The Best Online Introduction to Opera

Just a brief post to say that if you're someone interested in learning more about opera, YouTube is a treasure trove of mind-blowing singing performances. The best education in opera appreciation is to listen to a lot of great singers and see what you like, what you start to notice, etc.

To that end, one of the best YouTube channels created by any opera fan belongs to Onegin65. Check it out here. With almost 60 million views to date, he/she must be doing something right!

Why is "Nessun Dorma" on Every Talent Show on Planet Earth?

There have been countless amateur renditions of "Nessun Dorma" on TV talent shows across the world, and this phenomenon perplexes me. How is it that the wider public goes crazy for these performances, but cares little for professional classical music? I cannot believe that so many people who enjoy Paul Pott's "Nessun Dorma" would not enjoy Franco Corelli's.

For better or worse, American Idol, X-Factor, and [Insert Country]'s Got Talent rule television ratings around the globe. You don't attain that level of success without knowing what you're selling, and this product includes a healthy rotation of unpolished dreamers who dream to perform classical music. This is what I'm talking about. Whether tackling "Nessun Dorma" or a few other purely classical (as opposed to crossover) pieces, the spectacle of amateur classical singers doing their best sells well. Real classical tickets sell poorly.

So how can this be? 

Issue #1: "Nessun Dorma" as a moment instead of a piece of music, or, Does Anyone Actually Listen To Paul Potts Sing?

Here's the first obvious thing I missed: "Nessun Dorma" on these shows doesn't lead to stampedes at the opera box office because it is not a performance of opera.

Yes, these shows need good personal interest stories, cathartic moments, triumphs, embarrassments, struggle, heroes, and villains. This sounds exactly like opera, but these components are primarily produced in the TV studio and editing room, not through music itself. The values of classical music--commitment to a beautiful sound, attention to detail, expert control of technique for singers and instrumentalists, etc.--don't really support the needs of entertaining commercial television. Instead we have the familiar camera angles, the shots of judges' faces shifting from skepticism to amazement, and the endless standing ovations of the crowd, all meticulously arranged into a TV segment with the dramatic emotional journey the audience came to see.

Both the live and home audiences get satisfaction, but it's not because of music. If you really care about a musical moment, you don't scream during it; you listen.

Issue #2: Disinterest in musical values, or, Let Me Like What I Like

Everyone who has studied classical singing has experienced this: you board a plane home for Thanksgiving, you mention to your friendly neighboring passenger that you study singing, and now manners dictate that you must pretend to kind of like Josh Groban.

Because we've also experienced this: people become peeved if we say we don't really find these talents that amazing. While we've been holed up in a practice room or music library, most people have learned from commercial music that you like what you like, you get to buy what you like, and those who disagree with you are disparaging your taste, and thus your freedom (to buy). We then emerge from the music academy with several degrees in hand to find that even if people claim to want our opinion on a singer like Potts, direct criticism based on our accumulated knowledge gets branded as "snobby" no matter how delicately it's phrased. Musicians thus learn when to hide the fact that they're educated at all.

The problem here is that when trained musicians judge these talent show performances, they do so relative to musical principles, while the wider audience tends to do so relative to the principles of entertainment commodities. Serious music lovers evaluate whether the musical components came together to produce artistry. The wider audience cares more about whether the moment was exciting, the singer looked impassioned, the high note was surmounted, and the audience overwhelmed--in short, whether they've been watching good TV. My musical critique thus covers principles quite literally irrelevant to most folks' appreciation of a performance, but my dislike of Potts registers and becomes a slam against a moment they enjoyed. It's taken personally.

Issue #3: Repetition vs. relationship

With little free time to waste, entertainment seekers want guarantees that they'll enjoy themselves. The performances on these shows are commodities that come in packaging as standardized as a Coke's, so we know what we're getting and that we're going to like it, and also that everyone else is getting the same thing. There's a lot of comfort in that. As a result, the question is not whether so-and-so is a competent singer with potential, but whether we were entertained. If the current talent entertained us, as Susan Boyle did for many, then it's ready for mass distribution now, unchanged except for the perfunctory makeover.

Listening based on musical principles comes from a desire to understand music and have a relationship with it. We want to know what a singer's strengths are, how she develops as an artist over time, and what new things her voice may be capable of in the future. We want to know how she uses vocal sound to communicate inarticulable truths. A thoughtful relationship over time with an artist, a style, or even a single work is a necessary part of appreciation for all art, and like all relationships, there may be rough spots, things you don't understand, frustrations. It's not entertaining, but it's infinitely rewarding. The classical music of many cultures requires this commitment.

The point is that as consumers of entertainment, we don't want what classical music is: we want repetition over relationship. When I go see most new science fiction movies, I'm really hoping I get to watch The Matrix for the first time all over again. Should someone criticize technical components of The Matrix, informed by a deep love of and relationship with film as an art form, it matters little to me; I just want my show. Ergo, the opera world isn't scooping up hoards of new "Nessun Dorma" converts because nothing in the enjoyment of that aria on TV has prepares one for a relationship with classical music. It prepares them to watch more TV and buy the CD in stores as a kind of souvenir.

Coda: What is an arts organization to do?

I've long been perplexed that various kinds of classical singing seem so resistant to commercial appropriation. The power of commerce to market anything, combined with the internet's ability to find and mine the most specialized of niches, should be easy to wield for anyone trying to either build a commercially relevant classical music audience or develop and market new music based on classical traditions. Instead, big symphonies struggle to hold onto their (literally) dying base, and virtually no contemporary commercial music makes direct use of true classical technique.

I think the above goes a long way toward showing why. To gather new audiences, we need to convince the uninitiated that a relationship with classical music (and this holds true of many other art forms) is worth the time and effort. Embarrassing Hollywood-style ad campaigns in an attempt to be "relevant" don't do this, and in fact insinuate the opposite: opera can be just as slick and disposable as that trash in the multiplex! Instead, we should focus on activities that invite and allow people to start their own relationship to opera. I recently read of opera singers giving a free concert in a park, only to have their company's next show sell out of tickets. This is a perfect example of preparing an audience: let them decide on their own that live, beautiful and professional singing is something they enjoy, then invite them for more.

Let's stop marketing opera as what it's not, and start showing it for what it truly is. It has nothing to do with Paul Potts on TV; that is about entertainment, and people should be free to entertain themselves however they choose. Real art in music is something that needs and includes you within it, builds a relationship with you, and gives you lifelong nourishment. Let's help more people find that.

What We Praise When We Praise a Child's Singing

Consider the following two videos:

These two videos have both gone around the web a lot over the past few years. Both seem to be viewed mostly positively. Both performances seem well practiced and rehearsed; but they show radically different sides of children's singing.

In the first case, we have an 11-year-old girl wailing away in what seems to be an exact facsimile of some adult singer's rendition of the song. We get growls and big sounds, belted high notes, and we are amazed that she is only eleven! What might time bring? But all is not well: many trained singers will tell you that the way this very talented girl mimics adult sounds is not particularly healthy. Moreover, if she sounds so "adult" now, which we praise, how will she sound when she's 30? Will she sound 75? Will she sound the same? Is either choice likely to be satisfying?

On the other hand, we have a 14-year-old boy accurately sing through a coloratura opera aria, and he sounds exactly like a 14-year-old boy soprano. The piece is rangy and difficult, with runs and staccato notes and some chromatic harmony, and YouTube commenters mostly show amazement at his skill. How will he sound when he's 30? Nothing like he sounds now, for certain, but we can guess he'll still sing in tune, in tempo, and with energy, which should serve him well in any style he chooses to sing.

These two videos catch us applauding child performers for totally different reasons, and this difference tells us a good bit about how singing is often perceived and interpreted today.

We applaud Bianca's precocious vocal talent, but what exactly impresses us? We're not applauding any openness of communication beyond her years, or a genuinely moving performance, but the fact that her singing sounds unnaturally grown up. She's an amazing mimic, and she clearly has the pipes and musicianship to mimic convincingly, but this becomes the focus at the expense of actual music. Later in that same season she takes on "Piece of My Heart" by Janis Joplin. It sounds, again, impressively like the original, but it's unsettling to watch this 11-year-old girl sing of "how a woman can be tough".

To be fair, Robin Schlotz taking on Mozart's Queen of the Night in her big vengeance aria could also be thought inappropriate; the big difference lies in how we interpret his sound. We get no delight from how much he sounds like a real operatic soprano, but because he's able to maintain good principles of singing--accurate rhythm and pitch, a healthy sound, good phrasing--through a technically difficult piece. When we applaud, we applaud skill alone. Now Bianca also has musical skill--but if she sang merely accurately, the applause would not have been so rapturous.

Another way you could phrase this: Robin's voice cannot convincingly mimic the sound of a commodity, while Bianca's can. In other words, Bianca not only sounds like an adult, she sounds like a recordable and marketable adult. Robin sounds like a boy, so no amount of talent can make him ready for the adult marketplace. 

You can see in this situation how much decades of listening to a so-called music "industry" affects how people interpret singing. The singing called "good" is the singing most like already-produced recent commercial and pop music. If Disney Channel graduate Nick Jonas doesn't have the technique to sing Les Miserables, people still defend his singing because they can recognize the sound of his pop albums in his attempted Broadway belt. Good singing is singing that sounds like a commercial record we already have. And more and more, technology can pick up the slack for singers with uneven, weak, or even out-of-tune voices. In other words, it can help bad singers sound like preexisting pop music. It can make the bad singers into good singers. 

This is unhealthy for the singing field in general. Bianca Ryan's very real talent requires discussion of the mechanics of her success, including the unhealthy components, to be truly perceived. Robin's talent can only be perceived through such discussion. Without reference to some kind of principles of singing, principles independent of the commercial music world, the public's ability to evaluate and thus appreciate talented singers will continue to erode.