounds of opera. As it continued, I became more and more annoyed by the distraction—until suddenly I realized that audience members were tittering, for the sound had actually carried out to the house. In that scene the chorus shares the stage with me in tableau, meaning without moving, and in my peripheral vision I saw one of its members sheepishly leading a very large borzoi off the stage. It was then that I realized that my partner was a dog, which had begun to sing with me, or howl. (The audience howled, too, though not in the same way.) For my part, I was more than slightly concerned about the fact that the dog’s high notes were rather good. When the curtain came down, and I said firmly to members of the artistic management who came running backstage, “It’s the dog or me,” I was sure I detected some hesitation.

 

Richard Strauss has become my core composer, in a sense, replacing Mozart. I’ve never completely understood the label “Mozart/Strauss soprano,” because the music is so different, but historically it is true that many Countesses and Fiordiligis have also become Arabellas, Marschallins, and
Capriccio
Countesses, as the roles do require similar vocal weights and, more important, temperaments. For me a stretching of comfortable limits is also important from time to time. A good example is the title role in
Daphne,
which presents a great challenge because it is so fiendishly composed. Four of the five principal roles in this opera are what I would call “extreme Strauss,” with writing that tests the absolute limit of each voice type in range, tessitura, and volume.

Daphne’s tessitura lies uncomfortably high. I sing other repertoire containing higher individual pitches—Daphne’s highest pitch is only a high C—but the average may be considerably lower. This is one of the absolute keys to knowing whether a role is suitable: an appropriate tessitura, not whether the actual pitches are too high or too low, which is a secondary consideration. One of the most important strategies I’ve found to deal with a tessitura that is too high is to use an equally higher resonance. In other words, I’ll sing more in head voice with less mouth and chest resonance in order to remain relaxed and vocally unstressed.

Ten years ago I could not have survived this opera. As my technique has improved, roles such as Manon, Violetta, Daphne, and the bel canto heroines have more comfortably entered my repertoire. Usually singers take on these roles when they’re very young, as the voice tends to get lower and darker with age. I’ve had the opposite experience. Recall the image of the vocal tapestry, in which the higher colors are woven into the fabric of the tone and the lower colors are woven out for the period in which the high tessitura is sustained. Physical relaxation becomes more important than ever in a role like this, which often means being vigilant about stress in and around performances.

Musically, Daphne is slightly more chromatic than other Strauss roles, so it took longer to learn the pitches, and though the text itself is simple, the harmonies move so quickly that it takes the precision and speed of an acrobat just to keep up with the score. When I’m first learning a role, I work simultaneously with the text and the music. In a perfect world there would be enough time to divide these tasks in a more painstaking fashion, but I usually put myself under more pressure than that. A huge role to learn in a month and a high tessitura to navigate were not my only obstacles in preparing this part. The score for
Daphne
is so complex that my first priority was simply finding an accompanist who could sight-read or who knew the music. I can remember a time (and it doesn’t seem like that long ago) when my problem wasn’t so much finding an accompanist as being able to afford one. I always encourage all young singers to study piano, because they’ll save themselves a bundle of money, and the ability to teach yourself your own music is an incredibly useful skill. I have many colleagues who are truly fine pianists, and as a result they have the musicianship that enables them to learn a wide variety of difficult repertoire (although some of the greatest singers in history couldn’t even read music).

A month before we began our rehearsals, in order to get a head start on interpretation, I had a reading session of the score with Semyon Bychkov, who would conduct
Daphne
in Cologne. A great conductor like Semyon will work with a singer to find colors in the voice, along with dynamic variety, rubato, and every other element that distinguishes one performance from another. Semyon suggested, for example, that I emphasize the
schein
(“shine”) in
Sonnenschein
(“sunshine”) with a “smile in the voice,” and perhaps a lingering on the
sch
sound. (A “smile in the voice” is one of my favorite tonal ideas; the effect is produced with more lift in the cheekbones, or an inner smile. Victoria de los Angeles was the best representative of this technique, which is a beautiful way to illuminate a phrase, so to speak.) Likewise, I’ll sing the word
tanzen
(“dance”), which has a dotted rhythm, in a light, springy way. If the word is
Trauer,
which means “sad” or “sadness,” and it’s on a minor chord, then I’m going to lean on that pitch and invest my sound with a much darker quality to bring that word to life.

The most interesting aspect of Daphne’s character is that she begins the opera as a true innocent—unconnected with the human world, and desiring only to be a part of nature, which makes her uncomfortable with her own coming-of-age. Unfortunately, she realizes too late that her childhood friend Leukippos would have been the appropriate suitor for her—too late, because Apollo kills him with a bolt of lightning in their fight for her affection. In the monologue she sings after Leukippos’s death, she matures before our very eyes and ears, her music taking on a dramatic heft that intensifies her grief. This shift in the character of the music shows the brilliance of Strauss as a dramatist. Daphne is finally granted her wish, as she is transformed from human to tree. In the eerily repeated phrases that end the opera I always imagine her voice combining with the rustling of the leaves depicted by the violins.

Arabella, another of Strauss’s great female creations, is entirely human and strong. She knows what she wants and buoys her entire family through a trying financial period, finding solutions to every heartbreak as well. I found her difficult to like when I first began learning the role, as my modern sensibilities couldn’t accept what seemed to be a callous rejection of her other suitors once she decides that Mandryka is
“der Richtige,”
the right one. But once I studied the period in which she lived, I came to appreciate her unusual degree of emancipation. It is
she
who is deciding who will be her mate, at a time when few matches were based on love or desire. Being sensible and highly responsible, she feels that it is her duty to end cleanly her other potential liaisons. In the last act, it is Arabella who takes charge of the situation—not Mandryka and not either of her parents. She forgives his distrust and encourages her family to accept Matteo as an appropriate mate for Zdenka. Arabella’s soaring soprano resolves the humiliation of the evening and of her family, and allows Mandryka to rise to the occasion as well, so that they can forever-more prove the adage that opposites attract. Vocally, this role lies similarly to the
Vier Letzte Lieder,
with some of the same sustained high singing in the stunning first-act duet, in Arabella’s monologue, and in the final scene. I imagine Arabella as a young Marschallin: a woman of great integrity, the very soul of graciousness.