Isabelle B wrote: "Graham, who has worked in such houses in Germany, how does the system work in practice? I'm betting that there is a larger pool of singers than just two or three sopranos, two or three tenors, etc., yes? Big houses fly international singers is because that's how you get the best voices for one particular production; you get "the" Amneris of today, and a soprano who does a killer Aida but would be totally wrong if she had to sing Donna Anna, Adina, and Musetta in the same house.
It's not that I think everyone should specialize and sing only one role brilliantly, but I think that stretching a voice into too many different fachs (even if they're all broadly "soprano" or "tenor" roles) isn't good, especially when you're young. It's important to choose roles that are just right for your voice at the time, and if you belong to a repertory house that decides that roles A, B, C, and D are what's right for you -- because there's no one else to sing them, and because that's what will produce a lovely season for the audiences to appreciate -- I think you are being done a disservice."
I could write a book in answer to these statements! I'm the one who sang Mimi and the Fidelio Leonore in the same season in Flensburg, a "B" house in Germany. Mimi was a bit too lyric for me, although the Germans prefer a fuller-voiced Mimi than Americans seems to, and Fidelio seemed a bit too heavy at the time. I THOUGHT it would kill me, but actually, my teacher insisted it would be good for me, and I developed incredibly during the LONG 6 week rehearsal phase of Fidelio, during which I occasionally sang a 4 hour Fidelio rehearsal in the morning, and then a Mimi/Boheme performance that night. At that time, for women Flensburg had 1 jugendlich-dramatischer sopran (me), 1 lyric soprano, 1 soubrette, 1 Operetta-Diva, 1 mezzo, 1 spiel-alt. Occasional guests were brought in on a production basis to fill in whatever we couldn't cast from the ensemble. For example, for Zauberflöte, we had to get a guest for the Queen of the Night, I sang the 1st Lady, the Operetta Diva sang the 2nd Lady, mezzo the 3rd, the lyric sang Pamina, and the soubrette sang Papagena. In my two years fest there, I sang Maddalena in CHENIER 12 times, 1st Lady in Flute 24 times, Leonore in FORZA 12 times, Mimi 18 times, and Leonore in FIDELIO 12 times. The lyric and the soubrette each sang two or three times more productions than I did (I don't remember all the shows I wasn't in :-)but I do recall Entführung, Gluck's Orpheus, Turk in Italia, Martha and the operettas were countless. This doesn't really begin to answer your question, but all I can say is that the system has definite benefits as well as drawbacks. One of the pluses is getting to do several (or many) performances of each role, which makes the ability to "jump in" a little more understandable. In the season after I had sung CHENIER, I "jumped in" with 4 performances in Hildesheim. I got to watch a video of the original dress-rehearsal when I arrived in the town around 1:00, and then had a quick 15 minutes with the bariton to practice getting thrown onto the ground (the only staging I got to rehearse), shook hands with the conductor, and went on. BUT, the year before, I had rehearsed for 4 weeks, plus sung 12 performances, so even though the sets, staging, costumes, etc., were all different, I could do it. And the point about getting tired of seeing the same soprano in every piece -- a good singer quickly develops a following, and these fans take great delite in discussing which roles were better suited, etc. Well, before this develops into that book.... Best regards, Cyndee Szymkowicz CyndeeSings@o... CyndeeSings@o...
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