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APPENDIX 1 - All the ‘useful rules’ in overview, for those who make opera
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 151-162
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Summary
What is opera?
✭ Opera: enacting a story through music.
✭ Understand the difference between music, and music for a purpose.
✭ Define the purpose of the music.
✭ Become a ‘music detective’.
✭ Know the orchestra.
✭ Give the orchestra a reason to play.
✭ Train your imagination.
The heart
✭ Go straight to the heart.
The seven ‘W’ s
✭ Start with the six ‘W’ s: Who? Where? When? What? hoW? Why?
✭ Then define the seventh: Whom? – the addressee.
✭ Locate the addressee.
✭ Change the addressee where necessary.
✭ If the addressee is imaginary, choose a fixed point and address it instead.
Sense and sensuality
✭ Find out: what does the work mean?
✭ Consider: what does your role contribute to it?
✭ Make sense. Both in the details and in the overall context.
✭ Sense trumps effect.
Bodies in space
✭ The body in the space is already part of the action.
✭ Develop a feeling for space in relation to your co-performers.
✭ Sameness is boring. Be dissimilar.
✭ The singer stands further upstage, the listener further downstage.
✭ Position yourself according to the golden section, not in the centre.
✭ A king can't play himself. Those surrounding him play him.
✭ Stand at an angle to the stage ramp, not in the ‘pancake position’.
✭ Maintain your relationship with your partner. Avoid the ‘tenor's turn’.
✭ Seek a position between two fronts. It's dramatically effective.
✭ Wherever possible, place the leading voice in an ensemble on the left.
✭ Leave space around you. Otherwise objects can become competitors.
✭ Hold your stance – don't wobble around.
✭ When you move, make sure it's with a purpose and a specific goal.
✭ Violence and torture have a greater impact on a live body on stage than in the two-dimensional images of film and TV.
✭ Fill the space with breath. If the audience coughs, you've got too little breath.
✭ Regard sentences and musical phrases as the arch of a bridge. Make sure to reach the other side.
✭ Master the play of tension and release.
The ‘trizophrenic’ upbeat
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 65-68
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Summary
As mentioned already above, we all have to do two things before saying anything: thinking and breathing. Only then is speech possible. This is even truer of music. The expansion of time in an arching musical melody demands the appropriate breath, plus the corresponding emotional span. Therefore it is eminently necessary to be ‘ahead’ of the music. Only then can the singer seem as if he himself is creating the music in that very moment; only then can his voice and body form a unity. While the singer is singing one phrase he must already be preparing himself inwardly for the next so as to connect it to the first. And, above all, he has to use the upbeat of his breath to make the orchestra his servant, his vehicle of expression, in order to explain to the audience the meaning of the music emerging from the pit. It happens all too often that singers breathe when they already should be singing, while the orchestra stampedes away without any visible reason. This is a sure sign that the singer did not think – more generally, he did not ‘switch’ on time. Lagging behind the music like this, instead of ‘creating’ it in good time, can often be involuntarily comic.
The decisive element is the upbeat. Anyone watching me teach might be irritated by my frequent interjection: ‘And – ’ just when the singer is singing at his most beautiful. His concentration on the sheer beauty of his sound makes him forget the upbeat to what's coming next. In my childhood we had an old housekeeper who had the habit of ending her sentences with ‘and –’. As in: ‘I'm going shopping now, and –’. The effect was magical because the whole family would be waiting to hear what came next. It was the magic of the upbeat. ‘And –’ is the magic formula for all types of upbeats. Long ones drawn out over several bars, and short ones; hard, soft, exalted or graceful upbeats. Upbeats for every type of music and movement.
Preface
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp ix-ix
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Summary
Do you love opera?
I love it and hate it.
You hate it? And yet you …?
I love the genre, the works, the possibility of depicting the world through music.
But I hate the institution – the opera business that's supposed to bring these works to life in the manner they deserve. Instead, it's been treating them badly – albeit with some notable exceptions – for over four centuries. Regrettably, we use the same name for both the works and the institution: opera.
But you've been running opera houses and festivals yourself for decades!
Out of opposition! I wanted to change the institution. Sometimes I succeeded – for a short time, when the conditions were right. But then the natural inertia of the institution overpowered everything again. In brief: I have won battles, but lost the war. Opera cannot be changed.
So why this book?
The works don't stop asking for answers. Perhaps this book can prompt opera the institution to take a more serious approach to opera itself.
Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- The Crafty Art of Opera
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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The heart
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 11-14
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Summary
How does theatre actually exert its impact? This happens on two different time levels: in the moment of performance, and in the memory. When I was a young actor, older colleagues of mine told me of their times spent working for Max Reinhardt in his legendary productions. Their memories were so powerful that they had tears in their eyes and could barely continue to speak. After more than half a century! Reinhardt had left a mark on them for the rest of their lives. I even suspect that time had intensified their emotional response, far beyond the original impression.
And am I any different? One of the most beautiful performances I have ever seen was Giorgio Strehler's production of Goldoni's Le baruffe chiozzotte (Brawling in Chioggia). I vividly remember the end of it – the reconciliation among the poor fishermen after all the commotion and the quarrels, illuminated by the light of simple lanterns while night descends over the autumnal, misty-grey Adriatic; and then there was the Cogitore, representing Goldoni himself as a junior lawyer, dressed in a wine-red coat (the only colour in the otherwise grey image), slowly drawing the curtain on it all. And when I describe it, I too am overwhelmed again and again by the sheer emotional power of the performance, even though it now lies almost fifty years in the past.
The fact that I came to opera was also thanks to such an experience. I was still in acting school and was auditioning in Berlin for a well-known theatre intendant (that's a title in Germany given to the administrative/artistic manager of a theatre or opera house). Obviously I wasn't too bad, because his assistant said he had two free tickets for an opera that same evening and asked if I would join him. Opera – what a dreadful thought! For a would-be actor to be interested in opera was something totally unfitting. But I wanted to be hired, so I said yes. And then, to my surprise, after a long opera performance I found myself breathless, with my heart pounding, right on the edge of my seat in the stalls.
Dedication
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp v-vi
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Le physique du rôle
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
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- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 47-50
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Having the right body for a role is vitally important, as is knowing how to move it. This is called: ‘le physique du rôle’. I'm almost tempted to regard this as the most important aspect, even more important than the voice. Because the body was the first and earliest instrument of expression. When casting a role, both aspects should be treated at least equally, also with regard to the other roles involved. It's not just the voices that have to fit together, it's their bodies too. Only under this condition can opera attain fulfilment. When this is not the case, hopes of success are stymied from the outset. However beautiful the singing, and however honest the efforts of everyone involved – not least the costume designer – one will always come up against the original defect. And one will always end up dissatisfied. Many opera houses pay far too little attention to this aspect when casting roles. It's not just a big mistake: it's one of the main reasons for the widespread dissatisfaction with opera.
Different languages also produce different attitudes and patterns of movement. One can observe it when children play. Without the slightest knowledge of languages, they use gibberish and mimicry to ape a gangling, gum-chewing American, a wildly gesticulating Italian, a rigid German or a blasé Frenchman. And in opera, too, the cast should be chosen in such a way that the language employed emerges idiomatically and credibly from the physical behaviour and social status of the character.
At this point it can be profitable to consider the world of cartoons. Mickey Mouse and Co. often apply the principles of opera far more consistently than opera does itself. Cartoons offer a perfect transformation of music into physical expression. Of course, cartoon characters can be drawn by hand or in the computer according to the needs of the music. Or, conversely, one can compose the music according to the cartoon characters. This is easier than embarking upon a tiresome search for a real living person able to create movement and music in a single action. And yet opera can learn a lot from cartoons. If roles have been cast with the right vocal and physical characters, the mechanical effect of cartoons can even be recreated on stage. The following episode can prove it.
Bank robbers
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
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- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 55-58
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Summary
Opera singers have generally not robbed a bank. Thank God for that! On the other hand, had they done so, they would have learnt how all kinds of shady figures behave – conspirators, murderers, terrorists and, of course, bank robbers too. Such dodgy characters can be found in many operas. They act inconspicuously when planning their dirty deeds; they meet as if casually, in the shadows on the walls, not out in the open; they speak softly, with seeming indifference and immobile expression; and their eyes are always scanning the scene for possible dangers. Once they're about to crack open the bank safe, bank robbers reduce their words and gestures to what's absolutely necessary. They act slowly and carefully, avoiding all hasty, accentuated movements that could trigger the alarm. All this happens under the greatest possible tension and with bated breath.
There are plenty of such scenes in the operatic literature, but many opera singers play them freely, insouciantly – as if they were the owners of the bank. They simply refuse to acknowledge the robbers’ true state of mind and ignore the ominous tension in the orchestral accompaniment. They just have no experience of such things. So a healthy dose of bank robber's imagination could really help.
In such hazardous moments when discovery threatens, the tension can even be heightened by little mishaps – such as a tool clattering to the floor. Or when Pedrillo is organizing the escape in Mozart's Entfuhrung aus dem Serail and has to manage the necessary ladder through the narrow, squeaky metal gate; or when Romeo is climbing up to Juliet's balcony and nearly loses his grip, about to fall. In such scenes, the audience has to root for the character, holding its breath in anticipation. But they'll do this only if the character himself plays his part under great tension.
Just about every opera also has someone in a hiding place, spying on others. They too have to demonstrate the tension of their situation – the danger of being discovered, the exertion involved in eavesdropping so they can catch every word. Even if their hiding place is constructed so they can't possibly be seen by the others, allowing them to relax while eavesdropping, without fear of discovery, the audience will find their being hidden believable only if they play it with the right tension, with pounding heart and bated breath.
In place of an epilogue: My teachers
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 135-150
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Summary
It seems fitting to offer some information about those who educated me in my youth, and to whom my work and my ideas remain indebted to this day.
Max Reinhardt
Reinhardt, naturally, wasn't my teacher – I was only eight years old when he died in exile in the USA. But it wasn't long afterwards that a magical book came into my possession: Reinhardt and his Stage, edited by his stage designer Ernst Stern and his dramaturge Heinz Harald. I devoured it, reading it over and over again, and couldn't get enough of it. It described Reinhardt's theatre in all its aspects, as vividly as could be. It explained how a production is developed, retelling all the details of several specific performances. Reinhardt's famous actors were presented to the reader in characteristic roles. Nor was the material aspect of theatre ignored – the revolving stage and other machines, what went on in the workshops, the role assigned to light and music, the make-up artists, the rehearsals with extras, managing the crowd scenes, and even the organization and administration of the whole complex business. And at the end of the book was a chapter entitled ‘Twenty-four hours at the Deutsches Theater’ that described a single day in Reinhardt's theatre, with sketches by Ernst Stern of the typical, daily activities there. It began at four in the morning with the night watchman and transport deliveries of the backdrops, then proceeded to the dismantling of the old scenery and the erection of the new, then there were the rehearsals, auditions, programme meetings, the bell for the evening performance, the applause and the night-time grind in the workshops until midnight came – the ghosting hour in the empty auditorium. And then, at the close, a picture of the outside façade of the theatre, everything dark except for a light in one window. The caption ran: ‘Two in the morning. All is dark; only the administrator is doing his sums.’ That was it for me: backdrops, rehearsals, actors, actresses, workshops, auditions, revolving stages and doing sums at night.
Mozart
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 73-84
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Summary
‘A lot was stolen from Mozart’, said an audience member to Richard Strauss after a Rosenkavalier performance. Unmoved, Strauss replied: ‘Well, do you know anyone better?’ And indeed, Mozart is the best teacher in opera. One can learn everything from him. Above all, one cannot cheat with him. If a singer chooses Mozart for an audition, his strengths and weaknesses will be obvious after just a few bars. Murphy's Law applies all too well in Mozart: what can go wrong, often will. Stylistically, he's hard to characterize. Often, what he does is little different from his contemporaries, and yet he constantly turns convention into revolution. However brilliant new ideas and concepts might be, they won't help with Mozart. All one has to do is already in the score. All elements for a good performance can be found in it. ‘It's simple, but simple is difficult’ (Goethe). Mozart's simplicity is the most difficult of all. Only stagecraft and integrity can help here. ‘The heart ennobles the man’ is the best-known quote from his letters.
Whole libraries can be filled with what has been written about Mozart. It seems that everything has already been said. But in fact, little has been said about what ‘opera-makers’ can learn from him. And the lessons Mozart can teach are well-nigh inexhaustible. Here's a few of them.
In Mozart, a lot of things happen very quickly – in comparison to other composers, many more things happen in Mozart at any given time. His rapid shifts in musical expression and his abrupt emotional changes demand an extremely fast, inner ‘switching speed’ in order to anticipate the next phrase that already has different music. ‘Mozart is a brain problem’ said John Pritchard, my longstanding music director at Cologne Opera, who was famous for his interpretations of Mozart.
For many performers, this speed is too much to handle. They can't keep up with Mozart, so they try to salvage the situation by resorting to a one-fits-all expression that ignores the ever-changing differentiation of his music. And in fact, he does demand a lot. Sometimes his musical structure changes every two bars – even every bar in some cases.
‘Too many notes …’
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 99-106
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Summary
‘Too many notes, dear Mozart, too many notes’ is what Emperor Joseph II supposedly said after the first performance of the Entfuhrung aus dem Serail in Vienna's old Burgtheater. Mozart's reply was: ‘Just as many as necessary, Your Majesty.’ This episode has served to condemn the poor Emperor as musically illiterate, but in fact the opposite was true. He was a decent cellist and every week in his Schönbrunn Palace he either listened to the latest chamber music or played it himself, all under the guidance of his court composers Gassmann, Salieri and Gluck.
Joseph actually could have gone down in history as one of the greatest theatre intendants, had his main job not been as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. While still the co-regent of his mother, the Empress Maria Theresia, he had founded the Burgtheater, which has remained to this day the premier German-language theatre. He systematically promoted the German Singspiel, the genre of comic opera whose most glorious fruit was Mozart's Entfuhrung. The best contemporary composers wrote works for his Italian-language Court Opera under the direction of Antonio Salieri, and these works went on to enjoy huge success all over Europe. Besides Mozart, these composers included names such as Gluck, Haydn, Paisiello, Martin y Soler, Cimarosa and Salieri, who all wrote operas that are still performed today. And Lorenzo Da Ponte was just one of many librettists who were engaged to write for the opera – among the others were men as famous as Giambattista Casti, Goldoni and Beaumarchais. Not to forget Emanuel Schikaneder, who had originally come to Vienna with his theatrical troupe at the specific request of the Emperor himself, long before he wrote The Magic Flute with Mozart, and long before he built the Theater an der Wien and rose up to become the uncrowned king of theatre in the imperial capital. Many extant documents also prove that the Emperor busied himself with the details too.
Pretend theatre
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 59-64
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‘As soon as the roaring trombone sounds, go this way’ says the Priest to Tamino and Papageno during their trials in Mozart's Magic Flute. To underscore his command, his right hand points somewhere up in the air, while his left hand holds a burning torch. Tamino and Papageno would have to fly in order to follow his instructions. Instead of simply pointing to the (clearly visible) dark passage awaiting them, the Priest pretends that he is showing the way. No idea of space or intent directs his gesture. And this happens not only with small gestures but also with great emotions. The singer pretends that he loves or hates, but without actually feeling either emotion. One can experience it all the time: the orchestra in turmoil, the vocal line at fever pitch of passion – and yet something's missing, namely the actual emotional and physical state of being, the breath of big emotion that alone could make all this believable. The singer's body betrays him – especially his hands, which are telling us: ‘It's not really that bad. There's no reason for the orchestra to get so worked up.’ There is no reality created by imagination whatsoever. The singer offers merely ‘pretend’ theatre.
This refusal to depict a character's true physical and mental state is one of the capital problems in opera. It's one of the reasons opera can seem awkward and ridiculous. But perhaps singers do this instinctively with good reason. Because singing (and making music in general) is a far more technical activity than acting. The famous violinist Yehudi Menuhin once said: ‘Expression is the enemy of technique.’ In opera, this means that the more a singer immerses himself in the condition of the figure he is portraying, the more he runs the risk of neglecting his vocal technique. This is why it is so important that singers should learn to unite the voice and the body during their training, both of which must be controlled by the breath demanded by the emotional and physical situation.
Sense and sensuality
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
-
- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 21-26
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Summary
More than any other art form, opera addresses our senses. This is both its strength and its weakness.
Ihr wisst, auf unsern deutschen Bühnen
Probiert ein jeder, was er mag;
Drum schonet mir an diesem Tag
Prospekte nicht und nicht Maschinen.
Gebraucht das gross, und kleine Himmelslicht,
Die Sterne dürfet ihr verschwenden;
An Wasser, Feuer, Felsenwänden,
An Tier und Vögeln fehlt es nicht.
So schreitet in dem engen Bretterhaus
Den ganzen Kreis der Schöpfung aus.
As you know, on our German stages
Everyone tries out what suits him.
So don't hold back today
With backdrops or machines.
Use the heaven's greater and lesser lights,
And let's have plenty of stars,
Water, fire and rocky crags,
Animals and birds.
Let the whole round of Creation
Tread out these narrow boards.
(Goethe, Faust I, Prologue on the stage)Opera doesn't need to be told this. It addresses our emotions and our intellect, along with all our senses. Its rhythms possess our physical body, our pulse races, our nerves tingle, our blood pressure rises, pain disappears, and all while our eyes and ears revel in beautiful images and sweet music.
In the heyday of opera, when the upper classes kept their own boxes at the opera house, culinary and erotic delights were also the order of the day. For example, there was the ‘aria di sorbetto’ – an aria sung by a less important character that didn't demand the listener's full attention, leaving him free to focus on supping his champagne and slurping his lemon sorbet. And once his thirst was quenched, he could close the curtains of his box in order to satisfy further appetites – opera no doubt played its part in keeping the birth rate healthy. The vestiges of that era could still be seen in the old Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona before it burnt down in 1994. The ‘chambres-séparées’ behind the boxes were all still there, with their dining tables and their curtains to provide the necessary privacy to the upper crust. Opera, as the Babylon the Great among the arts, always had a strong penchant for dissolute delights. The danger in all this is that opera's multifarious appeals to the senses means the sense of the whole undertaking gets lost. There is nothing better suited to lulling us into gentle slumber through sensual indulgence than the art of opera.
The Crafty Art of Opera
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
-
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016
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Opera has become big business as well as an art form, attracting young and old, true connoisseurs, enthusiasts and celebrities. And while opera singers and superstars sometimes attract a separate following, the stage director's job is often the one that really counts, yet it is a type of specialised knowledge available only to a select few. Here, Michael Hampe brings glimpses of the director's work to a wider audience. The Crafty Art of Opera uncovers the many techniques and rules that should inform an opera's staging: the need for singers to know their orchestra, the importance of space around singers, the gestures of languages, what we all can learn from Mozart, and the primacy of sense over effect, to name but a few. It shows how stories, through music, become tangible and real. Packed with many anecdotes from the author's luminous career, this book is dedicated to opera-lovers who want to understand 'how it is done'; to opera-makers who want to better understand their craft;and, above all, to those who loathe opera, in order to prove them wrong. Eminently readable, it brings both insight and wit from a life spent in opera as director and teacher.
MICHAEL HAMPE is an internationally acclaimed opera stage director. The Crafty Art of Opera was published in German as Opernschule.
Bodies in space
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 27-34
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Curtain up! The performer takes the stage. Straightaway a relationship exists between his body and the space in which he moves. Perhaps he's coming along the centre line from way upstage to the front as a mighty ruler, as a conqueror, or as blind Oedipus as he taps out his path with his broken sceptre. Or he's emerging swiftly from the wings as a servant, a conspirator, or a surprise guest. Or he appears backstage right, crossing the stage diagonally as a messenger or a man about to plead a suit before his sovereign. In all these cases, the relationship between his body and the space is already part and parcel of the events being depicted.
However, the performer's body does not just enter into a relationship with the stage space, but also with all the other bodies and objects that are in it. And thus a tiny universe is created that obeys the same laws as the universe itself with its orbiting planets and galaxies. This stage universe, too, knows attraction and repulsion, gravity and centrifugal forces, tension and release. And in the magical space of the stage, even supernova explosions can occur, as can black holes that swallow up everything. Even invisible dark matter can be felt in the ‘aura’ of a performer – something no one can define, but that draws everyone under its spell. This bodily phenomenon, however, has its own boundaries: in the spoken theatre, these boundaries are some 25 metres across, in the opera roughly 32 metres. And auditoriums should respect these boundaries, too. After all, you can't fall in love at a great distance, and this is precisely what should happen in the theatre: the audience has to fall in love with the performers. In opera, this little stage universe has yet another dimension: the music. Whoever wants to be a master of this small universe would do well to follow rules derived from those of the Big One. And indeed, such rules exist.
What is opera?
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 1-10
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‘What is opera?’
The question was posed to participants of a master class, all of them young opera singers. Their answer: silence. Only after some encouragement did they hesitantly proffer a few suggestions. One of them said: ‘Connecting words and music’. Another: ‘Grand emotions, publicly performed’. A third (he'd probably been reading about Wagner) ventured: ‘The Gesamtkunstwerk’ (‘The total work of art’). The right answer – actually the simple answer – didn't come.
‘Favola per musica’ or ‘dramma per musica’ was the name of this new art form when it was invented some 400 years ago in Florence. And this expresses exactly what opera is. Telling a story through music – no, not ‘telling’: enacting it! A plot expressed through music. Music is opera's principal means of expression, as is the playwright's text in a play. In ballet it's the rhythmic motions of the body, and in film it's the moving images (hence ‘movie’). In opera, music is thus a function of the action. It serves to express it.
Some might already be raising their eyebrows at this. ‘Music serves? Doesn't he know that music reigns in opera?’ We're not that far yet. ‘Prima la musica – poi le parole’ (‘First the music – then the words’). This centuries-old dispute is pointless. Both music and words are dependent on the story, the action that initiates them. One could well imagine an ‘improvisation-opera’ in which the story is set out with just a few words – like in the commedia dell'arte – and all participants enact the story through improvised music. I once had a rehearsal pianist who was a gifted pedagogue, and when the singers’ acting was awkward, he didn't play what was in the score, but instead improvised music, mimicking their affected behaviour. The ensuing laughter in itself answered the question about the relationship between music and the stage action. Or consider silent movies. The pianist would sit in front of the cinema screen and improvise music to match the images.
Note on the English edition
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp viii-viii
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The harmony of the spheres
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
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- 16 June 2016, pp 129-134
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Summary
Whoever takes a serious approach to opera will sooner or later come into conflict with opera the institution. There is a vast discrepancy between the aspirations of the works and the institution tasked with presenting them. In the never-ending battle with these inadequacies, one can at least find a little comfort and take courage in being in the very best of company. Hardly had the art of opera been invented when its first-ever grand master, Claudio Monteverdi, was writing letters in which he complained bitterly about the shoddy, negligent treatment meted out to his works. Handel was driven to sickness and financial ruin by the insatiable lust for money of his castrati and prima donnas – not to mention their impossible whims and rivalries. When his star soprano Francesca Cuzzoni one day refused to sing her aria ‘Falsa immagine’ at a rehearsal of his opera Ottone, Handel could take it no longer. He grasped his fractious singer by the waist, cried: ‘Oh, Madame, I know you're a veritable she-devil, but I hereby inform you that I am Beelzebub, the lord of all devils’, and threatened to drop her out of the window if she made any more objections. The aria was a huge success – and Cuzzoni was still singing it thirty years later when she gave her farewell performance on the London stage.
Gluck's despairing fits of rage during the rehearsals of his works were as talked about and feared in Vienna as they were in Paris. And in his famous letter to court councillor Anton Klein in Mannheim, Mozart despaired of the ‘breakdown of German opera’ in Vienna: ‘It is the greatest misfortune that the directors of both the theatre and the orchestra have been retained, for their ignorance and inactivity have played the greatest part in the failure of their own work. If only a single patriot were on the board – it would all look very different!’ In his disappointment, he ends by saying ‘after such an outpouring of the heart one should be able to drink oneself drunk without danger of ruining one's health’.
Dramaturgy
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
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- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 107-120
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Summary
‘And what do you hope to achieve with this?’ I still remember his Augsburg dialect whispering in my right ear. It was the voice of Caspar Neher, that great man of the theatre: set designer, librettist, friend and colleague of Bertolt Brecht who had immortalized him in several poems. Neher had sat himself behind me at the director's desk, had watched me at work for a while, and then this: ‘And what do you hope to achieve?’ It felt like having a bucket of cold water poured over me and made me start all over again. For some reason or other, Neher had directed his furor pedagogicus at me. And what a pedagogue he was! His lessons were strict, and often spiced with irony and sarcasm.
‘We need one more chair’, I said in the dusty furniture storage room. ‘What kind of chair?’ he asked promptly. ‘Empire style would be best’, I suggested. ‘Really. What do you mean by “Empire”?’ I quickly sketched a chair. ‘Here, Empire, you see … Napoleon.’ ‘Aha. So you mean Louis XVI.’ And so it went on the whole day.
Once, we were walking through the garden of the Belvedere in Vienna when he stopped at the steps that lead up to Prince Eugen's magnificent palace. He took out a small ruler that he always kept with him. ‘Measure it!’ – ‘What?’ – ‘The steps!’ – ‘47 × 11.5 centimetres.’ ‘If you ever want elegant steps’, he said, ‘use these’, at which he stuck his ruler back in his pocket. On another occasion, he grumbled: ‘I'll take any colour as long as it's grey.’ And he went on to explain that nature generally prefers muted colours. It uses strong, luminous colours only as a signal meaning ‘Mate with me!’ or ‘I'm poisonous, don't eat me!’ Accordingly, he believed that theatre should use colours in the same way. Neher was the most merciless, incorruptible dramaturge I ever met.
Dramaturgy – it's a grand word that often lacks a proper meaning. How much nebulous gibberish comes along with it! And yet dramaturgy is really something quite simple: what has to be said, and how it must be said to be understood.
Index of names and works
- Michael Hampe
- Translated by Chris Walton
-
- Book:
- The Crafty Art of Opera
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 25 October 2017
- Print publication:
- 16 June 2016, pp 183-187
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- Export citation