Stand Up Straight and Sing! (27 page)

To this day, I find the film of this production of
Oedipus Rex
to be one of the few truly fine opera films available. The young musicians of the orchestra were honored to adhere to Seiji’s every musical suggestion and the collaboration amongst all of us was a wonder: rare and inspired beyond ourselves.

OF COURSE, THOSE
who work with singers must understand and respect that we are musicians who carry the musical instrument inside the body. I have found that far too often, stage directors for the opera envision what they wish the stage to resemble, with no understanding of or willingness to explore how their vision melds with reality or how it will affect the musicians with whom they are working. Such was the case during one production when a young colleague of mine was having a moment with our director, who was demanding that the singer run up a series of stairs while singing. Now, their discussion had nothing at all to do with my own role, but I was in busybody mode and things were reaching an unpleasant level, even though only slight changes were needed. With the hope of calming the waters, I took a moment during one of our rehearsal breaks to make a suggestion to the director in a cheery “Let’s talk about this” manner. I relayed that it was simple physics, and the physiological use of the breath made it possible to run
down
a flight of stairs and sing, but that running
up
the same flight of stairs while singing was not something that one could manage easily. A singer with empty lungs from having run up a flight of stairs against gravity would need a few seconds for physical recovery: only then could there be singing. I understood the dramatic intentions here, but there were real physical limitations to realizing these intentions.

And yes, against his will, I made a friend of this director. And my young colleague performed fantastically.

One must consider, too, the equally fascinating art of dance as it relates to the body as instrument. Some invaluable lessons were gleaned in working with dance great Rudolf Nureyev, whom I had long admired. We had come to know one another in the 1980s, and found ourselves together in Paris in the mid-’80s while I was performing Purcell’s
Dido and Aeneas
at the Opéra-Comique. He was present at practically every performance, giving me helpful hints and notes after each one. Once, he stated that a performer’s back “has something to say as well,” and that even if one’s back is toward the audience for a time during a performance, the stance of the dancer, the tension in the body, must make it clear that the performer is in full attention—never at rest, even if one is not actually singing or dancing at that very moment. This one statement from him has traveled with me to many productions. And this energy is visible in practically any film of Nureyev’s work. You can hardly take your eyes away from him, even when he is not moving at all and has his back to the camera. Wonderful.

The lessons continued when I sang from the orchestral pit while he danced on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. It was during these performances that I learned to establish a tempo in complete collaboration with the dancer. Keeping that tempo, even in the highly romantic and soul-stirring music of Gustav Mahler’s
The Songs of a Wayfarer,
was essential. There is no room for improvisation or flights of fancy on the part of the music makers. A certain number of steps bring the dancer to a certain place both in the choreography and on the stage. He might wish to improvise one evening, but the support, the music, must remain the “magic carpet” on which all of this can take place.

Nureyev was a fine musician in his own right. I was once present when he conducted the complex Prokofiev
Romeo and Juliet
orchestral score, and, by Jove, he knew what he was doing. Admittedly, he had danced Romeo many times, but one could see that conducting this score gave him immense pleasure. I have to say that I was thrilled to witness this. It was doubly thrilling that the illustrious Margot Fonteyn was onstage—not in her signature role at this point, but the circle of life was completing itself: the two of them were making art again, together.

Of course, it is equally powerful when the art exposes not only your heart but the very things in your wide world that make it sing. The brilliant dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones is truly one of a kind in this regard. In the days when performing artists were not at all reluctant or hesitant to use their public platforms for advancing their ideas on social and political issues, Bill T. would have been amongst like-minded peers. As it happened, he found himself often on the frontlines of such discussions and actions without a lot of company. I admire this fearlessness in him. His artistic achievements leave me rather amazed at the number of his “firsts,” and the altogether stunning work that has emerged from his mind and his body. Bill T. is unique, too, in that he is not one who places physical standards on the body type of a dancer. No one is too tall or too short, too wide or too thin to be taught to move gracefully. He believes with all his being that it is the soul that is on display in dance, and that the physical self is but a conduit. A vessel.

Working with Bill T. on
How! Do! We! Do!,
which premiered at New York’s City Center in 1999, was a revelation: I witnessed the depths to which he was prepared to reach in order to find that thing that would satisfy his idea of a movement, a gesture, the lighting, the appropriate apparel. I learned, too, after some resistance, to do something that dancers do all the time, and that is to count dance steps in uneven numbers. It may sound simple, but believe me, it is not, if you are also working hard not to seem as though you have no coordination at all. I managed to relax and take in many new thoughts and to simply allow Bill’s brilliance to speak.

The result was an evening of sheer joy in movement, talk, and music, all of which seemed totally and completely improvised, even though we had worked together for months. One of a kind, indeed. In our show, we offered some of the stories of our lives in poetry, movement, and song. Bill sang a little; I moved in tandem with him (I would not be so bold as to say that I danced!). We shared our love and deep admiration for our own art forms, as well as those beyond our individual disciplines—because love is easy to share, love is easy to demonstrate, love is easy to accept when the whole heart is involved.

Long live art, long live friendship, long live the love of life!

L’île inconnue
, Les nuits d’été • H
ECTOR
B
ERLIOZ
Island of the Unknown

***

8

The Song, the Craft, the Spirit, and the Joy!

“THE LORD’S PRAYER”

Our Father, which art in Heaven,

Hallowed be Thy name,

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

Give us this day, our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses

As we forgive those who trespass against us

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever,

A-men

I am asked often who my favorite composers are—which of the songs I sing in recital or the roles I perform on the stage are my most beloved. This, I find, is unusually simple to answer: all of them! I could not possibly say that I prefer Wagner or Strauss or Berlioz over Schubert or Mozart or Brahms. Ellington over Gershwin or Cole Porter. I sing the music—and this is really true—that I love. There is so much music in this world, I cannot think of a single reason to perform anything that does not give me pleasure and that fails to give something back to me. All of this giving out, this grateful sharing with the audience, is replenished. I am refilled by the music, by the very act of singing!

Many different factors are at play in my choosing repertoire: chief among these is whether or not the music will expand my thoughts and my horizons, and increase my knowledge and understanding of my craft. I am certainly drawn to beautiful melodies, or perhaps it is that the text is so beautiful and I am so grateful that someone has set those particular words to music, that I add that song to my “to do” list immediately. Sometimes, I might find myself wanting to sing a particular piece in order to perform with a particular ensemble. The ways of finding repertoire are endless and great fun.

I am surely open to suggestions. It was my pal Michael Tilson Thomas who said in about 2007 that I should think about the music of John Cage, whose centenary would arrive in 2012. He was sure I would find this music challenging and enjoyable.

And it happens that he was absolutely correct. We have been having the best time performing this music in various places with members of the San Francisco Symphony. We performed at Ann Arbor, at my former school there, the University of Michigan, and at Carnegie Hall. Plus, I have realized a great fantasy in working with Joan La Barbara and Meredith Monk, both of whom had the opportunity of working directly with John Cage. What a group!

I find it difficult to respond to the question of my creative process, as I work, I would think, in unconventional ways. I work first alone at the piano, and delay working with my piano accompanist or with the conductor until my own ideas about the composition have come together, at least to a degree.

Language is of course extremely important to me. The only language in which I sing that I do not speak or that I have not studied as a language is Hebrew.

Long ago I purchased a book with the wonderful title
Hebrew in Ten Minutes a Day.
The publisher neglected to mention how many
decades
of ten-minute sessions this might require. When I received the joyous invitation to perform and record Bartók’s
Bluebeard’s Castle
with Pierre Boulez, I learned to read Hungarian. I had to do this! It was an utterly different preparation process than rehearsing an opera written in French, for instance. I had tutors on both sides of the Atlantic working with me from the same textbook so that each would know where I was in my studies when our turn to work together came. It was marvelous, like being in school again.

I ONCE GAVE
serious consideration to taking a year off and preparing Racine’s
Phèdre,
the play, to perform onstage, as I was so enamored of the words. And then, as mentioned earlier, when the opportunity arose to sing the role of Phèdre in Rameau’s opera
Hippolyte et Aricie,
and I discovered that the libretto used the precise wording of Racine, I did not hesitate to accept. The production in Aix-en-Provence gave me the added opportunity of working with two new opera directors at the time, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. We worked diligently together on the three scenes of Phèdre, and I am thrilled that there is video documentation of the results, as to date I have performed this role only at that festival. The actual director for the production, Pier Luigi Pizzi, was happy to have the three of us working away on the stage during the height of the afternoon sun, when no one else wished to do anything other than have a good lunch and a siesta. In hot sun and all, we mapped out (or, in theater jargon, blocked) the scenes and went forward from there. Pizzi left us to our own devices. It was a pleasure to work unhurried and in music and words that provided their own cooling, calming atmosphere to that very warm stage.