Greek: A Student Study Guide

STUDENT STUDY GUIDE

TURNAGE

A NEW BOSTON LYRIC OPERA PRODUCTION

BLO’s Greek Photo: Liza Voll Photography

Esther Nelson Stanford Calderwood General & Artistic Director David Angus Music Director John Conklin Artistic Advisor

October 24, 2016

Dear Educator, Boston Lyric Opera is pleased to invite high school and college students to attend Final Dress Rehearsals throughout our 40th Anniversary Season. We look forward to seeing you and your students at the Emerson/Paramount Center for our Opera Annex Production of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Greek.

The experience of seeing and hearing live, professional opera is second to none. And we encourage you to explore the world of the opera in your classroom as well. We are proud to offer this study guide to support your discussions and preparations for Greek. We’ve included special insights into this particular production as well as the opera’s history with connections to Social Studies, and English Language Arts.

Boston Lyric Opera’s mission is to build curiosity, enthusiasm, and support for opera. This study guide is one way in which we support the incredible work of educators like you, who are inspired by this beautiful art form and introduce it to your students. As we continue to develop additional study guides this season, we want your feedback. Please tell us about how you use this guide and how it can best serve your needs by emailing education@blo.org.

If you’re interested in additional opera education opportunities with Boston Lyric Opera, please visit blo.org/education to discover more about our programs.

We look forward to seeing you at the theatre!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Ann S. Kirk Manager of Education Programs

TABLE OF CONTENTS WELCOME LETTER FROM BLO MANAGER OF EDUCATION............................................................................................................

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GREEK SYNOPSIS .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 4 CHARACTERS................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 4 SOPHOCLES & GREEK TRAGEDY...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5 MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE: A CONTEMPORARY COMPOSER ............................................................................................. 6 LISTEN UP!.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7 1980s LONDON......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 10 RESOURCES............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 12 HISTORY OF OPERA: AN OVERVIEW.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 16 NOTES TO PREPARE FOR THE OPERA.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 20

GREEK SYNOPSIS Late 1970s. Brought up in the East End of London, Eddy is aimless and fed up with the tedium of living at home with his parents. He fantasizes about his ideal woman and a life of success and sophistication. When his parents tell him that a fortune teller had once predicted that their son would kill his father and seduce his mother, the ridiculousness of the idea catalyzes Eddy to leave home in search of a better life.

After getting caught up in a riot and being beaten by the police, Eddy, pent up with fear and angst, ducks into a café where he gets into an argument with the manager and ends up beating him to death. The owner’s wife is distraught, but Eddy comforts her. She remarks that he seems familiar somehow, reminding her of someone. She confides in him of how years ago, she lost her little boy in a boating accident on the Thames, and all she has left to remember him is his abandoned teddy bear. They fall passionately in love and marry.

Ten happy and successful years later, Eddy and his wife are visited by his parents. London continues to be besieged by social ills, assumed to be caused by a Sphinx. Eddy decides to confront the Sphinx. She spits insults at him, but he easily answers her riddle and kills her.

Returning home triumphant, to reconcile with his family, his parents have an admission to make: he’s not their biological son. They rescued him from the Thames, clutching a teddy bear which they threw back in the water. The true horror of what’s happened is revealed. Eddy is utterly traumatized, and cries out to Oedipus, who plucked out his own eyes after suffering a similar fate. But Eddy defies his tragic fate, choosing to live and love as he pleases.

CHARACTERS In this opera three of the four singers play several different characters in the story. These costume renderings for BLO's production of Greek are a few of the characters in Act I.

Dad/Café Manager/ Chief of Police baritone

Doreen, Eddy’s sister/Waitress 1/ Eddy’s Wife/ Sphinx 2 mezzo-soprano

Eddy, a young man baritone

Renderings by Nancy Leary, Costume Designer for BLO 4

Mum/Waitress 2/Sphinx 1 soprano

SOPHOCLES & GREEK TRAGEDY

Opera is a direct descendant of Ancient Greek tragic drama. Beginning in approximately 6th century BC, during Dionysia, the annual Athenian festival to honor Dionysus—god of wine, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre—competitions to write and produce tragic dramas were wildly popular. The author of the tragedy was also the leading actor playing the protagonist. He not only wrote the script, but also served as composer, choreographer, director, designer, and producer. He was financed by a wealthy Athenian who was required by the government to finance a play once a year as part of the tax system. Audiences expected to be impressed with clever poetic rhythms and rhymes, and with characteristic gestures and postures. If the play won the competition, the financier was also required to pay the expenses to offer a dedication to Dionysus.

Some of the most famous playwrights of the time included Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles. Sophocles is known to be the most celebrated, having won 18 out of 50 competitions he entered and authoring over 120 plays during his lifetime. His most well-known surviving plays, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone, are often combined as a trilogy, but were actually each separate plays originally part of different tetralogies.

Oedipus and the Sphinx of Thebes, Red Figure Kylic c. 470 BC, from Vulci, attributed to the Oedipus Painter, Vatican Museum.

Wikimedia Commons.

The playwrights submitted plays to the festival in a tetralogy (group of four plays), three of which formed a tragic trilogy and the forth being a satyr, or tragicomedy that tended toward bawdy mockery similar to burlesque (and did often include the mythical half-man half-goat as a character). This form has carried through Western Civilization; Shakespeare wrote tetralogies, and Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is an example of an opera tetralogy.

Greek theater was performed in an open-air arena, as they required the sun to light the stage. Actors were only male and played several different characters in the same play, wearing masks to hide their own features and depict different characters. The structure of Greek tragedy alternated scenes of dialogue with songs so that the chorus could comment on the action of the previous scene while the actor changed costume for the following scene. Most tragedies began with an opening scene called a prologue, followed by an opening chorus called a parados. The scenes, called episodes, alternated with songs sung by the chorus, called stasima, until the ending scene, the exodus.

DISCUSS: Why are we as humans, attracted to tales of tragedy? What elements are essential to making us feel that a story is truly tragic? How has the story influenced popular culture, psychology, sociology, and literature? What other stories are some of the most retold throughout the centuries? What makes them still relevant today?

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MARK-ANTHONY TURNAGE: A CONTEMPORARY COMPOSER

What does contemporary opera sound like? As you may imagine, as people are more mobile, and technology continues to advance, musical traditions increasingly influence and inspire across oceans and new sounds are fused together in innovative ways.

Opera is a centuries old art form and has its roots in Greek tragedy. East London born Mark-Anthony Turnage did not grow up listening to opera, preferring instead the greats of American Jazz including Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. In the early 1980s, a twenty-something Turnage was a composition fellow at Tanglewood Music Center in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts. Until then, he had only composed works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, or voice. His mentor, German composer, Hans Werner Henze, urged Turnage to try his hand at opera, saying he had an instinct for drama. While the initial idea of being a part of such a “posh” art form and industry did not appeal to him, Turnage eventually agreed after Henze helped to arrange an opera commission for him.

Turnage admired the work of Steven Berkoff, a prominent in-your-face British actor and playwright, and decided to adapt one of his plays—a retelling of the Sophocles tragedy, Oedipus Rex. Berkoff himself suggested his play Greek, which premiered You may recognize Steven Berkhoff for his acting having in February of 1980, as Turnage played the “bad guy” in films including the James Bond film was considering other works.

Octopussy (1983), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), and Rambo: Turnage and colleague Jonathan First Blood Part II (1985).

Moore, who was also the director for the opera premiere, adapted Berkoff’s script into a libretto. While composing an evening-length opera initially felt daunting, his confidence grew with time as he worked to bring the play to life through music. Turnage’s first opera, Greek, a profane tragicomedy, premiered at the Munich Biennale in 1988.

The opera met immediate acclaim, winning best opera and best libretto at the festival. It soon traveled to the Edinburgh Festival, and had its United States premiere a decade later. Turnage, Mark-Anthony Turnage.

Photo: Philip Gatward bolstered by its success, went on to write four more operas including his most recent, Anna Nicole, about the life of Anna Nicole Smith, which premiered in 2011 at the Royal Opera House in London. While he has matured as a professional composer, he still brings a youthful, edgy, explorative spirit to each new work, influenced by both the history of opera, his life experiences, and current cultural, political, and musical trends. He continues to compose opera as well as works for other ensembles.

DISCUSS: What other versions of music, theater, art, film, etc. can you think of that was inspired by or is a retelling of Sophocles’ famous tragedy Oedipus Rex? Does Turnage’s retelling of the Oedipus story qualify as a tragedy? Why or why not? What role does comedy play, even in a story without a happy ending?

Steven Berkoff . Photo: Lancaster Litfest

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LISTEN UP! While some embrace new music, loving it instantly, others take a while to warm up to it, needing to listen several times before making up their mind. Especially in a contemporary genre when composers/song writers are creating new sounds and bringing new rhythms and instruments together, sometimes the sounds may seem unpleasant to your ears merely because they are unfamiliar.

When exploring music that is new to you, and maybe even new to the world, it helps to remember that all music is influenced by the music that came before. Therefore, what does it remind you of? What artists/composers/songs do you hear referenced, mimicked, or even quoted?

Mark-Anthony Turnage was a huge fan of American Jazz. Listen to this part of his opera Greek and think about what other music it reminds you of: Act II—Journey to the Sphinx

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

Perhaps it has tinges of a foundational composer who mixed Classical music and Jazz: George Gershwin, in his city noises of Rhapsody in Blue.

Listen to this one: Act I—The Café

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

Does it make you think of a Tom and Jerry cartoon? Especially with the percussion and the fact that the music plays a large role in telling the story?

Turnage particularly admired the work of Charles Mingus and Miles Davis. Do you hear bits of their music in his?

Maybe in this selection? Act II – Eddy’s Return

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

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Turnage found inspiration in many different places. For instance, the first two bars of the Prologue, one of the simple themes woven throughout the piece, is inspired by a football (read: soccer) chant.

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

There is a quartet in Act II that is evocative of barbershop, a style of close harmony a capella singing.

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

Musical scholars have also attributed influences of British composers who have preceded him, especially Benjamin Britten.

Compare Britten’s soliloquy in the opera Billy Budd to the soliloquy in Turnage's Greek.

Listen Up!

Listen Up!

Finally, in homage to its Greek roots, the final ensemble in Act II, Eddy’s “Blinding,” resembling a traditional Greek Chorus moment, can be compared to how the Chorus is used in The Rake’s Progress. Do you agree? (Come to BLO’s next Final Dress Rehearsal in March to see this Stravinsky opera and decide for yourself!)

Listen Up!

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There is no right or wrong answer to what you what you hear in the music and what it reminds you of, as musicians are highly influenced by each other. Challenge yourself to not pass judgement on whether you like or dislike the music, merely stay curious and listen a few times to see what you hear. Your tastes may surprise you! You can listen to the entire opera of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Greek on Spotify.

DISCUSS: Here are a few things to think about as you listen: • What do you find interesting? What questions does it evoke for you?

• What does it make you think of? Go find that piece of music to compare and contrast.

• How does Turnage use percussion? In what ways does this help tell the story?

BLO’s Greek Photo: Liza Voll Photography

GENERAL QUESTIONS TO GUIDE YOUR LISTENING • What instruments are playing?

• How fast is the music? Are there sudden changes in speed? Is the rhythm steady or unsteady?

• Key/Mode: Is it major or minor? (Does it sound bright, happy, sad, urgent, dangerous?)

• Dynamics/Volume: Is the music loud or soft? Are there sudden changes in volume (either in the voice or orchestra)?

• What is the shape of the melodic line? Does the voice move smoothly or does it make frequent or erratic jumps? Do the vocal lines move noticeably downward or upward?

• Does the type of voice singing (baritone, soprano, tenor, mezzo, etc.) have an effect on you as a listener?

• Do the melodies end as you would expect or do they surprise you?

• How does the music make you feel? What effect do the above factors have on you as a listener?

• What is the orchestra doing in contrast to the voice? How do they interact?

• What kinds of images, settings, or emotions come to mind? Does it remind you of anything you have experienced in your own life?

• Do particularly emphatic notes (low, high, held, etc.) correspond to dramatic moments?

• What type of character fits this music? Romantic? Comic? Serious? Etc.

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1980s LONDON

Greek, Mark-Anthony Turnage’s 1988 operatic setting of the Oedipus story, is set in the gritty, seething political turmoil of 1980s London: the era of Thatcherism, of extreme political and social changes, and of artistic and cultural revolt. The prosperity and triumph of capitalism that marked Margaret Thatcher’s time as prime minister from 1979–1990 were not without cost or controversy.

During the winter of 1978–79, (referred to as “The Winter of Discontent”) disputes between unionized workers and Prime Minister James Callaghan, of the Labour Party, led to a series of strikes that crippled the economy and turned the tide of public opinion against the unions. Demanding that the caps on their pay raises be lifted, public sector unions that went on strike included lorry drivers, train drivers, nurses and ambulance drivers, gravediggers, and—crucially—waste collectors, leading to huge piles of rubbish and trash in London’s posh Leicester Square. All of this disorder, combined with the coldest winter in England in nearly 20 years, hurt the economy and retail spending and brought Britain to a halt.

Though the strikes were mainly over by February of 1979, the political fallout cost Callaghan his job, as Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party swept to power that spring.

Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister in May of 1979. She immediately moved to curb the power of the unions, decrease nationalized industry, and promote capitalism. Determined and resolute, her core principles became known as “Thatcherism”—belief in small government, personal responsibility, and free markets unencumbered by regulation. During her 11 years in office, Thatcher emphatically rejected socialism, reducing the British welfare state, breaking up unions and nationalized industries, and touting traditional values and the nuclear family.

Margaret Thatcher in 1983.

By Rob Bogaerts / Anefo - Nationaal Archief

Her first term had a fraught beginning. Unemployment swelled to its highest level since the Great Depression, a record number of businesses went bankrupt, and in 1981 riots broke out in the London district of Brixton, the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, and more. But with time, the economy began to turn and the middle class swelled as she slashed taxes and subsidies to failing industries, sold over a million public housing units to their occupants, sold state-owned industries to the private sector, and took on the National Union of Mineworkers in an infamous 1984 standoff that culminated in a strike of 362 days. (The 2000 film-turned-musical, Billy Elliot was set during this strike.)

By Nick from Bristol, UK - Miners' Strike rally, 1984 10

The arts and culture sector did not escape Thatcher’s cuts. She pushed the arts to be profitable and self-sufficient, shifting away from state subsidies to a greater reliance on corporate sponsorship. Britain’s leaders in the arts ridiculed her tastes as provincial, and her focus on commercialism as antithetical to true “art.” Thatcher came to stand in for everything that had gone wrong in Britain in the view of many cultural leaders and the intelligentsia: greed; bourgeois, reactionary tastes and values; and the worship of capitalism.

Steven Berkoff’s verse play Greek, upon which the opera is based, premiered in February of 1980—shortly after the Winter of Discontent and Thatcher’s rise to power, but before her reforms began to take effect. As he explained it in the foreword to the play, “Britain seemed to have become a gradually decaying island, preyed upon by the wandering hordes who saw no future for themselves in a society which had few ideals or messages to offer them.”

Mark-Anthony Turnage was in his late 20s when he composed Greek, and he described himself at the time as “very anti-Thatcher and anti-Conservative.” There were many pushed to the fringes of society by her focus on traditional, reactionary family values, with little tolerance for alternatives outside the mainstream. Turnage’s Greek premiered in 1988, during Thatcher’s third term.

She had already gone from underdog candidate to prime minister, broken up the unions and the nationalized system of industry, been lauded as the savior of the economy, been vilified as narrow-minded and unyielding, and taken her place as a world leader.

Polarizing and dominant, Thatcher was nothing if not operatic.

DISCUSS: If this opera was updated to 2016, what changes would need to be made? Does the story transcend time? Why or why not? How is 1980s London similar to the political climate of today? How is it different?

11 April 1981, during the 1981 Brixton riot in London, police with riot shields line up. By Kim Aldis.

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RESOURCES

Berry, M. (2013, October 23). Mark-Anthony Turnage, Greek. Opera Today. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from http://www.operatoday. com/content/2013/10/mark-anthony_tu.php Coda: The Magazine of Boston Lyric Opera. (2016, September 20). Retrieved October 14, 2016, from https://issuu.com/ bostonlyricopera/docs/blo_codafall16_3_final_proof?e=9060353/38953424 Conklin, J. (2016, September). Digging Deeper. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from https://blo.org/greek/ Maddocks, F. (2011, September 10). Greek/ Music Theatre Wales; Proms 67, 68, 70 – review. The Guardian. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/sep/11/turnage-greek-edinburgh-review Mark-Antony Turnage Greek. [CD]. (1994). Decca record company.

Pettitt, S. (1988, August). Mark-Anthony Turnage and 'Greek' The Musical Times, 129(1746), 397-400. doi:10.2307/965963 Thomas, R. (2013, October 18). The operas of Mark-Anthony Turnage - Royal Opera House. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from http://www.roh.org.uk/news/the-operas-of-mark-anthony-turnage-2 Tuttle, R. (2008). Review - Turnage - Greek. Retrieved October 14, 2016, from http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/a/ arh02105dvda.php

BLO’S OPERA ANNEX The Opera Annex was created to produce smaller-scale, Contemporary or rarely-performed Modern works. Over its first seven years, Opera Annex was performed in innovative, often non-traditional venues suiting each production, attracting critical acclaim, and building new audiences. This is Boston Lyric Opera’s 8th Season producing opera for its Opera Annex initiative.

In the Penal Colony by Philip Glass Photo: T. Charles Erickson

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The Love Potion by Frank Martin Photo: E. Antonio

1600-1750

1730-1820

THE HISTORY OF OPERA Toccata from L’Orfeo. Claudio Monteverdi Favola in musica. Reprint of the First Edition of the Score, Venice 1609, via Wikimedia Commons

People have been telling stories through music for millennia throughout the world. Opera is an art form with roots in Western Europe dating back hundreds of years. Here is a brief timeline of its lineage.

RENAISSANCE 1573 The Florentine Camerata was founded in Italy, devoted to reviving ancient Greek musical traditions, including sung drama.

1598 Jacopo Peri, a member of the Camerata, composed the world’s first opera – Dafne, reviving the classic myth.

1607 Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) wrote the first opera to become popular, Orfeo, making him the premier opera composer of his day and bridging the gap between Renaissance and Baroque music. His works are still performed today.

BAROQUE 1637 The first public opera house, Teatro San Cassiano, was built in Venice, Italy.

1673 Jean Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) Italian-born composer, brought opera to the French court, creating a unique style, tragédie en musique, that better suited the French language. Blurring the lines between recitative and aria, he created fast-paced dramas to suit the tastes of French aristocrats.

1689 Henry Purcell’s (1659-1695) simple and elegant chamber opera, Dido and Aeneas, premiered at Josias Priest’s boarding school for girls in London.

1712 George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), a German-born composer, moved to London, where he found immense success writing intricate and highly ornamented Italian opera seria (serious opera). Ornamentation refers to stylized, fast-moving notes, usually improvised by the singer to make a musical line more interesting and to showcase their vocal talent.

Dido and Aeneas, 1747, Pompeo Batoni, via Wikimedia Commons

CLASSICAL 1750s A reform movement, led by composer Christoph Gluck (1714-1787), rejected the flashy ornamented style of the Baroque in favor of simplicity refined to enhance the drama.

1767 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) wrote his first opera at age 11, beginning his 25-year opera career. Mozart mastered, then innovated in several operatic forms. He wrote operas serias, including La Clemenza di Tito, and operas buffas (comedic operas) like Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro).

He then combined the two genres in Don Giovanni, calling it dramma giocoso.

Mozart also innovated on the form of Singspiel (German sung play), featuring spoken dialogue, as in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute).

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

1805 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) although a prolific composer, wrote only one opera, Fidelio. The extremes of musical expression in Beethoven’s music pushed the boundaries in the late Classical period and inspired generations of Romantic composers.

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Giuseppe Verdi

Giacomo Puccini

Richard Wagner

ROMANTIC — THE GOLDEN AGE OF OPERA 1816 Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), becoming the most prodigious opera composer in Italy by age 24. He wrote 39 operas in 20 years. This new style created by Rossini and his contemporaries, including Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, would, a century later, be referred to as bel canto (beautiful singing). Bel canto compositions were inspired by the nuanced vocal capabilities of the human voice and its expressive potential. Composers employed a strategic use of register, the push and pull of tempo (rubato), extremely smooth and connected phrases (legato), and vocal glides (portamento).

1790-1910

1842 Inspired by the risqué popular entertainment of French vaudeville, Hervé created the first operetta, a short comedic musical drama with spoken dialogue. Responding to popular trends, this new form stood in contrast to the increasingly serious and dramatic works at the grand Parisian opera house.

Opéra comique as a genre was often not comic, rather realistic or humanistic.

Grand Opera, on the contrary, was exaggerated and melodramatic.

1853 Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) completed La Traviata, a story of love, loss, and the struggle of average people, in the increasingly popular realistic style of verismo. Verdi enjoyed immense acclaim during his lifetime, while expanding opera to include larger orchestras, extravagant sets and costumes, and more highly trained voices.

A scene from a 19th-century version of the play The Barber of Seville by Pierre Beaumarchais. Its origins in the commedia dell’arte are shown in this picture which portrays Figaro dressed in the costume and mask of Harlequin. 1884, via Wikimedia Commons

1865 Richard Wagner’s (1813-1883) Tristan und Isolde was the beginning of musical modernism, pushing the use of traditional harmony to its extreme.

His massively ambitious, lengthy operas, often based in German folklore, sought to synthesize music, theater, poetry, and visuals in what he called a Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art). The most famous of these was an epic four-opera drama, Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took him 26 years to write and was completed in 1874.

1871 Influenced by French operetta, English librettist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) and composer Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) began their 25-year partnership, which produced 14 comic operettas including The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. Their works helped inspire the genre of American musical theater.

1874 Johann Strauss II, influenced largely by his father, with whom he shared a name and talent, composed Die Fledermaus, popularizing Viennese musical traditions, namely the waltz, and shaping operetta.

1896 Giacomo Puccini’s (1858-1924) La Bohème captivated audiences with its intensely beautiful music, realism, and raw emotion. Puccini enjoyed huge acclaim during his lifetime for his works.

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Mikado theatre poster, Edinburgh, 1885, via Wikimedia Commons

20TH CENTURY

Hammerstein and Kern

Leonard Bernstein

Scott Joplin

20TH CENTURY 1911 Scott Joplin, “The King of Ragtime,” wrote his only opera, Treemonisha, which was not performed until 1972. The work combined the European late-Romantic operatic style with African American folk songs, spirituals, and dances. The libretto, also by Joplin, was written at a time when literacy among African Americans in the southern United States was rare.

1922 Alban Berg (1885-1935) composed the first completely atonal opera, Wozzeck, dealing with uncomfortable themes of militarism and social exploitation. Wozzeck is in the style of 12-tone music or Serialism. This new compositional style, developed in Vienna, placed equal importance on each of the 12 pitches in a scale, removing the sense of the music being in a particular key.

1927 American musical theater, commonly referred to as Broadway, was taken more seriously after Jerome Kern’s (1885-1945) Show Boat, words by Oscar Hammerstein, tackled issues of racial segregation and the ban on interracial marriage in Mississippi.

1935 American composer George Gershwin (1898-1937), who was influenced by African American music and culture, debuted his opera, Porgy and Bess, in Boston, MA, with an all-African American cast of classically trained singers.

1945 British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) gained international recognition with his opera Peter Grimes. Britten, along with Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), was one of the first British opera composers to gain fame in nearly 300 years.

1957 Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990), known for synthesizing musical genres, brought together the best of American musical theater, opera, and ballet in West Side Story—a reimagining of Romeo and Juliet in a contemporary setting.

Porgy and Bess by the New York Harlem Theatre, 2009

1987 John Adams (b. 1947) composed one of the great minimalist operas, Nixon in China, the story of Nixon’s 1972 meeting with Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Musical Minimalism strips music down to its essential elements, usually featuring a great deal of repetition with slight variations.

TODAY Still a vibrant and evolving art form, opera attracts contemporary composers such as Dominick Argento (b. 1927), Philip Glass (b. 1937), Mark-Anthony Turnage (b. 1960), Thomas Adès (b. 1971), and many others. These composers continue to be influenced by present and historical musical forms in creating new operas that explore current issues or reimagine ancient tales.

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So Young Park as Queen of the Night Photo: Eric Antoniou.

THE SCIENCE AND ART OF OPERA WHY DO OPERA SINGERS SOUND LIKE THAT? Opera is unique among forms of singing in that singers are trained to be able to sing without amplification, in large theaters, over an entire orchestra, and still be heard and understood! This is what sets the art form of opera apart from similar forms such as musical theater. To become a professional opera singer, it takes years of intense physical training and constant practice—not unlike that of a ballet dancer—to stay in shape. Additionally, while ballet dancers can dance through pain and illness, poor health, especially respiratory issues and even allergies, can be severely debilitating for a professional opera singer. Let’s peek into some of the science of this art form.

HOW THE VOICE WORKS Singing requires different parts of the body to work together: the lungs, the vocal cords, the vocal tract, and the articulators (lips, teeth, and tongue). The lungs create a flow of air over the vocal cords, which vibrate. That vibration is amplified by the vocal tract and broken up into words by consonants produced by the articulators.

Breath: Any good singer will tell you that good breath support is essential to produce quality sound. Breath is like the gas that goes into your car.

Without it, nothing runs. In order to sing long phrases of music with clarity and volume, opera singers access their full lung capacity by keeping the torso elongated and releasing the lower abdomen and diaphragm muscles, which allows air to enter into the lower lobes of the lungs. This is why we associate a certain posture with opera singers. In the past, many operas were staged with singers standing in one place to deliver an entire aria or scene, with minimal activity. Modern productions, however, often demand a much greater range of movement and agility onstage, requiring performers to be physically fit, and disproving the stereotype of the “fat lady sings.”

Vibration: If you run your fingers along your throat you will feel a little lump just underneath your chin. That is your “Adam’s Apple,” and right behind it, housed in the larynx (voice-box), are your vocal cords. When air from the lungs crosses over the vocal cords it creates an area of low pressure (google The Bernoulli Effect), which brings the cords together and makes them vibrate. This vibration produces a buzz. The vocal chords can be lengthened or shortened by muscles in the larynx, or by increasing the speed of air flow. This change in the length and thickness of the vocal cords is what allows singers to create different pitches. Higher pitches require long, thin cords, while low pitches require short, thick ones. Professional singers take great pains to protect the delicate anatomy of their vocal cords with hydration and rest, as the tiniest scarring or inflammation can have noticeable effects on the quality of sound produced.

Resonance: Without the resonating chambers in the head, the buzzing of the vocal cords would sound very unpleasant. The vocal tract, a term encompassing the mouth cavity, and the back of the throat, down to the larynx, shapes the buzzing of the vocal cords like a sculptor shapes clay. Shape your mouth in an ee vowel (as in eat), then sharply inhale a few times. The cool sensation you feel at the top and back of your mouth is your soft palate. The soft palate can raise or lower to change the shape of the vocal tract. Opera singers always strive to sing with a raised soft palate, which allows for the greatest amplification of the sound produced by the vocal cords. Different vowel sounds are produced by raising or lowering the tongue. Say the vowels: ee, eh, ah, oh, oo and notice how each vowel requires a slightly lower tongue placement. This area of vocal training is particularly difficult because none of the anatomy is visible from the outside!

Articulation: The lips, teeth, and tongue are all used to create consonant sounds, which separate words into syllables and make language intelligible. Consonants must be clear and audible for the singer to be understood.

Because opera singers do not sing with amplification, their articulation must be particularly good. The challenge lies in producing crisp, rapid consonants without interrupting the connection of the vowels (through the controlled exhale of breath) within the musical phrase.

Perfecting every element of this complex singing system requires years of training, and is essential for the demands of the art form. An opera singer must be capable of singing for hours at a time, over the top of an orchestra, in large opera houses, while acting and delivering an artistic interpretation of the music. It is complete and total engagement of mental, physical, and emotional control and expression.

Therefore think of opera singers as the Olympic athletes of the stage, sit back, and marvel at what the human body is capable of!

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Contralto

Somewhat equivalent to the lower female alto role in a chorus, mezzosopranos (mezzo translates as “middle”) are known for their full and expressive qualities. While they don’t sing frequencies quite as high as sopranos, their ranges do overlap, and it is a “darker” tone that sets them apart. One of the most famous mezzo-soprano lead roles is Carmen in Bizet’s Carmen.

Occasionally women have an even lower range that overlaps with the highest male voice. This voice type is rare, and they often play male characters, referred to in opera as trouser roles.

Tenor

The highest male voice; tenors often sing the role of the hero.

One of the most famous tenor roles is Roméo in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliet. Occasionally men have cultivated very high voices singing in a range similar to a mezzo-soprano, but using their falsetto. Called the Countertenor, this voice type is often found in Baroque music. Countertenors replaced castrati in the heroic lead roles of Baroque opera after the practice of castration was deemed unethical.

A middle-range male voice, baritones can range from sweet and mild in tone, to darker dramatic and full tones.

A famous baritone role is Rigoletto in Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Baritones who are most comfortable in a slightly lower range are known as Bass-Baritones, a hybrid of the two lowest voice types.

Baritone Bass

Mezzo-Soprano

Opera singers are cast into roles based on their tessitura (the range of notes they can sing comfortably). There are many descriptors that accompany the basic voice types, but here are some of the most common ones:

The lowest male voice, basses often fall into two main categories: basso buffo, which is a comic character who often sings in lower laughing-like tones, and basso profundo, which is as low as the human voice can sing!

Doctor Bartolo is an example of a bass role in The Barber of Seville by Rossini.

Bass

C

The highest female voice; some sopranos are designated as coloratura as they specialize in being able to sing very fast moving notes that are very high in frequency and light in tone, often referred to as “color notes.”

One of the most famous coloratura roles is The Queen of the Night in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Soprano

DIFFERENT VOICE TYPES

D

Baritone

E

F

G

A

Tenor Contralto

B

110 HZ

C

D

E

Mezzo-Soprano

F

G

A

Soprano

B

C

220 HZ

D

E

F

G

A

B

C

440 HZ

D

E

F

G

A

B

C

D

E

F

880 HZ

Each of the voice types (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor, baritone, bass) also tends to be sub-characterized by whether it is more Lyric or Dramatic in tone. Lyric singers tend toward smooth lines in their music, sensitively expressed interpretation, and flexible agility. Dramatic singers have qualities that are attributed to darker, fuller, richer note qualities expressed powerfully and robustly with strong emotion. While its easiest to understand operatic voice types through these designations and descriptions, one of the most exciting things about listening to a singer perform is that each individual’s voice is essentially unique, thus each singer will interpret a role in an opera in a different way.

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THE PHYSICS OF OPERA SINGERS What is it about opera singers that allows them to be heard above the orchestra? It’s not that they simply sing louder. The qualities of sound have to do with the relationship between the frequency (pitch) of a sound, represented in a unit of measurement called hertz, and its amplitude, measured in decibels, which the ear perceives as loudness. Only artificially produced sounds, however, create a pure frequency and amplitude (these are the only kind that can break glass). The sound produced by a violin, a drum, a voice, or even smacking your hand on a table, produces a fundamental frequency as well as secondary, tertiary, etc. frequencies known as overtones, or as musicians call them, harmonics.

For instance, the orchestra tunes to a concert “A” pitch before a performance. Concert “A” has a frequency of about 440 hertz, but that is not the only pitch you will hear. Progressively softer pitches above that fundamental pitch are produced in multiples of 440 at 880hz, 1320hz, 1760hz, etc. Each different instrument in the orchestra, because of its shape, construction, and mode in which it produces sound, produces different harmonics. This is what makes a violin, for example, have a different color (or timbre) from a trumpet. Generally, the harmonics of the instruments in the orchestra fade around 2500hz.

Overtones produced by a human voice—whether speaking, yelling, or singing—are referred to as formants.

As the demands of opera stars increased, vocal teachers discovered that by manipulating the empty space within the vocal tract, they could emphasize higher frequencies within the overtone series—frequencies above 2500 hz. This technique allowed singers to perform without hurting their vocal chords, as they are not actually singing at a higher fundamental decibel level than the orchestra. Swedish voice scientist, Johann Sundberg, observed this phenomenon when he recorded the world-famous tenor Jussi Bjoerling in 1970. His research showed multiple peaks in decibel level, with the strongest frequency (overtone) falling between 2500 and 3000 hertz. This frequency, known as the singer’s formant, is the “sweet spot” for singers so that we hear their voices soaring over the orchestra into the opera house night after night.

Listen Up!

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Prof. Tecumseh Fitch, evolutionary biologist and cognitive scientist at the University of Vienna, explains the difference between a fundamental frequency and formant frequency in the human voice. For an opera singer, the lower two formants (peaks on a graph) determine the specific vowel sound. The third formant and above add overtones that are specific to each particular singer’s voice, like a fingerprint. When two people sing the same note simultaneously, the high overtones allow your ear to distinguish two voices.

Boston Opera House

A RESONANT PLACE The final piece of the puzzle in creating the perfect operatic sound is the opera house or theater itself. Designing the perfect acoustic space can be an almost impossible task, one which requires tremendous knowledge of science, engineering, and architecture, as well as an artistic sensibility. The goal of the acoustician is to make sure that everyone in the audience can clearly understand the music being produced onstage, no matter where they are sitting. A perfectly designed opera house or concert hall (for non-amplified sound) functions almost like gigantic musical instrument.

Reverberation is one key aspect in making a singer’s words intelligible or an orchestra’s melodies clear. Imagine the sound your voice would make in the shower or a cave. The echo you hear is reverberation caused by the large, hard, smooth surfaces. Too much reverberation (bouncing sound waves) can make words difficult to understand. Resonant vowel sounds overlap as they bounce off of hard surfaces and cover up quieter consonant sounds. In these environments, sound carries a long way but becomes unclear or, as it is sometimes called, wet–as if the sound were underwater. Acousticians can mitigate these effects by covering smooth surfaces with textured materials like fabric, perforated metal, or diffusers, which absorb and disperse sound. These tools, however, must be used carefully, as too much absorption can make a space dry–meaning the sound onstage will not carry at all and the performers may have trouble even hearing themselves. Imagine singing into a pillow or under a blanket.

The shape of the room itself also contributes to the way the audience perceives the music. Most large performance spaces are shaped like a bell–small where the stage is, and growing larger and more spread out in every dimension as one moves farther away.

This shape helps to create a clear path for the sound to reach every seat. In designing concert halls or opera houses, big decisions must be made about the construction of the building based on acoustical needs. Even with the best planning, the perfect acoustic is not guaranteed, but professionals are constantly learning and adapting new scientific knowledge to enhance the audience’s experience.

Boston Symphony Hall, opened in 1900, with acoustical design by Harvard physicist Wallace Clement Sabine, was the first concert hall to be designed with scientific acoustic principles in mind. Each seat was mathematically designed and placed for maximum acoustical perfection.

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NOTES TO PREPARE FOR THE OPERA You will see a full dress rehearsal–an insider’s look into the final moments of preparation before an opera premieres. The singers will be in full costume and makeup, the opera will be fully staged, and a full orchestra will accompany the singers, who may choose to “mark,” or not sing in full voice, in order to save their voices for the performances. A final dress rehearsal is often a complete run-through, but there is a chance the director or conductor will ask to repeat a scene or section of music. This is the last opportunity the performers have to rehearse with the orchestra before opening night, and they therefore need this valuable time to work. The following will help you better enjoy your experience of a night at the opera: • Arrive on time! Latecomers will be seated only at suitable breaks in the performance and often not until intermission.

• Dress in what you are comfortable in so that you may enjoy the performance. For some, that means dressing up in a suit or gown, for others, jeans and a polo shirt fit the bill. Generally “dressy-casual” is what people wear. Live theater is usually a little more formal than a movie theater. Please do not take off your shoes or put your feet on the seat in front of you.

• Respect your fellow opera lovers by not leaning forward in your seat so as to block the person’s view behind you, and by turning off (not on vibrate) cell phones and other electronic devices that could make noise during the performance. Lit screens are also very distracting to your neighbors, so please keep your phone out of sight until the house lights come up.

• Taking photos or making audio or video recordings is strictly forbidden.

• Do not chew gum, eat, drink, or talk while the rehearsal is in session. If you must visit the restroom during the performance, please exit quickly and quietly.

• At the very beginning of the opera, the concertmaster of the orchestra will ask the oboist to play the note “A.” You will hear all the other musicians in the orchestra tune their instruments to match the oboe’s “A.” • After all the instruments are tuned, the conductor will arrive. Be sure to applaud!

• Feel free to applaud or shout Bravo at the end of an aria or chorus piece if you liked it. The end of a piece can be identified by a pause in the music. Singers love an appreciative audience!

• It’s OK to laugh when something is funny!

• When translating songs and poetry in particular, much can be lost due to a change in rhythm, inflection and rhyme of words.

For this reason, opera is usually performed in its original language. In order to help audiences enjoy the music and follow every twist and turn of the plot, English supertitles are projected.

• Sit back, relax and let the action on stage pull you in. As an audience member, you are essential to the art form of opera—without you, there is no show!

HAVE FUN AND ENJOY THE OPERA!

Boston Opera House

• Listen for subtleties in the music. The tempo, volume, and complexity of the music and singing depict the feelings or actions of the characters. Also, notice repeated words or phrases; they are usually significant.