Musical America Blogs

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.

Janice L. Mayer

How many of us remember Lily Tomlin center stage on Broadway portraying her loveable character, bag-lady Trudy? She held up a can of Campbell’s soup in one hand and a print of Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Can in the other and pondered “This is soup and this is art. Art. Soup. Soup. Art. No, this is soup and this is art.”

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend I drove with friends from Sacramento along Route 5 to Lake Tahoe. We stopped for lunch at an Italian Restaurant, Dante’s, en route. I should credit their recent stellar write-up in the Sacramento Bee for our dining choice, but actually it was because they were dog-friendly and my usual sidekick, Fiona (a King Charles Spaniel), was along for the ride.

Dante’s chef and owner, Kevin Cairns, was an amateur magician and his penchant for illusion is evident in the décor. Period posters promoting acts such as “Lee Grabel Acclaimed World’s Greatest Living Illusionist” line the walls and his tricks-of-the-trade are in showcases. These days Kevin’s magic happens in the kitchen where he masterfully slices sausages in half instead of svelte assisting artists. We certainly appreciated the results of his culinary art, and the enthusiasm in his son Dante’s presentation of a couple of magic tricks taught to him by his Dad. (A third trick is still being routined; it may be ready to showcase, if you drop by later this summer.)

How and what we choose to showcase as art has been a question for me for many years now.  As a former exhibitor at Western Arts Alliance and the trade shows sponsored by the many presenting service organizations in America, the question was raised in my mind time and time again.  I will never forget the WAA conference where my booth was directly opposite an agent representing a magic act.  As an animal lover, I was distressed watching the video loop of a bunny being shot out of a canon over and over again. I finally had to ask about the bunny’s welfare, and was comforted to learn that there were actually two look-alike rabbits used in the act! (Shhh, I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone.) As a small business owner and an artist manager representing thirty-six classical musicians, I was appalled. Needless to say, having a circus barker on the aisle deterred many a prospective presenter from traveling down our row. And those that did ‘brave it’ were not really oriented toward presenting the carefully curated vocal recitals that I was offering. I had a similar experience at the Midwest conference another year when I had the ‘good fortune’ to be assigned a booth next to giant puppet-people.  It took an intrepid music-lover to get around them and talk with me about Schubert!

So do we draw a line between entertainment and art, and if so, where? Should the shows be juried? And if so, what artistic authority draws the line in the sand? I think most would consider the legendary Salzburg Marionette Theater to be an artistic enterprise, but then what about my encounter with the grotesque giant puppet people? Is sawing a ‘Vanna White-esque’ magician’s assistant in half, art? What about ripping apart a young apprentice in ‘The Donald’s’ Boardroom on his hit television show The Apprentice – art or entertainment (or, dare I suggest, neither)? As proposed by some song words from Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, do we need to present “Something for Everyone?” And if every form of amusement exists co-equally, then is there still room to contemplate the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen on our own artistic journeys as Gustav Mahler would suggest?

By Janice L. Mayer 

I confess that I’m addicted to Law & Order.

Special Victim’s Unit is my favorite, but Criminal Intent distracts me just as easily. I blame this new habit squarely on a friend in Houston. I used to watch Anderson Cooper 360, but when the real world issues seemed unfathomable, we agreed that it seemed better to tune into a show that solves a problem in less than sixty minutes!

The other night I was zoning-out in the blue-ish glow of another TV homicide, when it turned out that the murder was solved by evidence found at the crime scene: a violin bow. What, a classical music reference on commercial television? Now the episode really had my attention!  Let’s forget the fact that the bow was used in an unspeakable act, or that the murderer was tracked down through the improbable clue involving the uniqueness of the violinist’s bow hair fibers. (Most violinists replace the hair on their bows every three months or so, depending on how much they practice. There are only a few sources of the materials used, so the concept that the hair on the murderer’s bow was especially distinct is, shall we say, highly suspect.) Never mind, let’s not muddy the waters with facts. Somehow a violin captured the script writers’ attention enough that the instrument became central to the story line.

I’m told that more people choose to play the violin than any other instrument, so it’s capturing a whole lot of people’s attention these days, not just the writers of a television drama. Why the violin?  I decided to take a closer look.

Violinist Kevin Lawrence, an alumni of The Juilliard School and a faculty member at North Carolina School of the Arts, recalls being seduced by the instrument when he was in public elementary school in Massachusetts. In third grade a string teacher came to the school to recruit music students and players for the school orchestra. Kevin recalls that “I was amazed at how the bow and strings interacted and made a sound; the creation of sound was fascinating to me.” He convinced his parents to rent a violin through the school program and he began group lessons with a group of beginners. In fifth grade his family relocated to Bergen County, New Jersey. An initial disappointment that the system did not offer a string program was more than overcome when it was discovered that Beverly Somach, a former child prodigy who was a Concert Artists Guild Winner in 1953 and one of a very few students of the celebrated violinist, Jascha Heifetz lived in the community. Private lessons began at the Lawrence family house.

Kevin’s violin study was largely a solitary pursuit. Aside from his teacher, “nobody I knew had any connection to classical music. I grew up listening to all kinds of music, certainly not just the violin masterpieces. We didn’t talk about music in the family. It wasn’t talked about at school. I spent my practice hours trying to control the instrument and make it sound the way I wanted it to sound. For me it was about making a sound that pleased me.”

As he began his last year of high school, Kevin had been accepted to the North Carolina School of the Arts, but chose to enroll at the Pre-College Division of The Juilliard School instead. He found himself in the midst of “a lot of kids who shared the same passion and excitement, but who had been working very hard for their whole childhood – it was a reality check!” At Juilliard, he was stimulated by his classmates and by the cornucopia of concert opportunities now open to him in New York City. “I remember seeing Isaac Stern play the Beethoven Concerto at Avery Fisher Hall and many concerts by the New York Philharmonic. And at Juilliard, The American Quartet had just won the Naumburg and my classmates were Cho-Liang ‘Jimmy’ Lin and Robert ‘Bobby’ McDuffie – people who are now at the highest level of the profession; it was incredibly stimulating.” But perhaps more poignant, he realized that “music was not his own private universe, and the process of opening up to other musicians and ideas began.” Upon reflection, this realization at the age of seventeen seems to have been a pivotal moment, and informed his future career as an advocate for chamber music.

A residency at the University of Virginia, led to a position at Baylor University in Texas and eventually to the faculty at North Carolina School of the Arts – ironically the school he had turned down to continue his studies in New York.  But perhaps most influential in his studies were the fourteen summers he spent at Meadowmount String Festival. His personal studies and his five years teaching there, motivated him to establish another summer string festival in a bucolic setting.  “I wanted to create an atmosphere that had the same degree of focus while creating a supportive environment with an emphasis on human warmth and kindness.” By now Kevin was married to his wife Barb, a social worker, and her influences can be felt to this day at The Green Mountain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington where she continues to serve as Business Manager. A key difference in his experience in the two festivals was that “Meadowmount did not offer faculty performance opportunities and by the end of the summer I felt dried up.  I realized that I was a better teacher when I continued to play. At Green Mountain we program faculty concerts which enrich the Burlington community, hopefully inspire the student body and rejuvenate the faculty.”

I had expected to hear anxiety in Kevin Lawrence’s voice as I interviewed the Artistic Director of a budding summer classical music festival.  After all, these days economic woes are front page news in every newspaper from the Wall Street Journal to the Financial Times of London. Bucking the trend, the Festival launched its first successful annual appeal in December 2008 and applications to Green Mountain are actually up 5% over last year. Why are parents investing in summer music programs for their offspring as they watch their financial investments dwindle?  “Some parents want their progeny to enter the professional music world. Others see it more in terms of providing a growth opportunity for their children. Most of the students don’t know as clearly as I did that this is what they want to do.  I want to encourage them to work hard, but I also want to be sure that they wake up in the morning with a love for it as well. Whatever their initial motivation, at some point the violinist’s aspirations will be confronted by the realities of the American music scene and students will either be able to mesh into the field or not.”

Frank Salomon, long time Co-Administrator of the Marlboro Festival, a summer festival located near Brattleboro, Vermont sees no slow down in audition applications for Marlboro or for the New York String Orchestra Seminar. The String Orchestra Seminar invites exceptionally talented musicians ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-two years of age to New York City over the Christmas holidays/ winter school break to perform in an orchestra formation at Carnegie Hall under the leadership of Music Director Jaime Laredo. Marlboro, on the other hand, focuses on more fully-developed players, Frank clarifies. “The usual age at Marlboro is twenty-two or twenty-three, with an occasional exception such as Benjamin Beilman who is all of nineteen now. The emphasis at Marlboro is chamber music. And yes, we do have a larger number of violinists than other string players, but it is proportion to the complement required in a string quartet (2 violins, 1 viola and 1 cello).We immerse these players in the chamber music repertoire playing side-by-side with master artists, with unlimited rehearsal time and without the pressure of performing. We strive to give them the tools to become thoughtful musicians with something to say, not just fine instrumentalists; in essence to encourage them to illuminate the composer. Creating an integrated musical and human experience is a goal at Marlboro. It is of reciprocal benefit to the experienced participants and the younger participants alike. The senior artists are inspired by their young colleagues, and the experience of a young player sitting down over dinner and discussing everything from sports to a piece that they are working on with a musician whose records s/he has collected over the years is an amazing and unique experience.” Incidentally, over the years ten or twelve string quartets were spawned at Marlboro and went on to have international careers. The Guarneri String Quartet launched its forty-five (45 – wow!) year career at Marlboro in 1964 and played an average of one hundred concerts a year for most of that time.

No matter what the long-term professional result, Kevin believes “Music study has an impact far beyond the direct appreciation and ability in music. It satisfies various aspects of human growth: patience, objectivity, perseverance and an appreciation of beauty.  These are qualities that we have prized over the centuries and which will no doubt continue to benefit the generations to come.” I’m sure that Frank Salomon and his colleagues at Marlboro agree.

The nurturing and contemplative atmosphere at these two summer festivals, along with the beautiful green rolling mountains of Vermont, help inspire a musician to discover his or her inner musical voice. In contrast, the pulsating rhythm of New York City encourages the detectives on Law & Order to wrap up a case in a quick 60-minute segment. And who knows, with the advances in communication technology, maybe they’ll have to wrap it up in twitter-length one of these days. That’s even fast for Manhattan!

By Cathy Barbash

Many people ask me, “Why do so many Chinese youth study western instruments?”

I knew that students who study a musical instrument are awarded automatic extra points on the national university entrance exam. However, I was still mystified by the accordion episode, so went in search of other answers. A Chinese friend who works in the music field told me that for the last 10 years, traditional wisdom held that anyone who wanted to go abroad to study or get a job with a western company must play a western classical instrument. This belief arose from the following supposedly true story, which had circulated widely.

A young Chinese man interviewed for a job with a multinational corporation. The interviewer asked the man what abilities and skills he had in addition to those necessary to do the job. The job-hunter said he could play piano. The foreign executive happened to have a piano in the adjoining conference room, made the applicant prove it, and subsequently offered him the position. The young man was convinced that his piano-playing won him the job, and spread the story of his success. Urban legend?  I’d love to hear whether my Chinese colleagues have heard the same story.

By Andy Hertz

I was listening to an album that I purchased the other day: Sinatra Reprise: The Very Good Years. It’s a compilation of Sinatra’s Reprise hits including “I Get a Kick out of You” from the musical Anything Goes by Cole Porter. This arrangement is by Neal Hefti. I wrote a paper on this album in college, and I remembered the idiosyncrasies I identified in Hefti’s arrangement: syncopated rhythmic hits, extremely low trombone notes, lots of “wah-wahs” on the trumpets, call and response between the brass and reeds, etc.

I don’t remember analyzing these idiosyncrasies towards one single conclusion, though. The conclusion is obvious to me now: The orchestration was intended to be humorous. It’s entirely based around the word “kick.” It’s difficult to write music without lyrics that gets laughs (cries are much easier). I’m interested in other examples of “funny” art music. Haydn’s music is apparently full of laughs (most famously Symphony No. 94 – the “Surprise Symphony.”)

Listen to a Sinatra clip at: http://www.amazon.com/Sinatra-Reprise-Very-Good-Years/dp/B000002LOI

Though some players in Shanghai’s cultural economy have been affected by the economic downturn, others are sailing full steam ahead. While the acquisition of land for the construction of a new commercial arts center is on hold in one neighborhood, another city district government is in discussion with a potential partner from a significant international entertainment entity.

Fortunately, while some are preoccupied with this cultural “hardware,” others continue to focus on content, audience development and good business planning. The Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre is one of the most agile and successful local enterprises. Nick Yu wears multiple hats in marketing/pr and dramaturgy. As we catch up over tea, he reports on foreign collaborations with theater companies in Denmark, Finland, Great Britain, and the U.S. In November ’09 they will have 5-7 productions running.

Most of their funding comes from the Shanghai government, and Nick hasn’t heard about any stimulus money coming to cultural sector.

Their regional audiences are growing. Last year they toured 24 productions, which included 14 new productions and 10 revivals. They earned 16million RMB in gross touring revenues, up from 3-4 million 2 years ago. Their tours took them through 32 cities, into theaters of around 1000 seats. This year they will tour 4 plays.

Their biggest current worry is presenting too much “commercial” work. They say they realize people just want to be happy, so prefer comedy. They plan to address this problem with more audience education. When they presented “Copenhagen” recently, the audience that did come loved it, but the tickets sales were the worst of the season.

It is said that the Shanghai theater market is now bigger than the Beijing market. Shows from Beijing will now tour to Shanghai as well, and local professionals claim that in Beijing there is still a prevalence of group or free tickets, (Nick Yu proudly reports that Shanghai people pay for tickets.) In Shanghai, long runs are becoming more viable. And though young audiences generally don’t trust new unknown musicals, they do trust Nick Yu’s new plays. This year, Nick says, they will try a new small musical to see what happens, to educate them. (There are also reports that the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Centre is preparing to stage a dramatisation of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital using elements of Broadway musicals and Las Vegas shows.)

Nick has reason to be optimistic. Though “official” and formulaic entertainments still depend on invited audiences, some modern, original work has touched young Chinese audiences. My first night in Shanghai I try to find a ticket for “Rhinoceros In Love,” Meng Jinghui’s 1999 drama that has now achieved cult status in China. The Chinese press reports that this story of unrequited love (“The Bible of Love for Youngsters”) has been performed an estimated 270 times for more than 200,000 people in small theatres throughout the country, not including countless college productions, highly unusual in a country where most people are unfamiliar with modern drama.

So no surprise—the performance, part of a ten-day run at the Shanghai Grand Theatre—is sold out (top price US$85!!!). In China, there are sellouts and there are sellouts. This is a true sellout—there is not a scalper in sight. I stand by the theater entrance, studying the arriving audience, hoping to find someone with an extra ticket. They are young 20- and 30-somethings, practically airborne with excitement; no padded or official audience this! They brandish their tickets like trophies.

Practiced (former) orchestra manager that I am, I manage to sneak into the venue during the last minute confusion, finding a perch at the back of the balcony. The play begins; the ushers are perturbed at my presence. I stay long enough to determine that, as much of a touchstone the work might be to young Chinese, it would probably not work for American audiences. I am disappointed. My curiosity satisfied, I leave the theater and head to the home of my Shanghai host.

 It is 9:00 pm, and as I walk down Jianguo Xi Lu alley, I hear someone practicing the accordion on the second floor of one of the buildings. Behind the curtain, someone plays technical exercises for 20 minutes, hypnotic figurations reminiscent of “Messiaen meets Terry Riley”. As cats skitter across the alley and bats wheel in the sky above, the unseen virtuoso then launches into a long Bach fugue, then….good God, into the Scherzo from Midsummer Night’s Dream, a metronome barely audible in the background. I am mesmerized, mystified. What would possess someone to play this repertoire on this instrument? More on that to come.

Forty years later, Hair is still letting the sunshine in.  Anyone involved and/or educated in musical theater writing will tell you that on a structural level, Hair is seemingly a disaster.  If it were pitched today, its inherent riskiness would appear imminent to a producer.  There’s relatively no script and the lyrics are largely incomprehensible.  The music in-and-of-itself is the only aspect of the show that can entirely stand alone.  But the reality is that the script and lyrics DO work, and particularly well with the score.  In fact, Hair, as a whole can be beautifully executed.  It creates an environment that is contagious to the multi-generational audience, and leaves them laughing, crying, and fulfilled.  

I was lucky enough to music direct a version of Hair last summer in Asbury Park, New Jersey (I will be music directing The Full Monty there this summer).  It finally became clear to my why this show works: there is great a similarity between the rehearsal process (as always, invigorating but difficult and painful) and what you ultimately see on stage.  The sex, drugs, and rock and roll mantra of Hair does not differ terribly much from the lives of many of the actors involved.  The characters in the show, who are ecstatic at times, but also unstable and unsure of their anxious lives, parallel the lives of all actors (and most people in general).   What you get is a wild display of the human condition: concurrently joyous and sad, triumphant and tragic, thoughtful and flawed.  Add a rockin’ score, nudity, and the Draft, and you’re in for a night that everyone can relate to.  

Luckily, the phenomenal “happening” that was Hair this summer in Central Park has transferred in all of its greatness to Broadway.  If shows with the ingenuity and power of Hair continue to be written and produced today, we can hope for a true dawning of the Age of Aquarius for the musical theater.  

Andrew Hertz is a composer/lyricist, music director, and professor of musical theater.

Janice L. Mayer

The smallish plane, friendly flight attendants and the warm cookies with the chocolate still goopy and runny was a sure sign that I was leaving New York and headed to the Midwest. The stunning sycamore trees with their ghost-like white-painted bark, and the flat expanses of russet-colored dirt were clues that I was in Kansas.

I was told that fog rolls over the plateaus between the airport and Lawrence in the mornings, but the only evidence of Pfog when I arrived in Lawrence were the banners heralding “March Madness” and honoring Pfog Allen and the 39-year tenure of the famed coach of the legendary KU Basketball team, the Jayhawks. KU enters the NCAA playoffs as the defending champion.  Leading this year’s team are the 6-foot, 9-inch twin brothers: Marcus and Markieff Morris. They grow ‘em tall in Kansas!

But everything seems tall in Kansas to me; take the state flower, for instance – sunflowers. They’re majestic stalks with bright glowing faces turned to the sun. They stand 6 feet tall and find the light!

And there is the “Statuesque” mezzo-soprano who invited me to visit Kansas; Joyce Castle who grew up in the metropolis of Baldwin City. While maintaining her international-level career, she also serves as Professor of Voice at KU, her alma mater. Joyce Castle so embodies the word ‘statuesque’ that composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer composed a chamber cycle for her with that very title (released on Americus records as a benefit for Classical Action: Performing Arts Against AIDS). I was there to work with 21 graduate students in voice at KU, and advise them how to best prepare their audition materials and select their repertoire for entry into the professional world. One of John Stephens’ students (bass and head of KU’s voice department) was Matt Haney, a strapping guy from a football-playing family who was in transition from baritone to tenor repertoire. He may be a heldentenor – and surprisingly not the first one to hail from Kansas. Dodge City’s James King was one of the most prominent American heldentenors. Among this Metropolitan Opera artist’s many recordings is the 1965 DECCA disc of Die Walküre (with Birgit Nilsson and Hans Hotter, conducted by Sir Georg Solti) and the Deutsche Grammophon Parsifal with Dame Gwyneth Jones, conducted by Pierre Boulez. Internationally renowned soprano and Professor of Voice at Indiana’s Jacobs School of Music, Patricia Wise of Wichita recalls a performance with James King, “back in about 1976 when I began my 15 years at the Vienna State Opera, I was singing in a performance of Ariadne to a sold-out audience of Viennese Strauss lovers.  At the end of the performance, the cast lined up in front of the curtain after the solo bows.  Looking down the row of my smiling colleagues I saw three more Kansans:  James King (Bacchus), Janice Martin (Ariadne) from Salina, and Barry McDaniel (Harlekino) from Prairie Village.” 

And then there’s Samuel Ramey, the most recorded bass in history – from Colby, Kansas which is 400 miles west of Lawrence and almost on the Colorado border. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato – last year’s Beverly Sills Award recipient at the Metropolitan Opera – may be petite in stature, but her career is HUGE. Born in Prairie Village, KS she has already appeared at Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera here in the United States and at La Scala, the Paris Opera, and in Berlin, Munich and Vienna among many other international venues. Her peers from Kansas include soprano, Maria Kanyova and baritone, Daniel Belcher and the list goes on…

So what is it about Kansas that it has generated so many important American opera singers? If it’s the water, South Dakota should irrigate because I can think of only one or maybe two Valhalla-destined singers from The Mount Rushmore State. I was curious so I asked some of the native sons and daughters: the Joyces – Castle and DiDonato, baritone David Holloway of Gas City, Kansas (who is the Director of the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program and Head of Voice at the Chicago College of Performing Arts ), Patricia Wise and Sam Ramey.

Interestingly Joyce Castle and David Holloway both report having made their debuts as singers at the age of three – yup 3! Neither can remember the occasion, but second-hand accounts from siblings have Joyce singing “God Bless America” in church with her mother accompanying her and David relates “I have been told, though I have only a vague memory, that I sang from the back of a truck with my sister, Ruth, playing piano, “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah” at some community gathering.” Well, starting young surely gives one an advantage. Joyce Castle continued on to portray Little Red Riding Hood herself in school when the cute little Shirley Temple-clone actually cast in the part fell ill – an “All About Eve” moment, perhaps? Joyce was already too tall and not blonde, but that did not hold her back. She remembers a standing-room-only crowd in the school gym – exciting stuff! Later she found her real mezzo repertoire as the Wicked Stepmother in ‘Snow White.’

Sam Ramey’s debut was as Nanki-Poo in The Mikado as a high school junior – yes Nanki Poo, not the Mikado. He laughed and said, “they thought that the best singer in the school should have the male lead, so they transposed all of the songs down for me.”  And then senior year, he was cast as the Scarecrow in that Kansas classic Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

Patricia Wise and Joyce DiDonato also began singing in church choir – a commonality among the ladies. Patricia’s start was as American as apple pie. Her father was the bass in a Barber Shop Quartet and “we were blessed in those days with the Community Concert Series which brought to our small high school auditorium the Vienna Boys Choir, Rise Stevens, and other great performers from the world of classical music.  But no opera in El Dorado.  We moved to Great Bend, KS. (not far from James King’s home town) and my voice teacher there gave me arias like Quando m’en vo, Un bel di (!), which I thought were amazingly beautiful and emotional.  There I performed my first stage role, Yum Yum in our high school choir’s presentation of The Mikado. (We now have a ‘little list’ of young artists launched by The Mikado!)  I fell in love with singing and acting at the same time. Still no opera.  Later, as a sophomore at Kansas University where I studied with Miriam Stewart Green (she often spoke of her talented student, Joyce Castle) and was accompanied in lessons by David Holloway, I tried out for the chorus of Madame Butterfly (the Pinkerton, Edward Sooter later sang lead roles at the Met).  At rehearsals when I wasn’t on stage, I went out into the darkened hall and cried my eyes out listening to the beautiful music so expressive of this tragic story.  I was hooked!  The next year I tried out for Santa Fe Opera’s apprentice program (singing Sempre libera for John Crosby and John Moriarty) and found myself having to choose between going to the Miss Kansas beauty pageant that summer or playing the role of Clorinda the ugly sister in Cenerentola at Santa Fe.  The choice I made set me on my way to a 35-year international opera and concert career.” And it doesn’t get more American than having the Miss America pageant in the mix at the start of one’s career, does it?

Joyce DiDonato’s stand-out moment as a young performer was pretty high-brow: “I think it was singing my first solo, “That yonge child” in Britten’s Ceremony of Carols with the sophomore girls chorus.  That piece was very challenging, and we were (dare I say it) amazing!!! And Going to “State Choir” in Wichita as a senior was one of the highlights of my entire 4 years in high school!”

By the time they were seniors in high school Patricia Wise, Joyce Castle, David Holloway and Sam Ramey were all studying piano. Joyce’s mother taught her and her sister for one year beginning at age five and then turned them over to the local piano teacher. Joyce is so proficient that she believes she is the only actress to perform her own onstage piano part in Weill’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Patricia Wise began studying piano at age seven and was playing violin in the school orchestra at age 14. Why violin too? “Because carrying a violin case to school looked cool in those days.”

An excellent musician, Patricia looks back on her first performing accomplishment as “earning 1’s in piano state competitions for solo performance.  As a member of our local student music club in junior high, I presented a short program of American folk songs; it was my first public performance as a singer,” she added. David said “father and my older sister played piano and, therefore, I sat down at an early age and started playing by ear the music that I was hearing from them. I didn’t have a good sense of harmony or anything, so I mostly played a melody along with whatever I made up as the harmony, but it was definitely by ear. My parents started me on piano when I was 5, and I basically took lessons up through graduate school. So I can truly say that piano is what took me out of Gas City, Kansas.”  Sam’s mother always wanted him to study piano as a child, and at one point they had a piano in the house “because someone needed a place to store it for a year or so.” Sam balked, but did begin to study in high school because he intended to major in music in college and “thought he should get a jump on it.”

For Miss Castle and Mr. Holloway it was off to University of Kansas and for Sam it was Kansas State for 2 years until “I ran out of money and laid out for a year.” (Sam later finished his degree at Wichita State which had a more active performance program than Kansas State.) However it was his music teacher at Kansas State who introduced him to an aria from what would become a signature role: Figaro’s Non più andrai. Sam went to a record store (Remember record stores???) and flipped through the bins until he found a recording of Enzio Pinza singing opera arias. He would often go to the library to listen to opera records. One day he heard that Central City hired young singers for the chorus. The local radio station let him make a tape to send in to be considered and he was hired in the summer of 1963. The repertoire “was great for basses that summer: Norman Treigle and Richard Cross alternated as Don Giovanni, Spiro Malas was a Leporello and Justino Diaz was the Commendatore. I had never seen an opera before I was actually in one.” The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts were David Holloway’s introduction to opera and for Joyce DiDonato it was PBS telecasts that enticed her. “My father attended the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, but he never did convince me to go with him. I relied on the PBS Met broadcasts.  I wasn’t quite mature enough to focus for the radio broadcast alone, but watching it as well really hooked me.” Joyce Castle was “hooked” too – at a performance of La bohème at the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. “My sister was already in college and she and her friends invited me to go to the opera in Kansas City with them. I remember it vividly. We sat in the balcony and Jan Peerce sang – it was very exciting!” 

But all this Italian, wasn’t it forbidding as a young Midwesterner, I asked?  Sam Ramey admits that it was “daunting” at first to think of learning whole operas in another language. Conversely Patricia Wise recalls, “If anything, the foreign language element was an enticement to opera appreciation. Certainly too, I had a huge curiosity about all things foreign.  And I have been an avid reader since first grade.  In the 50s and 60s in Kansas, there was little exposure to other languages.  But my father was a salesman of oil well drilling supplies, and he often told of German communities in western Kansas where people spoke with accents and odd sentence structure.” Joyce Castle had a grandmother who was Czech and heard her speak in her native language. “I wanted to find out what it meant and I was curious about other cultures. When I started my career and moved to Paris, I had only taken one semester of French. I knew I had to study more and so I lived in Paris for six years and then lived in Berlin to study German as well.” 

David Holloway’s experience was similar and he ended up living abroad for a number of years.  “My High School; Iola, Kansas High School, only offered Latin as a language when I was there, and I took it one year. I have to say, however, that my parents, especially my mother, were very interested in the “outside” world and we frequently had visitors from Asia, Europe, and South America through our local Methodist church, so that I grew up with a lot of curiosity about other lands and other people. I always wanted to perfect languages and learn them and communicate with other people in other lands through them. That longing has never changed with me. Today, I still think in German, frequently, after spending 10 years there singing, and because we have many friends there. We also have many friends in Italy, and I can think in Italian, and in France, and we correspond with them in their languages. It is clear that something else had taken over with me and my family. We have maintained our friendships and even expanded them since returning to the US in 1991. As a matter of fact, we have had 4 different German students live with us, one of them for 4 years, while she studied at Roosevelt University.  

The profession of singing is a profession about opening yourself up to languages and other people and other ways of “seeing” things. It is the aspect of the profession that I stress the very most in my teaching. I try to help young singers connect in a personal way with the texts of the works that they are singing. There is no more universal way of communication in the world than through opera and song.”

Joyce DiDonato’s incentive to achieve fluency was the universal language of food. “I don’t know that I was easily drawn to other languages, it was more a necessity to become a singer, so I dove in that way.  Once I started traveling and catching glimpses of the culture, then I was completely enthralled in learning the language.  To be honest, you can order better food that way, if you know how to speak to the restaurant owners!”

All agree that today aspiring singers have a much easier time hearing and seeing opera because of the HD transmissions, You Tube, streaming and the internet access that simply wasn’t available when they were growing up. “They have the world at their fingertips now with cd’s and dvd’s and You Tube! Everything is at their disposal – so I say it just depends on how hungry they are. If they have a large enough appetite nothing will hold them back from making their way – but they may have to get creative along the way!” says Miss DiDonato. Miss Wise adds “But I don’t think we should underestimate the power of real drama. We tend to think only of comic opera when introducing children to opera. Kids today are used to violence and strong emotions in the media.  I think they would love stronger stuff.  And opera is about the un-enhanced power of the human voice depicting strong emotions.  The fact that one person can “throw” her voice out there over a 60-90 piece orchestra without a mike should not go unnoticed or unappreciated.” A new operaphile is encouraged by Joyce DiDonato to “listen, listen, listen – and GO! Attend the opera, search out the HD Movies on the weekend, get the dvd’s and GO to your local theater! We need the support, and there is nothing equal to experiencing it LIVE!” 

Abundant talent and outsized enthusiasm for opera coming from the middle of the country may seem really incredible. “Although Kansas is known more for its wheat than its corn, maybe it is the grain we eat or ate,” suggests Patricia Wise.  “But seriously, there was a long tradition of making our own music because so much of the rural territory was too far from any cultural center.  I recognized this fact in college when I wrote a paper on the subject for a music education class.  Also, since 1935 until today, the Midwestern Music and Art Camp established by band director Russell L. Wiley, music has been nurtured on the campus of Kansas University, attracting the finest young musicians and artists from all over Kansas and America for six weeks of music making in choruses and orchestras.  There for two summers I was introduced as a teenager to Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Orff, and many other masters of classical music.  The “camp” was made up of young people (including a young baritone named David Holloway) who loved making music, and they had little competition from sports or modern technology.  Some years later when I was living in New York and performing leading roles at City Opera (often with Sam Ramey as my Figaro or Raimondo or Basilio), I had a cocktail party for college acquaintances from KU in Lawrence who were also living in or around the city.  There were twenty friends from my class and a year or two before who were making their living as performers in the city.  Quite a crop that year from the fruitful plains of Kansas!  

And perhaps, as Joyce Castle posits, it truly is a result of “long, hot, peaceful summers in the backyard where we made up plays – there was lots of room for imagination. And you have to have quiet to get your own creativity working.  With the wide-open spaces in Kansas you’re freer to be imaginative and you can let your voice go a very long way.”

All of these Kansas vocalists have come a very long way down their own yellow brick roads and have helped to advance the art form and build American audiences for opera. Many thanks to Patricia Wise, Joyce Castle, Joyce DiDonato, David Holloway and Samuel Ramey for sharing their stories.