While
Thom King’s iconic cartoon, “What They Think About When They Sing,” has
entertained our community for some thirty years, I am honored to have
created the first publication to reprint it with his permission and
offer him my heartfelt thanks for the clean copy.
Hi Gary:
I sure enjoyed seeing you at the concert last night! I LOVED it! I was blown away by the "back up band" being a full
symphony, and choir! I'm not an opera buff, and would
have preferred a few more super-text lyrics, but my, what sound! He can be a difficult performer to watch, since he does not use his body
as sighted people do, but if you close your eyes, you find he puts
everything he has into the song, great sensitivity and a purity of
emotion. I imagine even non musical folks connect with him at that
aesthetic level. Of course, all the "encores" were rehearsed, but so satisfying
for his fans. I'm assuming the little girl on the edge of the stage was
his daughter.
It was fun to run through the choir with my field glasses and be surprised to see someone I know. Inquiring minds want to know:
-- How long did you have the music?
-- How many rehearsals with the choir did you have?
-- How many with the orchestra?
-- How many with the talent? Was it the same day as the concert?
-- Did you enjoy working with Andrea Bocelli? What was that like? Well, just had to write and tell you how much I enjoyed the wonderful concert. Well Done!
Kudos, V.
Hi, V,
I'm glad you had a great time. Here are some answers you may certainly share:
Portland Symphonic Choir accepted the contract to
provide 60 singers for the June concert in mid-April after negotiating
since March. As PSC's tenor section leader, I appointed the choral
tenors and helped my colleagues in the other sections chose theirs.
There were a few substitute choristers on standby, and we needed them
due to unexpected illnesses and such at the last minute.
We first had access to our music as online scans on
May 29 and got paper copies during our first choral rehearsal on Monday,
June 11. We had one more choral rehearsal on June 18. We learned some
details about the conducting and tempi from Doug Schneider, PSC's
usual accompanist, who ran our rehearsals: he'd been to their first rehearsal playing keyboards for the orchestra on June 17.
Our only rehearsal with the orchestra, conductor,
and guest performers was at 4:00 on the day of the concert. Andrea
himself wasn't there as expected because his flight from Las Vegas had
been delayed due to the president's flight commandeering the LV airport
that day. We only could only press on Andrea-less and hope he'd arrive
on time for the show.
The conductor had already toured with Bocelli and knew precisely how to predict his tempi and rubati. I myself was asked to fill in for A in rehearsal,
but I declined the nomination: Italian opera isn't my forte, I don't
know A's typical nuances, and I had to practice my own job in the show.
The conductor wheezed some of the tenor phrases when they mattered for
timing. For us choristers, though, it was the usual game of
FOLLOW-THE-STICK, since the hall was so large, amplified and wet that
we couldn't trust our ears for the beat. (Actually, we followed his
right wrist - his stick technique is unusually florid.) Rehearsal
ended at 6:00 with no sign of Andrea.
Andrea arrived at the MODA center slightly after 7pm
in a cortege of limousines, had a supper in his dressing room (we all
got a catered a meal of cannoli and chicken piccata), and you saw what
happened after that.
It's uplifting and inspiring to witness humans doing
such remarkably difficult and and exacting artistry, even when you
cannot hear clearly, cannot see their faces, and have your own part to
play in the production. Andrea's mezza-di-voce above the staff is well
known and regarded, but hearing it done in real time is breathtaking. I
can do that sort of thing well about one time out of every ten tries:
he got it perfectly every time. In the hundreds of notes he sang, I
heard only two that were less than perfect - they they only proved that
the fellow was human and doing this live.
I kept (stole?) my music and backstage pass as memorabilia.
Yours, Gary Shannon
( 8-{D} balding, bespectacled, bearded happy guy, usually open mouthed.
I teach voice lessons online: www.voice-mentor.com My Passion: Your Art.
Happily, I enjoy the research you have to do when writing or preparing songs, and discovering obscure surprises as you work out what's what. While preparing to play "Pirelli" in Marylhust University's production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, I dug out my copy of Finishing the Hat, Sondheim's collected lyrics (1954-1981) with, as the author names it "attendant comments, principles, heresies, grudges, whines and anecdotes".
Steve writes a long comment on page 345 about avoiding the typical monolithic opera/musical chorus, where all the singers seem to have exactly the same thought at the same time.
"The tradition of the chorus as one voice persists even today,but surely no two people in a crowd being exhorted by a seller of what is essentially snake oil have the same degree of sales resistance. Thus the overlapping voices in the lyric above. Every single chorus member is characterized as an individual and the director can decide how to treat each one specifically; at the very least he has something he can say to each of the performers which may help them distinguish themselves from their fellow spectators. (When the chorus is presented as a Greek Chorus, however, commenting on the action or telling the story directly to the audience, as in the case of "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," it's both justifiable and and necessary that they all sing the same lyric.)
"The problem of writing for choruses like this is that what you gain in the realism of individuality you lose in concerted choral power, and therefore you have to find a line, or preferably lines, that they can all sing without violating the principle. In "Pirelli's Miracle Elixer," for example, "Give us back the money" and "where is this Pirelli?" tie the garbled counterpoint on the simultaneously different musical lines together and allow for a joyful noise, which is not only expected, but welcome."
A few other surprising nuggets not in the script or the score are in Finishing the Hat:
London 1849. (The score says "Nineteenth century." After researching "Shelley" and "Botany Bay" from the libretto, before reading "Finishing the Hat", I'd calculated 1846.)
"Called an opera... a song cycle... a musical play... 'Dark operetta' is the closest I can come, but... what Sweeney Todd really is is a movie for the stage."
British Playwright Peter Schaffer spotted every word of slang Steven had invented in a draft. Producer David Land helped, but more than a few expressions are still Sondheimisms, not Cockeyisms.
Steve says he's a slow reader. (Compared to whom?)
Toby is slang for "boy", "beer stein", "road", or "highway robbery". "Tobias" is Hebrew for "God is Good"
"Beedle" or "Beadle" (either spelling is okay) is a a minor official's title, like "aide" or "officer", not a first name.
Lovett's "Worst Pies in London" irregular form portrays her "a glitteringly disorganized, chatterbox, switching moods mid-thought and thought mid-subject". The repeated and grounding phrase "worst pies in London" are only there to relax and fool the audience...
A tooth pulling contest and the Judge's song were both cut in the original 1979 Broadway production to tauten Act 1. New York City Opera's 1984 production, with the same director and sets, suffered no sag while including the Judge's song, but not with tooth-pulling.
Sweeney's schizophrenic breakdown in "Epiphany" alternates between rhythmic rhymed sections showing his determination, free-flowing un-rhymed sections for his grief, and even breaking the fourth wall for his true madness.
Alas, no applause for the actor: the unreleased tension in the audience makes what follows explosively funny.
Writing in 2010, Stephen would change a dissatisfying, unnecessary and clumsy," lyric in "A Little Priest" from "Last one really sold/wasn't quite so old" to "Last one that we sold / Wasn't quite so old."
Ditto, he'd change Todd: "we'll serve anyone-" Both: "meaning anyone- and to.. " to (and did for the movie in measure 351) Todd: "we'll serve anyone-" Lovett: "we'll serve anyone-" Both: "and to...
In "God, That's Good" (again a chorus of demanding, envious, freeloading, drunk, etc. individuals), the British expression for "Knock on wood" is "Touch wood", but needs three syllables to match "God, that's good". Stephen is still open to suggestions.
When Sweeney premiered in England, Stephen discovered by happy coincidence how sly a punster Lovett is in "By the Sea": "chopper" was slang for penis.
In the "Wigmaker/Letter Sequence", the stage directions are longer than the lyrics.
Madhouses were indeed places where wig-makers got supplies. Despite reforms and government oversight in 1816, London's Bedlam i.e. Bethlehem Hospital wasn't modernized until 1888.
Christopher Bond's 1973 play Sweeney Todd (and the basis of this 1979 operetta) has a scene where Mrs. Lovett tries to poison the Beadle, glasses get switched, and she almost poisons herself, distracted by Toby's singing. Steve wanted to write the disorganized trio, "but I never got around to it."
Whether the audience figures out the Beggar Woman's past from the start, in the middle, in her mad scene, or not at all, doesn't matter: "Sweeney's reaction to the revelation is what counts, and everyone gets that at the same time."
John Lahr panned the show scathingly in Harpers Magazine after having read a script draft, but not hearing the show. Sondheim wrote the critic and publisher that "he ought to see it first." Lahr's response: "I guess you're right".
He's right. It's bizarre, bloody, dark, idiosyncratic, and it's genius. See the show first.
"The tradition of the chorus as one voice persists even today,but surely no two people in a crowd being exhorted by a seller of what is essentially snake oil have the same degree of sales resistance. Thus the overlapping voices in the lyric above. Every single chorus member is characterized as an individual and the director can decide how to treat each one specifically; at the very least he has something he can say to each of the performers which may help them distinguish themselves from their fellow spectators. (When the chorus is presented as a Greek Chorus, however, commenting on the action or telling the story directly to the audience, as in the case of "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," it's both justifiable and and necessary that they all sing the same lyric.)
