Musical America Blogs

Janice L. Mayer

“Ooh my feet, my poor, poor feet” is Cleo’s Act I song in Frank Loesser’s The Most Happy Fella which I saw six times (yup count ‘em  6 run-thrus!) on my recent trip to Indiana University – more on that adventure in a sequel. In last week’s blog, I interviewed a singer who has performed the bawdy waitress Cleo many times.

Joyce Castle discussed how costuming impacts on the creation of her colorful characters. She said that “shoes make a difference in how you stand and walk. I need to be comfortable, but after that, I know that if I wear heels it will help me walk in a more stately manner and if I have clunky, oxford-looking shoes I will walk with a more measured gait.” When asked about her most memorable shoes, she immediately named the “thigh-high boots I had for my Met debut as Waltraute! Wow – running up that hill in those boots was really something!”

I decided to broaden my survey and ask some other internationally acclaimed singing-actresses how footwear impacts their onstage portrayals

British dramatic soprano Elizabeth Byrne remembers that she had “a wonderful drama and movement teacher at college who used to say a character was built from the feet up. Boy was she ever right! It is very important to wear a really comfortable pair of shoes on stage especially for especially long roles and to be insistent on that, even if the designer has to come up with something slightly different from their original intention.”

 She shared that “I encountered my most memorable experience with shoes during rehearsals for my first Brünnhilde. We Walküries were given what was tantamount to ballet slippers. The shoes proved to be not only uncomfortable, but also unworkable as we were performing on a very steeply-raked stage and they had a very soft sole. The only way that I could get a grip on the rake was to curl my toes very tightly. This ended up being very painful. My calf muscles and Achilles tendon were also burning like crazy and we hadn’t gotten to the Immolation Scene yet!  In the end I had to demand a pair of shoes with a slightly wedged heel to counter-balance the rake.” I ask you, isn’t singing Brünnhilde hard enough without having to fight gravity too? And who would mess with nine spear-bearing women on a rampage? Obviously a costume designer with a death-wish! Even renowned Swedish Wagnerian Birgit Nilsson is known to have said that “the secret to singing Isolde, was comfortable shoes.”

Indira Mahajan in the tile role of Bess at the Opéra Comique in Paris (Photo Olivier Pascaud)

Indira Mahajan, who received the prestigious 2008 Marian Anderson Award, found a way to make being off-balance work for her character. She commented on the 5-inch patent leather platform shoes she was given to wear as the title role in her recent run of Porgy and Bess in Paris, the fashion capital of the world.

“We all know that platform shoes can be treacherous, just ask model Naomi Campbell. Remember the tumble she took on the runway in those amazing Vivienne Westwood platforms? When I first saw the red platform shoes that costumer Olivier Bériot selected, I was petrified. During the rehearsal process I eventually stopped fighting to maintain my balance and, instead, used the ‘off-balance’ feeling as a dramatic choice. The shoes provided me with a really strong place to build distinguishable physical mannerisms due, in part, to Bess’s relationship with drugs and alcohol. Her shoes became a wonderful opportunity to juxtapose her compromised physicality and her emotional instability. Deconstructing Bess’s shoes became a metaphor for her journey throughout the opera and those fabulous red platform shoes became the window into her broken soul.”  Wow, now that’s an intense image!

Soprano Hanan Alattar‘s star is on the rise and not just because of her recent death-defying stilettos! She reported that she also found a way into her first performances in Massenet’s Manon through her heels. “The best character shoes I’ve worn were this crazy pair given to me for Pousette in Los Angeles and Berlin. I had already constructed my character to fit the Marilyn glamour years, but the shoes told me more about this particular girl. She really pushed the boundaries of taste! They were yellow, orange and red, and they were trying desperately hard to make a statement!!! They were really high heels, so luckily I had them to wear in rehearsal. When I saw them, I knew instantly where to go with her personality, because she is supposed to try hard but still have enough ‘class’ to make Manon wish to be just like her!”

Australia’s leading lady, soprano Cheryl Barker agrees that heels can create an impression. “Recently as Emilia Marty (in the Netherlands Opera production of The Makropulos Affair) I wore high platform shoes for my entrance and it helped me to feel commanding and to have attitude.” However, she also agrees with Elizabeth Byrne that  “it is important to have comfortable shoes that fit properly as often these days we have to run and do all sorts of things on stage. We’re also often working and rehearsing for long hours on raked stages.” Safety is also a factor. The original Mimi in Baz Luhrman’s acclaimed Australian Opera production shared that “once when I was doing La bohème I came on stage for my entrance with shoes that did not have rubberized soles and I promptly slipped.”

Cheryl Barker is most usually known for her graceful movements on stage and her entrance as Cio-Cio San in stage director Moffatt Oxenbould’s stunning production from the Australian Opera has been described as virtually ethereal. “Barker enters the stage as the gossamer winged creature-beautiful and fragile.  In an instant we are spellbound.”(Herald Sun) “Shoes make a huge difference in the characterization,” says our Cio-Cio San. “Tabi, the little sockettes, worn as Madama Butterfly help with the particular Japanese-style of walking. One also feels young and vulnerable without high heels.” Becoming comfortable with these specialty shoes and treating them as an integral part of the exotic costume is essential as Butterfly. It certainly has contributed to Miss Barker’s creation of a memorable portrayal; one which has now been enjoyed by audiences around the world.

American mezzo-soprano Emily Golden performed the title role of Carmen in over three hundred performances worldwide. She also values being grounded. “I always liked doing Carmen barefoot in Act I to help establish the earthiness and rebelliousness of her character.” With her ‘characteristic’ candor, she adds: “That said, hopefully one’s character choices are pretty well formed before the costume department ever gets to your feet!” And that seems to be Emily’s bottom line – literally.

By Alison M. Friedman

(The venue-building fever in Beijing is not confined to giant palaces of culture (China National Centre for the Performing Arts) or sports/pop (Wukesong Arena in the university-filled Haidian District). The “reform and opening up” of the cultural sector has allowed the flowering of independent intimate venues as well. I’ve asked my Beijing-based colleague Alison Friedman to blog about one of the newest, the Peng Hao Theatre. —Cathy Barbash)

What do dentistry and theater performance have in common? Besides the sadistic “Dentist” from Little Shop of Horrors, (or the fact that when done badly, both subject one to torture willingly paid for) it would seem not very much. For Beijing’s Dr. Wang Xiang (pronounced “She-ahng”), however, the two vocations have become the warp and weft of his existence. Despite the success of three private dentistry clinics, he felt his life—and Beijing’s theater scene—was lacking something, so he decided to use the success of his clinics to fund a new theater and café space to encourage small-scale intimate performances in the center of Beijing. Tucked in a hidden alley behind the government-run Central  Academy of Drama, Peng Hao Theater regularly packs the house and in less than a year of existence has  become one of the new “hot spots” for contemporary and experimental performance in Beijing. Alison Friedman spoke with the good doctor to ask him why a theater, why now, and what difficulties he encountered along the way.

AMF: What inspired you to create the Penghao Theatre?

Dr. Wang: Because there are not enough small theaters in Beijing. I’ve been to American and Europe. There are over 1000 small theaters in New York City. Beijing just has five or six, and this already is a lot for a city in China. I’ve done some calculations: In one year, I calculated that if one theater in New York City has 100 people a day, across 1000 theaters that is 100,000 people a day, and in one year that’s almost 36,500,000 theater-goers seeing performances. Watching performances affects them, what they talk about, their development and psychological nutrition, their energy, their spirit. This benefits the level of richness and diversity of their creativity, their economic output and consumption, an individual’s charm, a family’s happiness, hell even the quality of one’s love making!

Because there are so few theaters in Beijing, all these talented performers have to book a space at least a year in advance. There are too few opportunities for artists to perform. This was unbelievably depressing for me, this atmosphere felt repressed. Like America’s civil rights, there is a right to pursue happiness, not just material wealth but spiritual wealth, to protect against not just material but spiritual lack – I felt I suffered from this lack in my life. This lack made me feel stifled, choked, suffocated, so I wanted to lash out against this suffocation. Not just for me but for more people. So I thought, do I make performances, or do I create a venue to allow even more people to create and see theater? Which would reach more people and have the larger impact? I decided it was more important to create a theater venue.

Q: What does “Peng Hao” mean and why did you choose this name for your theater?

A: “Peng Hao” comes from the first line of a Li Bai poem. A “peng hao” person is an ordinary, average person. I named my theater this because I think it should be any average person’s right to walk into a theater and enjoy a performance.

Q: Why didn’t you just do theater from the beginning? Why dentistry?

A: I loved literature since I was little. I loved theater. I saw a lot of Soviet theater performances and read a lot of plays. But at that time in history, the Cultural Revolution, universities were closed and I didn’t have other choices. I only had two: one was to go to the countryside to work with the peasants; the other was to join the army. I chose to join the army and from there I registered for university but at that time they didn’t have any performance colleges in the army, only government and engineering colleges. The best program of study was medicine, so I chose that. After university I got my MA, the first generation of masters in dentistry. I was the first dentist in China to implant artificial teeth, denture implants.  So I was very successful and highly regarded. I worked in the National Navy Hospital for many years, one of the best and largest in China, and then in 1996 started setting up my clinics, the first privately-owned dentist clinics in China.

Q: When did Peng Hao Theater open? Why did you do it when you did it? Was it just the right time personally, or did you feel Beijing in general was ready for such a place?

A: I officially registered the theater on September 25, 2008 but we didn’t receive our performance permit until February 17, 2009.

I chose to do it when I did for two reasons, one personal and one having to do with the larger context in Beijing. A few years ago, I just loved to watch theater. I would see 400-500 performances a year, I saw the National Theater Company of China’s performance of Copenhagen over 30 times! I also started an amateur drama club to put on free performances. We rehearsed in my house and I funded everything. At that time I hadn’t thought to build a theater because I didn’t think there was a need, the theaters weren’t booked. Now, there are even more shows that want to be performed but not more spaces. So I felt there was more of a need.

Then my own need became stronger over the years and I couldn’t wait any longer. I was lonely. I had this dread that society was getting more and more materialistic and shallow. This is the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. With the founding, they brought both good and bad. On the one hand, they tried to feed the people who were starving, but the restrictions killed their spirits. After the reform and opening in the 1970s and 80s, China became the world’s factory. It became more prosperous. More people could eat their fill, their material needs were satisfied, but this brought new problems. In order to make sure they could feed the people, the People’s Republic of China had created a system of controls that limited other aspects. Now in this lacking situation, all these material things came in, took up even more inner spiritual space, making it even smaller. Materialism made people even more personally deficient.

I like to see people expressing themselves, this is the most beautiful thing. I don’t want to see so much materialist consumption, eating, drinking, buying cars and houses… I hope even more people can go see theater, this will enrich their spirits! And I won’t be lonely then. I’ll find people who care as much about theater as I do!

Q: Have you funded this theater by yourself, or with other investors? How much did it cost to build the theater, and what is its current operating budget? Do you have an additional budget for presentations?

A: Before I built this, China didn’t have any privately-owned theaters. There were theaters that individuals had built like Southgate Space in 798, but they weren’t able to fill the theaters with performances, and they were too far from city center. They didn’t last. Peng Hao Theater is Beijing and probably all of China’s first privately-owned, privately run, professional theater providing performances for society. 

It’s entirely self- funded. I paid 1,200,000 RMB (approx. USD 175,008) to build it, including renovation, installing the lighting grid, buying all of the light and sound equipment. I have no co-investors; this was all my personal money I have earned from my dentist practice. Our annual operating budget is around 500,000 RMB (approx. USD 73,000), which includes rent at 300,000 RMB (approx. USD 44,000) a year, plus utilities, salaries for my employees, etc. It would have been 10,000,000 RMB (approx. USD 1,458,400) to buy the place so I did not buy, I rent instead.

For productions, there are different arrangements. Some we co-produce, we invest. Another option is we split ticket sales with the performing group or individual.  Our income will not cover operating costs, so I’ll have to add 100,000-200,000 RMB (approx. USD 14,500 – 31,000) each year to cover the deficit.

So this is really non-profit. Even though we sell tickets and we’re not officially registered as a non-profit, in reality we are non-profit. I’m registered as a private enterprise because only recently has China allowed arts institutions to register as non-profit and the laws are not very clear or stable. So I went ahead and registered as a private enterprise. On top of all the costs I mentioned, I still have to pay commercial taxes!!!

Today I was an hour late for your interview because I was taking care of applying for government funding to the Beijing Municipal Propaganda Department and also the Beijing Municipal Cultural and Creative Industries Development Fund. I just sent my materials to them today, to apply for their support. So right now they aren’t helping but I’ve just applied.

China doesn’t have any foundations to support theaters and arts organizations, so I hope any American foundations reading this interview can support my theater! I believe it’s more interesting and meaningful to support a theater, not a one-off performance, as a theater can have a long-term impact!

Q: What steps did you have to follow to get its construction and operation as a venue approved?  

A: It was extremely difficult to set up! It took me a year to find the proper space. It’s just so difficult to find available space in Beijing, everywhere is too crowded! Out in the 798 Art District there is space but it’s too far away. I strongly believe the city center must have culture, but it’s already so crowded!

I went up and down this street [Nan Luo Gu Xiang] knocking on doors, asking if any spaces were for rent. Once I found this space, it took me six months to renovate it. Then there were all the permits and paperwork – paperwork for the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, for the ministries that cover health code regulations, fire hazard regulations, the paper work for the Ministry of Culture…. It took me six months. I legally registered on September 25, 2008 and I received my final permit to allow me to host performances on February 17, 2009. So the process from my decision to open a theater until the day it actually opened took two years.

Q: Do operations of the attached bar help subsidize the operation of the theater space? Do you anticipate the theater will ever be self-supporting?

A: I wanted this theater to encourage audiences to stay after seeing a show to talk. This way the experience could last longer. After you are moved by a performance, you stay and keep talking about it. That’s why I wanted the café. Also to help with income. It helps a little.

There may be a day I don’t have to add money to make up the deficit, but it will never make a profit.  That’s just the nature of small theater in any country. But why do people keep doing it? Because it’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a need like the need to eat.

Q: Tell us about the theater itself. How many seats? Ticket prices? What percentage are your own presentations, what percentage rentals?

A: 60-120 seats depending on how they are arranged and how big a performance space is needed. Tickets cost anywhere from 50 to 100 RMB (approx. USD 7-15), depending on the show. About one third of the shows I produce myself, one third are straight rentals, and one third we split box office to cover production costs. These three different methods are unique to my theater. All other theaters in Beijing are just for rent, they don’t self-produce. Of the productions, I’d say about 60% are theater; 20% modern dance; 20% chamber music.

Q: What are the rental rates? Are they sliding rates, depending on who is renting?

A: There are three options:

1. Rent the space for 2000 RMB (approx. USD 290) per performance.

2. No rental and we split the ticket sales 50/50.

3. Rent the space for 1000 RMB (approx. USD 145) per performance and we split ticket sales 30/70 (us/them).

Q: Who runs the venue and how can someone interested in renting it contact that person?

A: My co-producer, Liang Dan Dan (Jennifer Liang) and I run the theater, along with two or three office and café employees.  In the morning I stop by each of my three dentist clinics. My assistant doctor and the head nurse and different doctors are all quite stable, they don’t need me there all the time. So my mornings are there, afternoon and nights at the theater. Sometimes after a performance we still have production meetings to discuss a script or something, so by 1 or 2am I’m finally done. But the next day at 8am I still have to go the dentist offices.

Interested people can email Jennifer: jenniferliang@sina.com, she speaks English. If they read Chinese, they can visit our website at www.penghaoren.com. We will have an English website soon.

Q: What are your aspirations for the venue for the future? Do you plan to create more new small (or larger) venues in Beijing (or other Chinese cities) in the future?

A: I hope we can have even better performances and even more performances. I hope we can receive government and foundation support. If we have this kind of support, and more audiences who are willing to pay for tickets to see theater, then I’d love to open another one, maybe a larger theater, still in Beijing. I also hope to keep helping the better performances go elsewhere to continue to perform. I will sponsor/produce their tours to other theaters after Peng Hao.

Q: What have been your greatest challenges in creating and operating the Penghao, and what your greatest satisfactions?

A: Finding a location was really a huge challenge. I didn’t want to leave city center, but these spaces are too crowded. So it was the first difficult challenge, it took me an entire year to find an appropriate place! The next challenge was designing the style and feeling. This is the first theater designed from a courtyard; I kept the outer structure then built into it. This is the first in the world making a theater out of a courtyard. This is one of my great satisfactions. The application and bureaucratic procedures are too complicated, especially for the performance permit from the Ministry of Culture. Then all the health codes, fire safety codes, passing those, there used to be no standards for fire safety codes. Those were a huge challenge. Before there were no private spaces that applied for a legal performance permit, the other theaters were commercial or government. The Ministry of Culture had never before granted a performance license to a private theater before. I’m the first. This is one of my largest satisfactions. 

Q: Are there things you would do differently? Do you think other people will follow your model?

A: If I had it to do over ten more times, every time I would still do what I’ve done, choose to create Peng Hao Theater to bring more performances to more people. I think lots of people will follow my model, they’ll want to do this, but I don’t know if they can do it, because it’s really just so hard.

by Cathy Barbash

I’m delighted, no, thrilled to report that Anthony A. Hutchinson will become Senior Cultural Affairs Officer at the United States Embassy Beijing on August 2, and Dale Kreisher will become Cultural Affairs Officer in September.

I’ve known Tony since the winter of 2000 when he served as Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Consulate Shanghai, in which capacity he was tremendously helpful to touring American ensembles and other American cultural initiatives. Not only is he a genuine China Hand, he really truly loves the arts. I’ve only just met Dale, but he seems to share Tony’s enthusiasm, knowledge and commitment.

In the civilian realm, Alison Friedman, who has spent seven years in China working with a variety of cultural entities (Fulbright scholar, International Director of Beijing Modern Dance Company, General Manager of Tan Dun’s Parnassus Productions, etc.) will return to Washington , D.C., this fall for a year as a Kennedy Center Fellow.

That will leave more recent arrival and former Luce Scholar Sarabeth Berman, two years now the Program Director of BeijingDance/LDTX, as our resident American modern dance maven in Beijing.

In other dance news, word has it that SUNY Purchase has been actively looking for a dance partner in China for years, but I’ve not yet heard of any final decision.

Janice L. Mayer

photo credit: 2007 Clive Grainger

Joyce Castle is a chameleon, or perhaps in operatic terms she should be classified as a ‘Camille-ion’:  a leading singing-actress capable of moving from one nuanced portrayal to another carefully drawn characterization by utilizing her consummate theatrical skill, musicianship and vocal resources.  If she were a soprano, certainly Verdi’s tragic Violetta (the operatic version of Alexandre Dumas’s 1852 novel La Dame aux Camélias) would be within her grasp. But as a mezzo-soprano with a repertoire of gypsies, witches and one meat-pie baking loony, ‘extreme makeovers’ are often required.  Last week for example, she moved from the Queen of the Fairies in Patricia Birch’s fully-staged production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s Iolanthe with the San Francisco Symphony directly into rehearsals as the Mother in Menotti’s The Consul for Glimmerglass Opera. How does she make these transitions? I went behind the scenes to do some research.  After all, in last week’s blog some of opera’s most character-full tenors shared their tricks of the trade. Time to hear from one of the ladies, I think.

Joseph Frank in last week’s discussion spoke about languages being incredibly important in creating a character in opera.  Joyce Castle agrees.  “Languages are a skill to be reckoned with for most Americans,” she said. “I had to concentrate really hard on the pronunciation and then learn the languages so that I knew what I was singing about.  Coming from the Midwest, I had two years of Latin; that was all of my public school language training. Eventually I moved to Berlin for a short time, and then to Paris where I went to the Alliance Française every day.  Meanwhile, I was doing everything in French. Sometimes I would wish that I had been born in Europe, I mean how many languages does Nicolai Gedda speak…is it ten?” These days, I encourage my students at KU to attend summer immersion programs in languages in France or Italy.

With more dialects at her beck-and-call than Meryl Streep has films, Joyce Castle moves from Gilbert & Sullivan’s outsized Queen of the Fairies (in a largely British cast – sure, no pressure!) to Queen Elizabeth I in Britten’s Gloriana which she performed in the first American stage production at Central City Opera a couple of seasons ago, to Mrs. Lovett in Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd which she first performed in Hal Prince’s  production and then on to Mrs. Bertram in Jake Heggie’s opera The End of the Affair which was based on a Graham Greene novel. And let’s not forget Scottish Meg in Brigadoon which she performed at the New York City Opera opposite Broadway veteran Tony Roberts. Many American actors would not make a clear distinction between the various English dialects. “I did a lot of work early on. I first trained as an actress with the works of Shakespeare and Bernard Shaw. So I think of the Queen of the Fairies as speaking in heightened stage English.  With Sweeney, I had to hire a diction coach to learn Cockney and listen to tapes. But then Hal Prince cautioned me to pull back a little; that ‘it has to be clear’ and told me that he said the same thing to Angela Lansbury when

she performed the role on Broadway.  It can’t be too much or the audience won’t understand me. One can’t possibly know all of the regional accents such as Mrs. Bertram’s English seaside dialect.”  With a wink, she offers that she wouldn’t “have to work too hard for a Midwest or an East Texas dialect, but there aren’t too many operas set there!”

“Diction is unbelievably important to me.  I want to be understood in German and French or I can’t tell the story. And I have to tell the story. Once I know where I fit into the story from my vantage point, then I can find my way through the labyrinth.  And then of course, if I’m in the character and know what the other people on stage mean to me, I’m home free – really safe – and I can enjoy myself.”  

I asked the mezzo-soprano if she goes back to the original source material when she is portraying an operatic character that has been drawn from another medium? Claire Zakanassian in Von Einem’s The Visit of the Old Lady, which was first a straight play, comes immediately to mind.  “I read the play and go back to any original material I can find.” That amounted to a lot of research when she portrayed Queen Elizabeth I.  I had a friend stay over and after looking at the bookshelves in the guest room, I was asked if “I ever read anything that was not about Elizabeth or the Tudors?! And I read a lot about the life of the Carmelites when I originally prepared for Mother Marie and then later for the Old Prioress in The Dialogues of the Carmelites. At Glimmerglass Opera I had the good fortune to be directed by Tazewell Thompson who drew on his wealth of personal experience having been raised by nuns in a cloistered environment. He had first-person experience in that setting which he was able to bring into the rehearsal room. In Santa Fe, I would go by the Carmelites convent and watch them – and, well, er see what I could see.  Well you don’t see much, and that tells you something too.”

Darren Keith Woods spoke of observing people moving in Central Park for hours at a time so that he could incorporate individualized stances and walks into his characterizations.  I asked Joyce Castle how she developed the physical side of her characters, especially given the wide age range and socio-economic differences of the women she portrays? “Observing is good,” she concurred. “When I was in acting school I would sit in bus and train stations, and cafes to watch people.  Actors need to be observers.  I don’t plan my gestures, except in musicals where there might be a set movement. My physicality comes from knowing the character.  The body will work with the inner story of the character; everyone has physical inner instinctive knowledge and if you plug into that emotion then the body will follow.” Just this week alone she moved from a fictional royal fairy frolicking with young dancers culled from the San Francisco Ballet corps to an elderly war-worn mother behind the iron curtain. I can only imagine that this must be a physical challenge as well as a musical one.

As Augusta Tabor, which she will perform in her eighth production of The Ballad of Baby Doe this fall, she has been confronted with an Augusta with varying degrees of physical limitations. In her first production she was wheelchair-bound by the final curtain. I wondered how this restriction impacted on the character. “Augusta is old and weak by the end of the opera. Even when she walks, she doesn’t walk that well.  That impacts then on how you get up from a chair.  I’ve seen my mother get older and have been in nursing homes and I go back to observing.  Of course, if it is your mother who is becoming more fragile and you’re doing Strawberry Fields (Michael Torke and A.R. Gurney’s opera premiered by Miss Castle at Glimmerglass) and you walk in and sit on a bench, there are things that are inherent.”

Joseph Frank also spoke about musicianship and how he finds piano skills lacking in many of his undergraduate students because they are not given music instruction in public schools any longer. I asked Joyce Castle about her piano background having heard that she started playing at an early age. “I began studying piano at age six and then added cello and clarinet early on.  Later I played the tenor saxophone so that I could be in the jazz band and oboe because I thought it was a cool instrument. But I’m really a piano groupie and have even played my own piano solo as Begbick in Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny and my own cello solo as Lady Jane in Patience. Musical skills are important to develop because then you’ll know how to count. I seem to have a strong suit in rhythm and I like math, which may be why I like to do modern music. I love tearing apart a new score.” The artist who recorded the Old Lady on the Grammy Award-winning recording of Candide added “I’ve been able to ‘assimilate’ roles very quickly as a result: Without missing a beat, I was onstage as Siebel at San Francisco Opera – my first professional role – thirty hours after being assigned the role for the first time.  I joined rehearsals – in Russian – at the Metropolitan Opera three days after being engaged and I didn’t know a note before. I was contracted for my first Baby Doe (Augusta Tabor) two days before rehearsals began. I remember asking Beverly Sills what she missed most about singing and she said ‘opening that new score’ – I couldn’t agree more – it’s thrilling!

Joyce Castle not only ‘heard’ Beverly Sills, she sang with her as well. And she most certainly ‘listened’ to Leonard Bernstein when she was invited to give the first performance of Arias and Barcarolles with him at the piano. She also listens on stage. “Listening is just everything. If I’m in the story I listen to others on stage and I’m listening to my own thoughts as the character.  The rests are also very important – they’re in the music too. They provide time for breath and punctuation; they’re part of the phrase that is emotion and drama-filled.

Other composers with whom she has collaborated are Michael Torke, Judith Weir and Ricky Ian Gordon. “Singing recitals keeps me honest and I give one every year:

1 singer/1pianist.” Often new music is included. “Ricky arranged some songs for me – put some instruments to them and that was fun! Jake (Heggie) came to see me and we talked a lot before he composed Statuesque, and he found a librettist in Gene Scheer who knew me well. Bill Bolcom is now writing a new vocal chamber work for me and we’ve been going back and forth discussing possible texts.”

In last week’s article Steven Cole, Joseph Frank and Darren Keith Woods spoke about the importance of makeup and costuming for artists performing character-full roles. Joyce Castle agrees, “When you look in the mirror and see a different look it gives you so much. I had a wig-fitting today at Glimmerglass and we were discussing which wig ‘fits’ how I feel about this character.” And costumes? Steven Cole would agree with Joyce Castle’s comment that “if you’re in a witch’s costume with a green tongue and a fake nose it will obviously impact on how you stand and deliver.” She adds, “It’s not the same as walking out in a black sequined gown and heels. Shapes will change you too. If you’re wearing hoops it affects how you go through a door and how you sit down. You have to wear them awhile in rehearsal to get used to it.  I prefer wearing clothes to rehearsal that would be like what my character would be wearing onstage.  I try to wear a skirt if my character will be in a skirt, or pants if it is a pants role. And I get my hair out of my face. It helps me and it helps the director see you in the story. Hats are wonderful too; the Cendrillon hats designed by Andre Barbe for my role of Madame de la Haltière were really funny!” I would say, literally over the top! “Shoes also make a difference in how you stand and walk. I need to be comfortable, but after that, I know that if I wear heels it will help me walk in a more stately manner and if I have clunky, oxford-looking shoes I will walk with a more measured gait.” Her most memorable shoes? Nary a false step here, she immediately named the “Thigh-high boots I had for my Met debut as Waltraute! Wow – running up that hill in those boots was really something!”

Joyce Castle has more than risen to many a challenge on stage, and as she anticipates celebrating the 40^th anniversary of her professional career, she looks forward to continuing to ‘climb every mountain’ – even those as high as Valhalla!

The China National Center for the Performing Arts has been open now for a year and a half. While Henry Sanderson’s recent article in the Associated Press covered the basics, I feel compelled both to amplify and correct.

Despite the Center’s newness, it shut down the second half of March, ostensibly for maintenance. However, a reliable source within the organization told me it was really because the marketing staff had convinced themselves that it would be too difficult to attract audiences during the period between the end of Spring Festival and other spring holiday periods and would rather just shut down. Vertical and horizontal integration in arts administration has not yet arrived in China; hopefully such team spirit will develop soon.

Though Sanderson states correctly that the complex is never expected to be fully self-supporting, I disagree with his statement that it gets next to nothing from corporate sponsors. The CNCPA’s development department, lead by Pan Yong, a former Kennedy Center arts management fellow, last year raised 60 million renminbi (US$8.8 million) in cash and in-kind sponsorships. Notably, that amount came 50/50 from Chinese and international sources. As of April, Pan Yong projected the need to raise 75 million rmb more this year, 40 million of which had been already pledged.

The CNCPA is also pursuing arts education and audience development activities full tilt. When we met in March, Director Chen Ping proudly explained that of the almost 1000 public performances last year, a third were not-for-profit “for the public good” presentations. In addition, there were 800 all-ages educational performances, with 320,000 in attendance; tickets for these weekend educational concerts cost the equivalent of just US$1.50. There were also over 400 lectures on classical music, plus several hundred more on other performing arts topics. The CNCPA may have endured a prolonged gestation; now they are trying to make up for lost time.

The National Symphony Orchestra recently joined the growing list of major American and international orchestras appearing at the CNCPA. My colleague Anne Midgette, who accompanied the tour, observed that what she’d expected to find in China but didn’t seem to encounter were huge audiences eager to hear Western music. However, she did feel she’d found a more discriminating, more sophisticated audience, and I think the absence of a huge audience for the NSO is directly related. The Chinese are highly brand sensitive. During the CNCPA’s inaugural season and a half, Beijing audiences have already heard the top orchestras in the world.  Audiences are now savvy enough to realize that there are status hierarchies between orchestras as well.

Midgette also wondered how the young audience members could afford concert tickets. In fact, many tickets are still sold to corporations or given to government entities or sponsors, who in turn give them away. The well-connected music-loving young and even not-so-young music lovers are expert in finding the freebies. As for those taped pre-concert announcements she describes, they hold a special place in my heart. Full disclosure: 11 years ago, my family and I visited the soon-to-open Shanghai Grand Theatre. Their artistic administrator, remembering my husband’s professional bass-baritone resonance, kidnapped him into the sound booth. His rich and amused-sounding voice welcomes audience members to this day.

When musical theater was called musical comedy, the creators had one goal in mind: to make the audience laugh. Today, as shows are often laden with drama and heavy-handed material, the music and lyrics naturally suffer, and the story takes over. It’s not that only comedies have good scores, but if the score is written around the story and not the other way around, the score may take a hit (or conversely, the score may lift otherwise poor musical text). Today’s musical comedies are often written with slapstick, pastiche-filled tunes, which are good, but writers who write dramatic and serious music receive more critical praise than do their comedic counterparts. Who are today’s great musical comedy writers and what does their music sound like?

Lucky for us, in addition to the number of great musical tragedies that have premiered over the last few years, there are a number of great musical comedies. This all came to mind as I began to unearth the script and score of The Full Monty, which I am music directing for ReVision Theatre  on the Jersey Shore this summer. Not only does The Full Monty have a great comedic script (by Terrance McNally), but its score (by David Yazbek) is quite superb too. Yazbek’s style is distinctly “Yazbek” and inherently comedic (but also touching), in the same way that Leonard Bernstein had his own distinct style of comedy music in Wonderful Town, On the Town, and Candide. Think about how many contemporary composers you can identify just by hearing his or her songs, in the way that you can identify a Gershwin, Porter, Loesser, Bernstein, or Sondheim tune.

Janice L. Mayer

Magic is synonymous with the unexpected, and discovering a treasure-trove of illusionists’ artifacts midpoint between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe was a real surprise to me. As I mentioned in last week’s blog installment, Dante’s restaurant is bedecked in period posters, one of which promotes “Lee Grabel, Acclaimed World’s Greatest Illusionist [in his] Famous Mystery Review with an All-Star Cast of Assisting Artists.”

That last phrase really caught my attention: “All-Star Cast of Assisting Artists.”  In the opera field, would we ever see a three-sheet in front of the Metropolitan or San Francisco Opera houses that advertised “Placido Domingo as Canio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with an “All-Star Cast of Assisting Artists?”  I doubt it. However, the story needs Beppe to set the stage (literally), to provide contrast to Canio and to offer the audience some comic relief through his antics as Harlequin. As tenor Joseph Frank defines a secondary role “it is there to add color and interest to the plot,” and as tenor Steven Cole adds “to show another aspect of the leading character.” He elaborates, “I know that my role is there because the composer decided that at that point in the opera they needed my character for a particular reason. I have to discover how the composer perceived the role in each situation. Is my character there to show another dimension of the leading character, to add personality or comic relief, or to hold up the action while the audience has a chance to prepare for what is coming in the next scene? For example, the Witch in Hänsel und Gretel is there to illuminate the children’s evolution as they journey through the forest.”

I spoke with three established ‘character tenors’ in order to appreciate the role of the supporting artist more fully: Steven Cole, Joseph Frank, and tenor turned impresario – Darren Keith Woods, who is now General Director of Fort Worth Opera. Sort of our own Ping, Pang and Pong, or well actually two Pangs and one Pong (Ping is a baritone in Turandot‘s musically-tricky trio). Mr. Frank suggests that a supporting artist must “provide the foundation on which the big stars interact; you have to be someone that the major players will want around. Once you have gained your colleagues’ trust, you will heighten their ability to take chances.” Darren Keith Woods concurs, “we are there to take care of the principle cast.  They are there because they are great singers. The supporting artists have to provide dramatic variety and stability at the same time – to make sure that the show goes on. It’s next to impossible what these guys do.”

All of the tenors mandated arriving at rehearsal completely prepared and “with a bag of tricks.” Joseph Frank describes that “directors don’t have time to deal with secondary players.” Steven Cole sneaks a little time away from rehearsals for his first Don Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro to elaborate, “no one has time for me to make a mistake. Directors recognize that I am someone who is experienced and they assist me in determining my character’s boundaries.  Once they give me my orientation in the scene, ‘they can let me go.’ For example, I need to know from the director “when I enter the room, whether I know what is going on already or not?”  

Ever curious, now I want to peak inside their special ‘bag of tricks’!

Improvisational skills are stashed there, for one thing. Joseph speaks of listening as a critical skill. “I’m always engaged and listening on stage.  Even if it’s not your role, watch and hear what the other characters are doing and saying.” Darren agrees “you have to be quick and respond immediately. In the rehearsal process I was always discovering what I could build off of other colleagues and what they were doing in the scene.” 

And this involves physicality; number two in our collective bag of tricks. Darren uses the role of Mime in Das Rheingold to illustrate this point. “It’s a challenge to make this grotesque character seem real.  I think of his hands. Surely, they must be gnarled. How would he pick up things with his hands? On the opposite extreme, I worked with a Geisha to know how to move gracefully and operate a Japanese fan, so that my Goro (in Madama Butterfly) would be authentic.” “Artists have to know their bodies well,” agrees Joseph Frank. “I have never forgotten that the great director Jack O’Brien once said to me during Tosca rehearsals ‘Show us THE back.’ I realized then and there, that as Spoletta, I didn’t have to be looking downstage front to be a sinister character; my stance could create that impression.” However, the physical demands provide challenges to the singing as Darren describes “sometimes you have to contort your body, perhaps walk hunched over, which in effect closes off your chest. You have to learn how to get your support mechanisms to work in order to be able to still sing.”

Ahhhh singing. These characters appear in operas, after all. Mr. Frank, who teaches voice at San José State University along with continuing his international performing career states “you can’t bark your way through character roles.” ‘Comprimario’ does not mean vocal compromises are allowed; “the Tanzmeister (in Ariadne auf Naxos) has to have a

B flat – PERIOD.” Mr. Woods agrees, “You have to have a beautiful sound.” Interestingly both Steven Cole and Joseph Frank came to opera from the concert world, and both continue to perform in concert and recital. “It keeps the voice fluid” according to Mr. Frank. Today with the increased popularity of Baroque opera, the catalogue of supporting tenor roles that require vocal flexibility has grown enormously. And a high level of musicianship can often open the door for a young tenor as it did for Steven Cole when he stepped into a concert-version of Eugene Onegin on 48-hours notice with Seiji Ozawa and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He was still a student of Phyllis Curtin’s at Tanglewood when opportunity knocked.

Ariadne is traditionally sung in German, Tosca and Butterfly in Italian. Languages, yup they take up a big part of the bag o’ tricks. Joseph Frank makes fluency a priority. “First and foremost a supporting tenor has to have a great ability with languages. Often the words in our parts are sung fast and with accents and colors. For example, Valzacchi in Der Rosenkavalier has to sing Strauss’s score with bad German because he’s actually Italian.” Steven Cole admits that if he had his education to do over again, he would have studied languages, languages and more languages. “One of my first engagements was in Aix-en-Provence and I found myself singing a role in a Russian opera in rehearsals that were being conducted in French!” Yikes, I imagine that was quite a mind-bender for this American.

Speaking of American artists, what advice would these experienced artists share with a young tenor beginning to pursue supporting tenor roles? Darren Keith Woods remembers sitting on a bench in Central Park for two or three hours at a time simply observing people and how they walked. “I would also suggest finding people who have done these roles for a long time and get them to be their mentor. I covered Joseph Frank in three roles while I was a Santa Fe Apprentice and I asked him to coach me. I wasn’t shy about asking the great ones if they would help me with my character development. Not only did it help my art, but my first five or six jobs trickled down from the senior guys.” Continuing in the practical vein, Joseph Frank suggests learning to do your own makeup. “These days most regional companies cannot afford to import the level of makeup and wig companies we had when we were coming up, so learning to make yourself up is perhaps more important in these roles than in the leading roles.” Steven Cole also encourages young artists of all types to realize that they are a small business – each and every one- and that they have to understand the practicalities of finance and branding, just like any other small business.

Neal Ferreira, the 2009 recipient of Boston Lyric Opera’s Stephen Shrestinian Award for Excellence, is one of these emerging tenors exploring the supporting tenor category. Joseph Frank cautions that “you can’t back your way into character roles.” Steven Cole agrees that “you don’t become a character tenor by default.” Neal takes this advice to heart, as does Darren Keith Woods’s protégé Jamin Fabiano. Neal shared his story that he started as an actor in and around Providence (RI) and was reluctant to get into opera “because he thought it was not about real acting back then.” Former BLO General Director Janice Mancini DelSesto and the director of their Les Contes D’Hoffmann production (Renaud Doucet) “recognized my dedication to the theater in opera. They suggested that I explore character roles and I am grateful that they have opened this door for me by giving me my first major role, Spalanzani. I approach my characters as an actor and these parts, such as the Monostatos that I just took on in Boston’s Magic Flute educational outreach program; allow me to play a lot more. Of course I continue to study voice and to stretch my instrument. I’m just twenty-eight now and it has taken a while to get my voice up to my acting level.”

Neal’s questions for the experienced supporting tenors were about handling auditions and repertoire choices. Steven humorously describes his repertoire as “hit it and quit it” roles. Joseph Frank adds that “character roles are the molecules of the operas. They are mini-operas. You only get one crack at them.” Darren Keith Woods concurs “character actors have to develop in five minutes what soloists develop over three hours on stage.” Auditions are a lot like that, so they’re great practice for character tenors. That mindset could really take some of the psychological pressure off of the audition situation. And their audition repertoire reflects the breadth of the roles they portray. Steven Cole always used the Witch for his auditions, but that might be too big of a sing for some young performers. Aside from the Baroque repertoire, Joseph Frank suggests Pedrillo (Abduction), Tanzmeister (Ariadne), Arbace (Idomeneo), Triquet (Eugene Onegin), Shuisky (Boris Godunov), Hauk-Sendorf (The Makropolous Affair) AND the Magician in The Consul.

Interesting isn’t it, that a character tenor role brings the magic into Menotti’s opera and the comedy into Pagliacci?  So remember the next time you hear Canio exclaim the famous operatic phrase ‘La commedia e finita’  –  that there would have been no comedy without a dedicated supporting tenor crafting the role of Beppe!

By Andrew Hertz

There has been a consistent dearth of women on the production end of musical theater since its earliest roots. Of course, female actors have always been utilized and written for, but much of the canon strikingly lacks women in its production roster. There are only a handful of women writers (Mary Rodgers, Lucy Simon and Marsha Norman, Lynn Ahrens, and Jeanine Tesori, to name some of the few), however, the prevalence of women in musical theater, is still not up to par (although the talent is).

The Washington Post featured an interesting article last month on the “rarest role in musicals, the female director.” Last evening’s Tony Awards were chockfull of male winners in categories where a male or female could have won. Yasmina Reza won the Tony for Best New Play for God of Carnage, but otherwise, men swept the Tony Awards for best direction, choreography, etc., both for straight plays and musicals. As a field that has always been accepting of groups that are marginalized, women have still not found equality (save actors), even in the musical theater world.