Singing opera is a very difficult thing to do.
There are a lot of things that make opera difficult. First, you have to be able to sing the notes. Singing requires a lot of coordination and skill. What some people lack in skill they make up for with talent but still, you can’t do it alone on talent. You are not going to sing opera without developing some pretty amazing skills.
But aside from the physical act of singing you have to actually learn the music and the text. This is what most opera singers spend the majority of their time doing.
This, of course, nobody sees. The long hours alone sitting with the music and the text most of the time in foreign languages repeating repeating repeating repeating and repeating again and again and again before anyone ever steps on a stage to rehearse.
When I look back at my career I was thinking of the most difficult pieces I had to learn and why they were difficult. So here is a list of pieces that came to mind. this is in no particular order.
The Queen of Spades. This epic masterpiece by Tchaikovsky is of course written for the Russian language. The role of Ghermann is one of the most difficult and lengthy rolls for tenor that exists. So when I was asked to do Hermann I was asked whether I wanted to do it in Russian or in German. I knew that singing it in Russian was going to be very difficult to learn. I had never sung anything in Russian before.
Speaking and singing in foreign languages is difficult as it is but when the writing is totally different that also gives you another thing to do. I really respect people who do opera that are from the far east or the Middle East who have to deal with an entirely different alphabet, let alone the different muscular oral changes you have to make in the way you form words. So, it isn’t only a matter of learning the language, but also a matter of speaking or singing it like a native speaker. Folks, that is a rare and highly specialized skill, one that I have achieved with differing results.
The Queen of Spades is difficult vocally, dramatically, musically but most of all linguistically. I would have to say that was the hardest piece I’ve ever done.
The Tales of Hoffmann was the biggest challenge dramatically. Not because of the role but because I was on stage the entire opera and pretty much carried it. Hoffman is a very difficult role for many reasons but mostly because of the psychological torment that Hoffmann experiences. But it is well worth it. It was probably my biggest triumph on stage.
Die weisse Rose, is an opera by Udo Zimmermann. First of all, unlike most of the operas you do, Die weisse Rose is a real life tragedy in recent history. You aren’t dealing with characters created out of the mind of an author, you are actually presenting the life of a real person, and history that really happened. Not a fairy tale, not a novel and not a myth. Real life and insane tragedy.
This opera is difficult because the music is pretty modern, meaning nothing makes tonal sense in normal terms, and the tempo is mostly very slow with multiple meters. The sustained quality of this piece made it extremely difficult to count plus this came at the end of my first season in Germany. So my German was not all that great. Never mind you are playing a young medical student who was about to lose his head for defying the Nazis in Munich at the height of World War II. It is difficult to imagine being in that situation. Looking back at it I really appreciate all of the time and effort people went to to painstakingly get my German to a decent level to represent this very difficult theme. Plus, dealing with this theme as an American who just got off of the boat required a lot of time discussing this painful era in Germany history.
The Rakes Progress is a huge challenge for a tenor, not to mention the other characters in the opera. Tom Rakewell is a young man yet it is a dramatic role but requires extreme lyricism. There are dramatic changes that Tom goes through in the piece require intense psychological concentration all the while appearing superficial. In essence it is the Faust story, but with more real world types of aspects.
Managing Stravinsky’s musical language and rhythmic complexity is basically like doing multiple dimensional Sudoku, or three level chess. Stravinsky was a very methodical, yet original composer whose language is totally unique but related to other composers. So it isn’t totally unapproachable. After a while it makes perfect sense harmonically, but getting there is a bit of a task. But, wow, what a thing to have in your bag of tricks!
Cosi fan tutte is my nightmare opera. Why? Because we produced it in four weeks spending eight hours a day six days a week in rehearsal. By the time we reached the premier we were all exhausted. However, this routine and constant pressure made it possible for us to execute the direction very well. Mozart is very difficult to get right and playing the drama at the level we played it combined with trying to get it musically correct and tasteful is extremely trying. With Cosi all of your relationships get put into question and this puts a strain on the way you see relationships in general. At the end of the day, you aren’t quite sure what is right.
these challenges make you a better singer. Doing concerts of great music and studying the brilliance of those composers is one of the best things a person can do in life.
I close with sharing something Vincent La Selva said in a conducting class I attended at Juilliard. It went something like this…’Spending time with great music, with these masters, is like having their brains and souls become a part of you that is what makes it great.
When I look back at all of the pieces I have done and consider what my colleagues have walking around with in their minds, I find that this rare gift is something to be cherished and revisited. Whenever I go to or listen to an opera I have done, it is like going home and the home is not some shanty in the bad side of town, the homes are castles of beauty and complexity sitting high on a hill looking over the rest of the world. It is really a great thing.
Memorizing poetry, music, singing and speaking the greatest ideas ever created is obviously good for you, and it is not easy, which of course why so few do it. But, take time to challenge yourself with such things as languages a1nd musical complexity, soon, your mental home will be all the richer for it.