Further adventures in opera land
Further adventures in opera-land
(in which our heroine, an admitted music lover, attempts to crash the world of opera by joining the chorus of a local production of Madama Butterfly).
In Madama Butterfly, the chorus’s lines are sporadic outbursts that come out of nowhere (that is, with no helpful orchestra hint to tell you what your note is) and just as suddenly disappear, leaving you to scramble desperately for your note when it’s time for the next outburst. By the way, even though Puccini’s music is rhapsodically lyrical and unforgettably beautiful, it also contains truly weird chords that took me weeks to grasp. Sometimes I rush at the note like a defensive halfback trying to catch an elusive tight end.
I decided to cheat. On difficult passages I would simply mime. Pretty soon – maybe at the next rehearsal – surely the rest of the chorus would show up and I could hide among the multitudes. I would be an onstage umbrella twirler, the female counterpart of the spear-carrier. After all, this scene is supposed to be a big wedding party and bodies are needed to swell the crowd. But week after week, we five were the only ones to appear at the chorus rehearsals. Our accompanist denied any knowledge of the whereabouts of the tenors and baritones. An uneasy feeling began to sink in that there WERE no tenors or baritones or additional sopranos or (gasp) fellow altos. But we persisted and gradually one could begin to perceive the outlines of our choristical contribution to the wedding scene. Pretty soon we would get to meet the principal singers and even get to rehearse with my friend Michael, who is singing the role of the matchmaker. I wondered if I would know any of the four principal singers, since I have been involved in the Bay Area opera scene (as enthusiastic audience member) for a while and knew the folks who sing in our little regional companies.
One day the shock came. I learned that the principals are not friendly minor local singers who are grateful for a chance to sing a leading role and sure to be kind to the amateurs. They are solid professionals being flown in from around the country, with respectable resumes and admiring reviews in music publications like San Francisco Classical Voice.
Oh, s***. I can’t tell if I’m more upset about ruining the work of these artists with my meek off-key chirps, or of humiliating myself on stage. My husband is a gem and will overlook my failings, as always, but I have foolishly told all our opera pals about this production, and some of them may actually attend.
Too late to back out now. I really considered it. But there are just too few FOBs (Friends of Butterfly). How can I abandon the other four of them now? So I gulp and increase my home practice time. Finally the lyrics begin to come automatically, little burblings of rhythmic gushing gossip. Now I just have to stitch them into the correct sequence and match them to the music. Did I mention that all those clichés about Italian being such a musical language are BS? Sure, it’s a beautiful lyrical tongue, charming to speak and to hear, but for some reason opera composers have decided that it is NOT NECESSARY to match the syllables to the music! So everywhere in the score one finds a single note with three words crammed into it, and another word stretched out over four notes. There is no logic to this random madcap distribution, so there’s nothing for a hapless volunteer chorister to do but to drill the phrases repeatedly – while driving to the store, taking a shower, cleaning out the cat litter box….
So I bought a pitch pipe, a palm-sized round harmonica into which you blow to get your note (pitch). Yay, I thought, $27 is steep for this little toy from the local mom ‘n pop music store, but now I can practice finding my note even if I’m not at home with the keyboard. Thirteen little holes are distributed around the circumference of the pitch pipe, each labeled with a note (A flat, C sharp, etc.). You have to find your own octave, but it’s a start.
I should have tried it out at the store. When you blow into this little gadget, whose ancestors doubtless date back to the Baroque era, you receive a vague honking sound that may or may not resemble an actual pure tone. Ok, so maybe you have to turn it over or blow across the hole the way you did over coke bottles as a child. No such luck. New whistling drones were emitted and they never seemed to be identical to the ones they emitted last time. I blew and breathed and panted into the thing.
Oh wait. Maybe you’re supposed to suck.
Tried that. Silence.
Now I’ve breathed all over the pitch pipe and don’t want to take it back to the store. Besides, I’m a bleeding heart for small businesspeople, so I keep trying and finally get some use out of the thing. But I’m still waiting for someone, anyone, to find me a fellow alto.