Learning from Leontyne Price
Ohanian Comment: Whether or not Ms. Price's teaching methods should be held up as a model to emulate is at heart of the debate about Standards and Testing. I hasten to add that Ms. Price is teaching a master class, that is students, have put themselves into the position of asking for sharp evaluation. One can still question whether they should be treated as victims. The Wall Street Journal headline writer called her performance a class act. I wondered what the students called it.
New York
"Victims." That was what Maria Callas called the students privileged to show their stuff in her public master classes. "A little joke," she quickly added. Then she ate them alive. That, anyway, is how it went in Terrence McNally's international hit play of 1995, inspired in large measure by actual sessions the diva had conducted at the Juilliard Theater nearly a quarter century before.
In the popular imagination, Mr. McNally's "Master Class" epitomizes what such events are about. For good reason: Mostly, a conservatory will count itself lucky to turn out reliable, well-behaved musicians. But the public craves sacred monsters. When a school has the good fortune to attract such a beast for a visit, what often ensues is a high-wire coaching session for the school's top talents, with faculty, fellow students, interested professionals, and members of the general public in attendance. It can happen that such occasions degenerate into naked ego trips or even hazings that can leave a musician scarred for life. But even if their intentions are strictly and honorably educational, star teachers have a way of hijacking the spotlight. They can't help themselves. And the victims? Whether conscious of picking up new information or not, the exposure to greatness can be an education in itself. It gives them something real to shoot for.
La prima donna assoluta (r.) with a Julliard hopeful.
Earlier this fall, a packed house at Juilliard greeted Leontyne Price, grande dame and alumna, with a standing ovation. The first African-American artist to achieve superstardom in opera, she remains, at 76, an indisputable prima donna assoluta. The Juilliard audience would gladly have basked all day in the turbaned presence, I think, but the lady had other plans. A bemused smile, a shrug -- and already, she was settled into her chair, facing the piano, proud and watchful as the Sphinx.
Out of the wings stepped Victim No. 1, fresh-faced and slender. Transformed by a flowing pants suit into an incongruous Pierrot in scarlet, she promptly addressed herself to the Countess's aria "Dove sono," from Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro," lamenting the loss of the Count's affections, then resolving to win him back. It was an A+ schoolgirl effort: dulcet, in tune and vacant.
Ms. Price spoke up, her voice plush, the accent regal, still bearing traces of her native Laurel, Miss. Of Mississippi, and of the opera house, where Italian ("Ecco! Brava!") remains the diva's lingua franca.
"You've done it clean," she said. "Now that's over. You have more juice to give."
The junior Countess started over, with all the animation of a marionette as yet unattached to strings, unacquainted with the puppeteer.
"Sing high, angel!" Ms. Price urged, pointing a finger to the sky. "You can never sing too high, especially as a soprano."
A zinger! Or so the listeners thought. They roared with delight, and the incredulous student popped her eyes. Was the diva actually saying to sing sharp? Not at all, as everyone understood when suddenly she chimed in, taking the breath away with the luster of her sound, the immediacy of the text, her effortless command of the stage. She had not heightened the pitch but the expression, in every way imaginable. That, then, is what it means to "sing high." When the inevitable ovation broke out, Ms. Price cut it short.
"I learned that here," she said.
When there was bad news to deliver, Ms. Price never flinched. Was it cruel of her to tell an ill-advised mezzo-soprano who had struggled her dreary way through an interminable chunk of Donizetti's bel canto tragedy "Roberto Devereux" that she was not in tune? Some tender hearts in the audience thought so, and there was more: "You're singing notes, not the aria. It's too languido for me, too dragging. Don't make the audience wait half a day. You're not enjoying singing enough. You should always have total enjoyment, involvement with your instrument, dignity! Never let people feel you're going to run out of anything. Never let them feel that you have to reach for something. You need a lot more movement. There has to be more singing, and it has to be higher. All of the above! Get into it! This is not the time to be shy!"
Cruel? In the real world of opera, you rise to the challenge or you fall by the wayside. In Victim No. 3, a tenor named Steven Paul Spears, Ms. Price sensed a winner. Blessed neither with the physique nor the face of a matinee idol, he dispatched Don Ottavio's "Il mio tesoro," from "Don Giovanni," with ease and purpose, investing Mozart's florid roulades with a hint of heroic romance. The character is often written off as a wimp, but Mr. Spears must not see him that way, and neither does Ms. Price. He had hardly begun when she sat up in her chair. When he finished, she spoke of Ottavio's manliness, his valor.
"On the stage, you'd have the wig and the costume and the big boots and the light to help you," she added. "I want you to do what the costume and all that would take care of, so you don't even need them. You're already doing it. But do it more."
Then she had him sing it again, but this time, she wanted him to take the longest runs in a single breath. "You're on a trapeze," she said. "You're on it already. Just take that little extra step. I know you can do it. You have to know you can do it."
When he aced the run, he turned to Ms. Price, still singing, and grew an inch.
But she shook her head. "Don't sing to me!" she commanded, a majestic hand sweeping out toward the hall. "Out there! Sing out! Please them!"
"Present your enjoyment to the audience," she concluded, slowing down to italicize each remaining syllable, "which makes careers."
You can learn a lot at school. Repertoire. Style. Languages. You can even learn to sing in tune if you have the ear. But here was the lesson of the master. Live large. Love the music. Sing high, angel! Sing high!
Mr. Gurewitsch last wrote for the Journal on Sir Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic.
— Matthew Gurewitsch
A Class Act: Learning: Learning from Leontyne Price
Wall Street Journal
2003-12-10
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107102677083457500,00.html?mod=opinion
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