“ALWAYS ALLOW YOUR VOICE TO ASSUME THE
QUALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE
REPERTOIRE YOU ARE SINGING, RATHER THAN
IMPOSING UPON THE DIVERSE REPERTOIRE-YOU ARE
PRESENTLY SINGING-YOUR CONCEPT OF THE KIND
OF VOICE/SOUND YOU FEEL/BELIEVE YOU HAVE!”
(A hint ... read it out loud a couple of
times!)
Please forgive the “bold face” type, but it
is only there to emphasize the strength of
my conviction regarding how important I feel
this concept may be to the way you approach
each of the many different types of music
available to you.
When passing through the rehearsal halls and
stages of my career, it was always
fascinating to me how individual singers
perceived themselves as to their particular
“fach,” a German word classifying opera
singers as to vocal range, timbre, color and
the weight of a given voice, “Lyric,
Dramatic, Spinto” sopranos, being examples
in point. The great sopranos in opera, such
as Maria Callas (for her technical
expertise, not necessarily the quality of
her voice) gave me the first glimmer of this
concept with her great attention to ‘what it
was she was saying!’ I remember the first
time I heard her on a record given me by
Peter Duchow, International Public Relations
for Capital Records, who gave me her
recording of Il Barbiere di Siviglia. She
was a “lyric coloratura/mezzo sublime! In
subsequent years, she sang Medea, Tosca, Il
Trovatore, etc. and there was essentially
nothing she couldn’t do.
Then there was the more lyrical soprano like
the lovely Anna Moffo who ran the gamut from
Musical Comedy, Operetta to Grand Opera. I
remember our first time together on the
recording stage at Webster Hall, below 14th
Street in Manhattan, when we were recording
the Treasury of Great Operettas for Reader’s
Digest, with the RCA Victor Orchestra. We
met and had recorded our first “one take”
song fifteen minutes later, We sang The
Desert Song, Rosemarie and were both on the
Showboat album as well. She chose to sing
Julie instead of Magnolia and it is still
one of the best stylistically!
Our last singing was with her as Tosca to my
Scarpia, in Tampa, Florida nearing the end
of her career. She called me to ask if I
thought it was too heavy for her and I
assured her she would be just fine with it;
she sang it beautifully, an example of just
‘bringing to the singing’ what the
repertoire demanded.
If it pleases you to go to my website, there
are a number of songs/arias where I call
upon my days of singing pop, and the
occasional aria at the Horn in Santa Monica.
For contrast with my “operatic” persona, you
might slip down to the Audio portion on my
website and sample a few of my offerings.
The Lerner and Loewe Concert has Johnny
Green’s favorite of all his orchestrations
written for baritone; Gigi. In the rehearsal
at UCLA with the Roger Wagner Chorale, when
I heard the building of that great group to
the word “Gigi” ... I couldn’t make sound,
it was so overpowering. Johnny fell off the
piano bench-for a very funny affect-and told
me that Bob Merrill and Earl Wrightson had
done the same thing the first time they had
heard it! Listen to The Heather on the Hill,
They Call the Wind Maria, the Cabin Scene
from The Unsinkable Molly Brown with the
vivacious, wonderful Ruta Lee, My Defenses
are Down and The Girl that I Marry, from
Annie Get Your Gun, Rhymes Have I, from
Kismet ... and Easy to Remember and Where is
the Life that Late I Led, from Kiss Me Kate,
on R F in Concert. There is something
different required by each of them and the
“lyric is the thing!”
And finally, you might enjoy my aria from my
In House debut at the Met, Voila donc la
terrible cité ... from Thais, with Beverly
Sills, where I start the aria fifty feet up
stage-no microphones at the Met, and 3200
seats, 60 piece orchestra-and have to
compete with five French Horns, holding a
note an octave higher than the one on which
I start the piece. But ... it was better
than the first night when the Maestro nearly
blew me off’n the stage!
Then, if’n ya ain’t had enuff, listen to the
Pescatore from La Gioconda and Si vendetta
... from Rigoletto, with Gianna Rolandi from
the N Y City Opera. It might just give ya
nose bleed ... or, perhaps a new perspective
of “one voice” ... but ooohh so many
different things you can do with it!
I Am a Cabbage, from Sesame Street, anyone?
In R F in Concert ... it’s fun and ... it
might even be worth it!
