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Singing in Italian: Alan Montgomery Coaches Opera Students
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OBERLIN OPERA THEATER PRODUCTION (Sung in Italian) with the Oberlin Chamber Orchestra Jonathon Field, stage director; Paul Polivnik, conductor |
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For almost a month, Alan Montgomery, assistant music director of the Oberlin Opera Theater program, has coached opera students in preparation for performing Mozart's classic Così Fan Tutte in Italian, the language in which it was written.
"Opera often requires singers to act and react in a language not their own," Montgomery explains. "In the last 20 years, more and more opera companies in the U.S. and in Europe have performed opera in its original language. Jonathon Field, director of Oberlin's Opera Theater program, wants to ensure that we train singers for today's market, and creating a large production in costume, in an original language, provides invaluable training for our students. Last semester's opera production was Roméo et Juliette, performed in the original French. This semester, it's Così in Italian. Our alumni are proof of the program's success as our alumni singers are quite active in national performances (at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, San Franciso Opera, St. Louis Opera and Santa Fe Opera, among others) and in the film and recording industries."
Montgomery explains the process. "The first thing I do is to take my Italian score and write a word-for-word translation. Then, when singers come to me, they have a word-for-word translation right in front of them. The initial goal is to make sure all the notes and words and rhythms are correct. Beyond that, I have to make sure that what they are singing comes across to an audience as a language, not isolated syllables. Musical styles, too, comes into play. Mozart and Gounod, to name only this year's featured composers, aren't sung in the same style.
"In Così they also must sing in ensembles and part of my job is to put those ensembles together, focusing on balance (one voice's volume relative to another voice) and in articulation (when two people must sing the same rhythms in the same way). I also help singers realize dramatic possibilities when they vocally explore such theatrical devices as whispered lines, voices played in disguise, or even pauses in recitatives for maximum dramatic impact. In this opera, one of the biggest difficulties is found in the secco recitatives, which must move at normal speech tempo and sound like ordinary conversations."
He adds, "Of course students could learn from listening to recordings, but in that way, they also learn the vocal mannerisms of the recorded singers. The students wouldn't complete the personal groundwork that is required to make a character their own. Instead, they would be borrowing a pale carbon copy from someone else who had done the work. Opera gets really exciting and challenging for singers when they must learn languages, in addition to swordplay (as in Roméo et Juliette) or flamenco dancing (as in last year's production of Carmen)."
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