Encounter

This past weekend, I found myself at a party with three opera

stars. I’m not going to name them; no reason they should go to a party, and

then get talked about in public. But they’re singers anyone who goes to the Met

would recognize. And this is worth blogging about, in part because of a comment

someone posted to my “

href="http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2007/05/nuns_with_manicures.html">Nuns

with Manicures” post.

The person commenting asked what I’d thought of an

intermission feature in the Met’s live movie-theater

presentation of Puccini’s Il

style='mso-bidi-font-style:normal'> Trittico. This

was a short film about the Met’s National Council

auditions, showing one of the first rounds of that competition, complete with a

skeptical judge who didn’t think there would be many singers good enough to go

on to the next round. A friend of the commenter thought this was a terrible

thing to say, especially if the Met wants to bring new people to opera.

I disagreed, which will hardly surprise regular readers. For

one thing, we’re not going to be credible — not even remotely — if we pretend

that everything about classical music is wonderful. But, beyond that, singers

do vary. Some are good, some are bad. And hearing a major opera star sing in

someone’s living room is a striking reminder of what the standards for “good”

really are.

So here’s what happened. A lot of musical people were at

class=GramE>this party — opera stars, opera singers who do smaller roles

at the Met, other people in the classical music business, and one

coach/accompanist, who seemed happy to spend much of the evening at the piano.

Often when he’d start some opera aria, one of the singers would start singing.

Though not, for the most part, the major stars. They’re unlikely to sing at

parties. They need to save their voices.

But one of them did sing, a soprano

who sings roles like Tosca. Which is to say that she’s not a

lyric soprano. Her voice is bigger, more potent.

And here’s the lesson she taught. (Not that she meant to

teach anything. She was just having fun.) She might not be your favorite

soprano. Or she might be. I’m not sitting in judgment. But if you heard her do

Tosca or one of her other big roles, maybe you’d think that she’d gone past

some of her limits, whatever those might be. This is normal. Anyone might go

past their limits, singing major opera roles. Those roles are difficult.

But heard in a living room, this soprano was just about mesmerizing.

Somehow the pianist and singers got started on The Sound of Music. A lyric soprano sang the title song. And then

the Tosca soprano sang “Edelweiss.” All at once, anyone could hear what it

means to have a major voice, and an equally major ability to use it. The size

of the sound, the richness, the control, the focus, the commitment — these were

stunning (and all the more so because it all sounded so easy). You knew you

were hearing someone who knows how to sing, someone with a voice you won’t

forget, someone who delivers on a very high level.

And that’s what the judges at any competition are looking

for. Or, rather, the potential to get that far, since young singers aren’t

likely to be there yet. You can get into arguments about who’s going to make

it, who’s going to take the further steps that

professionals, hearing them sing when they’re young, know they have to take.

But not many people would disagree about what the goal is — or miss it, when it’s

plainly displayed just 15 feet away.