Preparing an Operatic Role

"I chose this book because the man it’s about, Ubaldo Gardini, was a tremendously important influence on my life. I actually feature a little bit in the book, along with lots of other singers. This funny little man, Gardini, was the dominant influence in British opera between 1970 and 1985. Conductors fell at his feet and listened to what he had to say. He had an extraordinarily vibrant personality, and an absolute passion for Italian opera. I think he thought that Italian opera was waning, and he was on a mission to revive its spirit and vigour and its violence. And he was a very vigorous and violent little man. What he did was he taught the singers their roles, he taught them how to sing them in a traditional Italian fashion. He did it in London, he did it at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and then he went on a trip to the Far East, to Korea and Japan, and he fell in love with, well, a Japanese woman. In fact, he fell in love with all Japanese women. He was completely blown away by them, and he stayed there and became a very, very important figure in Japanese opera. And Japanese opera is now itself very important. As is Korean. Korea is really the new Italy, producing wonderful voices, and wherever you go in the opera world you run into Koreans and Japanese. Their music is largely similar to our own (it’s not like Indian music, really weirdly different) and so it’s not a big step for them to go from their music to our music, and they’ve adopted, especially, Italian opera. Ubaldo made a big difference to their understanding of the whole thing. The book is a series of interviews with people that he has worked with – many of them well-known singers – and then you get a big interview with him, about the work that he does and his attitudes to Italian opera. You get a very interesting glimpse into the real entrails of an opera, of the opera world, of opera preparation. It’s something outsiders usually don’t have any access to, and that makes this a completely unique book. The singer would assemble with him and a pianist in a studio, and usually by that time the singer would have some idea about the notes of the music, he’d be able to sing it through with the book in front of him. But he wouldn’t have digested the role, he wouldn’t have made it his own. What Ubaldo used to do was to reveal to the singer the essence of the role, how to do the phrasing, how to do the pronunciation of the Italian, where to make a beautiful phrase, where to make an aggressive phrase. Of course, saying it and getting it to happen are two entirely different things. It was prodigiously hard work and a tremendous amount of energy goes into something like that, and it can take a very long time. Singers can take six months, or even a year, to master a big role. All these books I’ve chosen are for people who don’t have any particular background knowledge of opera, but are interested enough to want to know a bit. I’ve chosen them because they give some interesting insights into what is a very arcane sort of world, and one which is, in no sense, essential to anyone – but nevertheless fascinating."