An Interpretive Guide to Operatic Arias: A Handbook for Singers Coaches Teachers and Students

About this book

A premier singer and master teacher here tells other singers how to get the most from 151 famous arias selected for their popularity or their greatness from 66 operas ranging in time and style from Christopher Gluck to Carlisle Floyd from Mozart to Menotti. The most memorable thrills in an opera singers life according to the authors Introduction may easily derive from the great arias in his or her repertoire. This book continues the work Martial Singher has done in performances in concerts and in master classes and lessons by drawing attention not only to precise features of text notes and markings but also to psychological motivations and emotional impulses to laughter and tears to technical skills to strokes of genius and even here and there to variations from the original works that have proved to be fortunate. For each aria the author gives the dramatic and musical context advice about interpretation and the lyricwith the original language (if it is not English) and an idiomatic American English translation in parallel columns. The major operatic traditionsFrench German Italian Russian and Americanare represented as are the major voice typessoprano mezzo-soprano tenor baritone bass-baritone and bass. The dramatic context is not a mere summary of the plot but is a penetrating and often witty personality sketch of an operatic character in the midst of a situation. The musical context is presented with the dramatic situation in a cleverly integrated way. Suggestions about interpretation often illustrated with musical notation and phonetic symbols are interspersed among the authors explication of the music and the action. An overview of Martial Singhers approachbased on fifty years of experience on stage in a hundred roles and in class at four leading conservatoriesis presented in his Introduction. As the reader approaches each opera discussed in this book he or she experiences the feeling of participation in a rehearsal on stage under an urbane though demanding coach and director. The Interpretive Guide will be of value to professional singers as a source of reference or renewed inspiration and a memory refresher to coaches for checking and broadening personal impressions to young singers and students for learning to teachers who have enjoyed less than a half century of experience and to opera broadcast listeners and telecast viewers who want to understand what goes into the sounds and sights that delight them.