The Inner Voice: The Making of a Singer (30 page)

Capriccio
’s Countess falls, perhaps, somewhere between the two—still young but intelligent, witty, and searching for love and the essence of art at the same time. I have come to adore this score, having been indoctrinated in its subtleties. Underneath the rapid fire of this conversational text is as much desirous rapture as one finds in any of Strauss’s operas. Phrases in both Flamand’s and Olivier’s declarations of love haunted me every hour of the day throughout the Paris Opera rehearsal period when I first sang this role. The trick is to know
Capriccio
well, since these moments are too fleeting to catch easily on first hearing. I also imagined Strauss to be burying himself in the “longing for beauty of our thirsting hearts,” as the Countess sings in the penultimate scene, when he composed this piece in 1942.

The role that breaks my heart is the one that expresses loneliness. It’s very easy to become the Marschallin while I’m singing her. Forget about the inevitability of the end of her affair with Octavian: it’s her isolation, her crisis of time and beauty, aging and losing her sense of self-worth, that are so crushing, and that are fairly universal concerns for women. When she looks at the clock and asks it to stop, I can identify with her predicament, for I’m no less affected by that clock than she. The chances are slim that I’ll die of tuberculosis or be strangled to death by my husband, so while those sorts of dramatic roles can be exhilarating to play, they don’t lead me to look into the mirror of my own life. But playing out the Marschallin’s grief, her fears, and finally, her heartbreaking dignity—those are the moments when I feel the most exposed. There are nights when it can be hard to admit those fears to myself, much less to a crowd of strangers, and on those nights it can be equally hard to leave her sadness behind at the end of the performance.

 

When I canceled my scheduled debut in
La Traviata
at the Met in 1998, I regretted having backed out of the production since, like all diligent students, I had been conscientious about turning my papers in on time. Violetta is an extraordinarily demanding and complicated role, with a long history of brilliant interpreters, and I knew that when I got to it I wanted to give it the full force of my attention, and not let it fall at the end of the most difficult year of my life. When the Met kindly rescheduled the performances for the fall of 2003, the Houston Grand Opera equally graciously agreed to allow me to premiere the role there some six months earlier.

I have seen
La Traviata
performed many times, and I’ve always felt strongly that the vocal demands the role makes on the soprano are so enormous that it’s difficult to get far enough past them to concentrate on Violetta herself. The role is generally acknowledged to require almost three separate voices: the lyric coloratura of act 1; the
lirico spinto
of act 2, scene 1; and the lyric soprano of act 2, scene 2, and act 3. If sopranos like myself find “Sempre libera” uncomfortable, then the rest of the role will come as a gift; conversely, sopranos who love act 1 will find the remainder of the opera to be a difficult dramatic stretch. As an audience member, I have also always wanted to love Violetta more. I wanted to see her vulnerability and to root for her and feel crushed by the heartbreak of her situation; I wanted to believe that Alfredo’s love could make her well. As a singer, I wanted to get to a place where I felt so in control of the music that I could think beyond it and find the dramatic essence of Violetta, leaving open every possibility for the interplay of my imagination with the role. For example, I had always thought that Alfredo would present her with a flower at the beginning of act 2, which she would tenderly put in her hair. Otherwise there are few opportunities in the opera for the couple to show their happiness and the basis for their intense love. Whenever I thought about interpreting this role I thought about the flower, how it represented the freshness of Violetta’s life with Alfredo in the country, and how deeply she felt the joy of being alive. I very often imagine dramatic moments in the staging while learning a role, even if it’s difficult to achieve all the goals I set out for myself in an actual performance.

One of the primary reasons I longed to perform Violetta was for the opportunity to sing “Dite alla giovine,” which occurs at the moment in act 2 when Violetta succumbs to Germont’s demand that she leave Alfredo. For me it is the most heartbreaking music in the opera, and rather than making this the stormy confrontation we might expect, Verdi turns his heroine’s sacrifice into something that feels entirely intimate. Through the music, we can see her baring her soul; we can feel her vulnerability. I have always pictured Violetta taking the flower from her hair and crushing it unconsciously in her hand, just as her happiness is being crushed, in full awareness that she is dying. Violetta is a woman of tremendous integrity, unlike Manon, who is cheerfully decadent and has only glimpses here and there of the moral road not taken. Violetta makes the right choices at her own expense, so we feel she is victimized by class and circumstance and the men who love her. She is one of the most sympathetic characters I have ever played, while at the same time fully three-dimensional and therefore endlessly interesting to inhabit night after night.

Much of the information I need to create a role comes from the music itself. Verdi’s writing constantly gives the impression of breathlessness, which correlates perfectly with both the symptoms of Violetta’s disease and the excitement of new love. It took many performances before I began to explore fully these tiny pauses in the vocal line. While each scene, each phrase of Violetta’s music offers a range of choices, both musically and dramatically, the second and third acts are most comfortable for me—although most of the opening act is a joy to sing and, in a sense, a wonderful warm-up for the rest of the opera. But in an unusual choice, Verdi closes act 1 with Violetta alone onstage, in a scene that requires both stamina and strength, not to mention a high tessitura and no interludes for rest. Ultimately, I decided the only way to survive this and be vocally consistent was to lighten the color and weight of the high Cs in the cabaletta, and then proceed cautiously in the final pages of the act. The end requires enormous concentration on these technical challenges, which are made all the more difficult by the fact that they must be sung with a wanton air. The reward for pulling this off is, of course, the rest of the role, which is an absolute treasure.

I was helped enormously in my preparation for Violetta by my discovery of several books on the subject of courtesans in nineteenth-century France. I was surprised to learn that these figures were not prostitutes as we imagine them today, but women who lived alongside the crème de la crème of society in lavish lifestyles. In their fine homes they hosted some of the greatest minds of the day—poets, composers, men of power. They were turned out to the highest standards of fashion, they had the best carriages and jewelry, and they wielded power and influence over the men who admired them. If they were fortunate, they managed to save enough money to live on through retirement, or they had generous patrons who continued to support them through their later years. The less lucky courtesans died in their early twenties of tuberculosis, or consumption, as it was then known, a disease that left them thin and pale with blooming cheeks—in short, looking quite stunning. This research subsequently led me to Marie Duplessis, the real-life courtesan who is often regarded as the model for Violetta. Marie was a French farm girl whose father abandoned her by the age of fifteen after her mother died. She went on to become the toast of Paris, even conducting a love affair with Franz Liszt, who cherished her memory for the rest of his long life. She died at the ripe old age of twenty-three.

To help shape my performance I also took up my usual practice of polling, and I asked everyone what they thought about Violetta. Charles Nelson Reilly was helpful in discussing the spittoons she would have placed around her apartment. He also came up with a number of small tasks for her to perform, such as pouring tea for Germont and hiding pills in her bloodstained handkerchief. Even the movie
Camille
offered valuable insights. I loved Greta Garbo’s performance, her frail beauty, and her sadness, which are so touching against the Baron’s stern coldness. It’s useful to seek inspiration from all available sources and absorb their influence, for the more I have tucked away in me, the more likely I am to come up with my own ideas on the spur of the moment.

Of course, when a soprano goes looking for inspiration, one of the best places to start is with other sopranos. Historic recordings are essential resources, and when I start preparing a new role I want to listen to every interpretation I can get my hands on. The beauty of listening to historic recordings is that one can hear authentic Italian and hear just how clearly style has changed from sopranos such as Tetrazzini, Muzio, Melba, Olivero, Farrar, Caniglia, Carteri, and Ponselle. Performances were far more original and by today’s standards sometimes even eccentric, but what a joy to hear so much personality shining through in a work we already know so well. I don’t love Callas’s studio recording of
La Traviata,
which strikes me as oddly careful, almost pristine, and lacking in all the qualities for which she’s famous. Her live recording from La Scala with Carlo Maria Giulini, however, is wonderful and compelling. My favorite
La Traviata
recording is that conducted by Carlos Kleiber, with Plácido Domingo and the Violetta of Ileana Cotrubas, who has a shimmer in her voice that projects vulnerability in spades. I listen to these recordings and analyze the performances to see what secrets I can cull. I don’t mind stealing an especially moving turn of a phrase or dramatic idea, and other times I learn equally well what
not
to do.

I may study too much, as I still engage in a constant battle with myself as to whether as an actress I should be simple or layered, histrionic or direct. I go back and forth between these two alternatives on almost a line-by-line basis. One famous Violetta offered help directly. For me Renata Scotto always displayed remarkable musical intelligence and artistry. Her acting, imagination, and use of the text made her a fascinating artist to watch and hear. She generously agreed to coach me on the role of Violetta before I went to Houston and was especially helpful with language, the way to use words most effectively. Singing in Italian isn’t as easy for me as singing in French or German, because I speak those languages, and therefore I was grateful for the guidance from a native speaker.

One of the wonderful things about Violetta is that she is so mercurial a character that she can be played in many different ways. When I first sang the role in Houston it was fortunately under the direction of Frank Corsaro, who had very original things to say about her. In this production, for example, Violetta was angry and bitter in act 1, drinking too much and staggering across the stage with a Champagne bottle in one hand and a glass in the other, which made her not entirely attractive. There is much validity to this interpretation, because the truth is, Violetta has a great deal to be angry about. Just being able to think of her in a new way gave me the freedom to keep exploring, and I went infinitely further with her than I would have on my own. Violetta is a different woman altogether in the Met’s production, and I knew I was prepared and flexible enough to accommodate this version thanks to my experience in Houston.

 

If I had one wish as a performer, it would be to divide myself in two for a night so that I could be both onstage and in the audience, watching myself perform. If I could judge myself from the theater objectively and determine which turn of phrase was most successful, which look, which gesture, I could improve my interpretation. While it’s helpful to sing in front of a mirror, and having a teacher in the audience provides a useful critical voice, there is nothing that reveals the strengths and weaknesses of a performance quite so clearly as videotape. I remember the first time I sang the Countess at the Spoleto Festival in Italy (back to Italy again!) with a girlfriend. The local newspaper dubbed us the “two ladies from Baltimore,” which implied all too clearly that we lacked certain essential aspects of nobility. When I had a chance to see a tape of the performance, I was shocked to see how ungainly I looked onstage. A large part of the problem was how I used my hands, which unbeknownst to me were full of tension, with my fingers spread wide apart and thumbs sticking straight up. Seeing that tape taught me to observe how other singers used their hands and conveyed a sense of delicacy. I had to learn to release the tension, especially in my thumbs, and gesture gracefully.

Athletes have the advantage of instant replay and game tapes that can be studied later. I really believe that if I could watch more performances, I could be a much better performer than I am now. Unfortunately, the rules are such in theaters that no recording or videotaping is allowed for fear that illegal copies would be sold. Every time there’s a telecast from the Met, however, three scratch versions are made before the final taping, and I’ve learned so much about acting and performing just from studying them. Brian Large, who directed the Met telecast of
Otello,
helped me immensely when I nearly vaulted out the window after viewing the first scratch tape. The improvement between this initial effort and the actual taping was immense, because he helped me to find the best angles and use of lighting. Further, I took copious acting and performance notes after each viewing. These tapes are as painful for me to watch as it is for most people to hear their voices on an answering machine. But I force myself to do it, because without such direct feedback, I cannot continue to improve other than by guessing and second-guessing.

 

 

 

 

A
S MUCH AS I long to know what a production looks like from the house, most audience members wonder how the whole business of preparing a performance looks from backstage. The relationship between the world behind the curtains and the operagoers in their velvet seats is a little like that between the flaming hot, frantically busy, and completely well-organized kitchen of a five-star restaurant and the elegant customers who are enjoying their meals. The two tableaux seem so disparate that you could hardly imagine them sharing the same building on the same night, except for the fact that everyone is there for the same reason—in one case, the food; in the other, the opera.