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Loading... Fortissimo: Backstage at the Opera with Sacred Monsters and Young Singersby William Murray
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None No current Talk conversations about this book. ![]() ![]() Loved this one! Murray decided to follow a training program for apprentice opera singers during one season, and picked the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists, one of the best, if not the best, in the country, perhaps the world! The LOCAA takes singers who have some professional experience and over the course of one to three years trains them, not only in vocal technique, but in acting, stage presence, all sorts of things a diva needs to know. And they turn out some wonderful singers. (One of the sopranos in this group is Nicole Cabell, who recently won the Singer of the World competition in Wales.) Murray discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each singer, following them through classes, auditions and performances (all will sing some roles at Lyric during the season). For some odd reason, he also feels the need to describe everyone's clothes. It was great fun for me to read about performances I'd attended. This was the season, for instance, that Natalie Dessay sang her first Lucia in Italian, and knocked everyone out. Just like me, Murray viewed that as an historic performance. I also enjoyed reading what he said about someone I know, an assistant conductor at Lyric who works with the LOCAA. ". . . something truly special . . . a musician of great refinement and impeccable taste . . ." not to mention " . . . tall, elegant, resolutely cheerful . . . with a droll sense of humor . . ." I admit to having teased him a bit about this when last I saw him. The chapters about the "sacred monsters", Pavarotti and such, were not as interesting, and seemed to be padding. But I did like the way Murray, a journalist, talked about his own early experience as a hopeful opera singer, and compared that experience to what is now available to young singers. no reviews | add a review
H. L. Mencken declared that “the opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.” It was not meant as a compliment, but to William Murray, former New Yorker staff writer and aspiring opera singer, a bawdy house is an apt metaphor for the opera: a place of confusion, high and low drama, fleshly pleasures and raucous song. In Fortissimo, Murray follows twelve young singers in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s training program, the prestigious Opera Center for American Artists, through the 2003–2004 season. In the course of the year, these singers attend countless coaching sessions, inspiring master classes, nerve-racking auditions and grueling rehearsals—and finally perform with some of the most celebrated names (and spectacular egos) in opera, from Samuel Ramey to Jos#65533; Cura and Natalie Dessay. While chronicling their progress, Murray offers an insider’s look at the different aspects of the opera world that influence a young singer’s success, a world filled with temperamental maestros, ambitious directors, old-world tradition and sacred monsters. Weaving recollections of his own days training in New York, Rome and Milan in the 1950s with the personal and artistic struggles of the young singers in Chicago today, Murray lays bare the staggering ambition and relentless will required to achieve a career in the arts. As he writes, “Becoming a successful opera singer—stepping out on a huge stage to try to fill the house with your voice, to bring an audience of thirty-six hundred people to its feet—is as risky in its own peculiar way as embarking on a career as a matador. You can triumph, you can struggle to survive or you can perish from your wounds.” Fortissimo is a delicious tale of rising talents, angst and heartache and small triumphs, and the music that inspires it all. From the Hardcover edition. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)782.10973The arts Music Vocal music Operas and related dramatic vocal forms Modified standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography North AmericaLC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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