>From: Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
>From: Isabelle Bracamonte <ibracamonte@y...>
>When you have a repertory company which expects to
>hire one soprano to sing all the lead parts, one tenor
>to do the same, etc., as OSJ does, you will destroy
>the voices and comromise the production quality.
>Especially if you insist upon casting singers in their
>very young twenties, as OSJ has the reputation for
>doing.
Is that the case? Nearly all of the singers' program biographies list other
*professional* engagements at regional companies. They may be young, but
they aren't hired straight out of school.
In addition, you
>get bored of seeing one soprano sing everything for
>two seasons straight,
It might depend on the singer. Some of the OSJ singers have developed
*followings*, in particular the beautiful, talented and very very nice
Cynthia Clayton. One of my fellow church choir altos reports that her
daughter will go to the opera "on any night that Tom Truhitte is singing."
>Going back to Karen's idea, I think the idea of a
>local repertory company will work as long as your
>talent pool in the area is large enough. It's really
>boring to go see 6 out of 10 productions in a year
>where the leading tenor is the same man, or you see
>one soprano in every show. I can go to a season of 6
>plays in a small theater company in the bay area and
>see the same actor in perhaps two of those shows (in a
>small part and later in a large part).
>
When I was reviewing theater in Philadelphia, I regularly covered two
theaters that had resident companies, both of which had been in operation
for *decades.* Sure the quality of the productions varied, and not every
actor was perfectly suited for every part, but I never regretted seeing the
same actor four or five times a season.
And the Philadelphia acting community is small enough that I could watch a
few actors move from school and community productions to major professional
jobs. I'm still following Greg Wood's career, after more than ten years.
(If you saw "The Sixth Sense," he played the father of the little girl who
had died.) I've seen him in Shakespeare, Sondheim and everything in
between, and have yet to get tired of him.
At the risk of sounding like Graham "Only The Strong Survive" Sanders, I
really don't think that a professional-grade voice should have to be coddled
like a hothouse orchid. If I had to wait until I got a job that was
"perfect" for my voice, and then sing only when my technique, health, psyche
etc. were all in line, I'd never work at all. I prefer to think my voice is
like the roses in my back yard: a little water, a little sun, and they
bloom like crazy!
But then again, as someone I hope to play puts it, "Chacun a son gout!"
Elizabeth Finkler
Sunnyvale, California
mightymezzo@h...
mightymezzo@h...
http://home.earthlink.net/~mightymezzo
"If you must be wrong, be wrong at the top of your voice!" --Lucy Van Pelt
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