Now that we’re in the midst of learning a range of opera choruses for our May concerts Feel the Spirit, their full breadth and challenges are coming into focus. I’ve started to wonder why it feels so different to sing an operatic chorus from a musical work written expressly for a choir.
The answers may seem obvious. You are part of a drama fixed in a particular place, time and action. You are most often the onlooker, commentator, scene-setter as the drama unfolds before you.
Is that all? Not quite. I came across some insights from Chorus Masters who prepare the Chorus of international opera companies for performance; from operatic soloists whose masterclasses point the way for the aspiring singer. And from those who sing opera choruses for a living.
Multi-Tasking? You bet
The Royal Opera Chorus company in London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, says, with admirable understatement:
‘As most operas are performed in the original language (Italian, French, German, Russian, Czech) the chorus works closely with language coaches during the rehearsal period. Due to the brevity of production runs (six or seven performances) the chorus will often be performing in two or three productions in the evenings while rehearsing one or two other productions during the day and also learning the music of several other operas, all at the same time.’
English National Opera mezzo-soprano Judith Douglas doesn’t mince her words:
‘As a chorus, I think we are known for being up for pretty much anything. We have to be able to keep so many different things in our heads at the same time and, especially at the beginning of a new season, there's a huge amount to learn."
One voice or many?
New York’s Metropolitan Opera Chorus Master Donald Palumbo rehearses and conducts some of the best singers in the world and is renowned for his ability to blend the voices of the singers in the chorus:
‘Soloists can get away with "ah" vowels and "ee" vowels that have different degrees of brightness and spread, so to speak, in the vowel. My job as a chorus master is to try to get every chorus singer to take an "ah" vowel and interpret it in the same way, in other words, so that the roundness and the height of the "ah" is uniform across the chorus…In the chorus, we have to make sure that everybody adheres at all times to this same shape of every vowel.’
The endless note?
‘The sustaining of a note, the release of a note, the intake of the breath and the attack of the next note, should be one process that doesn't have any stop/start…It should never feel like tone, stop, gasp, produce a tone. With a chorus you have the advantage that you can do something called stagger breathing, which means if you have a very long phrase and you want to make sure that you get to the end of the phrase with the same full support that you had when you started the phrase, you can have people decide to interrupt say, a syllable, or to take a little we call it a "catch breath" somewhere in the phrase that is not going to be done at the exact same spot by everyone else in the chorus. So the overall effect of that is that the chorus is not breathing where actually everybody has taken a breath.’
Unleashing emotion?
Timothy Burke, Chorus Master at Opera North, Leads in England, puts his finger on why choruses can act as a dramatic lightning rod and why they can be scary:
"There's something uniquely powerful about a large body of people taking the voice to its limits.. The waves of emotion can communicate with an audience with enormous intensity. But the dynamics of the ensemble change radically when the numbers are suddenly almost doubled. Many more people are singing the same note, and there's a much higher risk of people getting a consonant in the wrong place. My job is to make sure that all the singers are completely secure with the music, and then that they keep the detail and stay focused.”
Where to start?
Catherine Wyn-Jones, mezzo-soprano soloist and teacher based in London gives her perspective:
‘You should always learn the text first, especially if it is in a foreign language. It is important to unpick problems you might find in the pronunciation, and then to develop a feeling of fluency. You must also get an idea of the whole story if you are talking about an operatic role, and know the background….Only then should you start looking at and learning the music.’
‘I have also noticed that students tend not to be as careful with rhythm as they are with pitch – but rhythm is just as important! The pitch has got to fit the accompaniment, and words have a spring in them…Finally, the score with the musical notation is not the music but only the guidelines for how the music should sound!…you’ve got to punch your way through the paper score and reach the music on the other side.’
So, there is much to take on board for your amateur Chorus singer, as we work on three more of our own opera choruses to be performed at our May 2024 Feel the Spirit concerts.
Habanera from Carmen by Georges Bizet
The famous habanera-style love song from Bizet's Carmen shows us how the Gypsy Carmen chooses
and seduces Corporal Don José in the first act of the play. The public then discovers the cigar maker, lascivious, arrogant, who plays with the feelings of her many suitors, before throwing the flower to the lucky one. If this doesn't foreshadow the drama that will unfold before our eyes? Seduction, manipulation, mad love, rejection, jealousy and murder, nothing less! Love has never known law…
Humming Chorus from Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini
Nagasaki, early 20th century. American officers stationed in Japan marry young local women, knowing that the marriage will lapse when they leave their position. Among them, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, who is going to marry a young fifteen-year-old geisha, Cio-Cio-San (Madame Papillon in Japanese). For Pinkerton, this marriage is harmless entertainment, while for Butterfly, it is a real commitment. A child will be born from their union, but only after the departure of Pinkerton who returned home, unconcerned about leaving a broken heart behind him. Butterfly will wait three years before Pinkerton returns, this time with his American wife, and only to claim his son! It will be too much for Cio-Cio who will kill herself by entrusting her child to the man she still considers her husband. The humming chorus at the end of the 2nd act wonderfully illustrates the anxious wait of Madame Butterfly, in a very successful atmosphere of suspended time.
Viljalied from The Merry Widow by Franz Lehar
The small Pontevedrine community living in Paris meets at the home of Hanna Glawari, a young and rich widow who is giving a big party in her home. Danilo Danilowitsch, a childhood sweetheart thwarted by their parents, is also there. During the evening, the guests talk about their homeland, Pontevedro; folk tunes are played. Hanna arrives and begins to sing Vilja's song, expressing in music her own homesickness, her unspoken but still intact love for Danilo, and her loneliness. A lovely lyrical, nostalgic and tender moment. Everything will work out in the end, and the beautiful widow, merry again, will find her lover, and her fortune will remain Pontevedrine. Champagne!
Grateful acknowledgements to The Guardian; the Royal Opera House Covent Garden; YourClassical.org; Vantagemusic.org