What must I do to become a prima donna? Let us reverse the usual method
of discussing the question and begin with the artist upon the stage in a
great opera house like the Metropolitan in New York, on a gala night,
every seat sold and hundreds standing. It is a modern opera with a
"heavy" score. What is the first consideration of the singer?
Primarily, an artist in grand opera must _sing_ in some fashion to
insure the proper projection of her role across the large spaces of the
all-too-large auditoriums. Those admirable requisites of clear diction,
facial expression and emotional appeal will be sadly hampered unless the
medium of sound carries their message. It is only from sad experience
that one among many rises superior to some of the disadvantages of our
modern opera repertoire. Gone are the days when the facile vocalist was
supported by a small group of musicians intent upon a discreet
accompaniment for the benefit of the singer's vocal exertions. Voices
trained for the older repertoire were not at the mercy of an enlarged
orchestra pit, wherein the over-zealous gentlemen now fight--_furioso ad
libitum_--for the supremacy of operatic effects.
An amiable musical observer once asked me why we all shouted so in
opera. I replied by a question, asking if he had ever made an
after-dinner speech. He acquiesced. I asked him how many times he rapped
on the table for attention and silence. He admitted it was rather often.
I asked him why. He said, so that he might be heard. He answered his own
question by conceding that the carrying timbre of a voice cannot compete
successfully against even banquet hall festivities unless properly
focused out of a normal speaking tone. The difference between a small
room and one seating several hundred is far greater than the average
auditor realizes. If the mere rattling of silver and china will eclipse
this vocal effort in speech I leave to your imagination what must
transpire when the singer is called upon to dominate with one thread of
song the tremendous onslaught of an orchestra and to rise triumphant
above it in a theater so large that the faithful gatherers in the
gallery tell me we all look like pigmies, and half the time are barely
heard. Since the recesses where we must perform are so exaggerated
everything must be in like proportion, hence we are very often too
noisy, but how can it be otherwise if we are to influence the eager
taxpayer in row X? After all, he has not come to hear us _whisper_, and
his point of vantage is not so admirable as if he were sitting at a
musical comedy in a small theater. For this condition the size of the
theater and the instrumentation imposed by the composer are to be
censured, and less blame placed upon the overburdened shoulders of the
vocal competitor against these odds. Little shading in operatic tone
color is possible unless an accompanying phrase permits it or the
trumpeter swallows a pin!