Acting in Opera

I was at a party a few nights ago, and I struck up a conversation with my friend’s brother, who is an opera singer. I started to wonder how what I teach might apply to his work in opera. A google search about training or coaching opera singers in acting resulted in paltry results. Amazon equally has precious few contemporary works. I knew that I had Stanislavski on Opera in my bookcase, so I broke it out to see what I could learn from the legend.

I have always considered opera to be the supreme union of music and drama. Yet I was disappointed to learn that most opera training focuses almost entirely upon the musical elements and pays lip service to the dramatic component. In fact, when I learned that my alma mater the RSAMD, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, had an opera school, I was somewhat concerned to hear that it was run by the School of Music. Thankfully, they do receive actor training as part of the course, but, as we might imagine, it is not a big part of their training.

I believe approaching any sung drama (singing opera or musical theatre) is very similar to approaching a classical text such as acting Shakespeare. It’s about learning to play within restrictions that are inherent in the form. It’s also then about exploiting the freedom within those restrictions.

In acting Shakespeare, we meet certain limitations that the rhythm imposes. In acting opera, we meet certain limitations that the music imposes.  But in both cases, beyond that, it is possible to use the basics of acting to help us.

The opera singer learns their lines before rehearsals begin.  For me, that demonstrates a commitment that contemporary theatre actors do not share.  Film and television actors have to turn up with their lines learned too.

The opera singer learning to act, can still employ the basics that will help lend credibility and emotion to their performance. The opera singer can easily use the basic techniques of acting on their songs.

You can analyse a song for the desire of the character, we call it a WANT.  What does your character want the other characters to do when they sing?  In other words, you can analyse WHY you are singing the song.  If you can understand that, you understand a lot more than the opera singer who is just trying to sing the song perfectly.  The WANT gives you access to their desire, the motivation behind singing.

The next step is to turn that into something you can actually do truthfully.  So we take the character’s desire, the WANT and turn it into an actable goal in the real world.

So for instance, in O Mio Babbino Caro, Lauretta is singing to ‘convince her father that she really loves Rinuccio and that she will kill herself if she can’t be with him.’  So, perhaps refining it, Lauretta wants her father to ‘give her permission to be with him, or she will kill herself’.  Note that it’s all about defining what Lauretta is getting her father to do.  Now you know why she is singing.  But instead of pretending that you want that, and instead of pretending YOUR father will not let you be with the person you know want, so that you can ‘feel the same feelings’, or ‘think the same thoughts’, or whatever else personal identification-based acting methodologies would have you do, we transform the want into a real world task, something you can actually do to the actor played your character’s father.  If her father was on stage, you would sing it directly to him, if he was off stage, you would STILL sing it directly to him.

The next step that we take is to establish a real world task, if I had to convince an authority figure (parent will be too unrealistic for you if you’re not still under 21) to give you permission to do something or there will be consequences.  I could try:

• To get someone to rescue me.

• To get someone to take me seriously.

• To get someone to give me what I deserve.

(or many more)

Now you have to do THIS to that other singer on stage with you.  We do this, by thinking of the types of tactics that you could use to achieve that real world goal.

When you sing the line, you can let the tactics, the verbs we use to get people to do things, can influence what you put behind the lines, inside the sound, affecting you, affecting the other actors/singers on stage, and of course, at the same time, affecting the audience.

This exact same process can be used to bring to life the songs of a musical, or in fact, ANY songs.  The basics of acting for opera, are understanding what motivates the character, turning that into a real world task, which promotes real world truthful action on your part, via real attempts at achieving it that we call TACTICS.

 -COACH- 

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