ML Hart - The Tenor Book 1 / Inspiration & Beginning: Overview

a new book by ML Hart

1. INSPIRATION & BEGINNINGS

"The mystique of an internationally acclaimed singer is unlike that of any other virtuoso musician. We can see skill at work in a violinist or pianist and attribute our own inability to fat fingers, or bad coordination. With a singer, we see nothing but an open mouth. In theory, we should all be able to sing. That we cannot makes us yet more in awe."

- Fiona Maddocks

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GUIDE TO THE TENOR BOOK PAGES

Imagine... You are sitting in the audience at the opera house... the curtain goes up and - you in the dark, he in the light - the tenor begins to sing... and the sound of his voice takes you to another world. A world of heroism, devotion, danger, betrayal – a world of delight and desire – a world of passion.

What is it about this voice that creates such intense loyalty among fans, fills up soccer stadiums by the thousands, and makes singers outside the operatic world from Aretha Franklin to Michael Bolton want to try singing arias? It's hard to put into words... but when the voice is right, there is no more thrilling sound on earth.

PASSION & GLORY AT THE OPERA - The Tenor Book is a celebration of the why of all that excitement.

Looking at the how and the what of being a tenor, award-winning author/photographer ML Hart brings her unique perspective and experience seen in the previously published The Art of Making Opera into sharp focus here. Photographs and in-depth interviews with dozens of tenors show what it's like - from inspiration to studying to rehearsing, performing, and dealing with the business of opera. Additional interviews with conductors, directors, critics, composers, coaches, and several generations of singers in all vocal categories help illuminate the art of the tenor and the life of an opera singer.

If you are fascinated by the tenor voice… caught up in the magic of opera… in the passion of singing… whether you are a singer onstage, in the shower, or hum along in the audience, then you'll find something to enjoy in this new work.

There's information here about the projected structure of the book - constantly evolving, of course, as it's being written. The author's journal entries talk about how this got started, the background work, and the creative process of pulling all the pieces together. A handful of photographs, stories, and excerpts from the interviews along with recommended reading and listening can be found here, as well as in the Words & Music Shop - there you'll find a whole page of tenors, along with profiles of tenors past and present.

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THE TENOR BOOK1 OVERVIEW: The Big Picture

"Sometimes a performance is made up of more than perfectly sung/executed notes. Usually, in fact, it isn't perfect.

"But energy, focus, understanding, sympathetic portrayal, everyone else being 'on' too - these can combine with the voice to create - on an individual level - a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. In the same way, all the elements of the whole opera can catch fire to exceed their boundaries.

"So I hope you'll be keeping the human factor in mind as you write this book."

- George Jellinek, at the conclusion of our interview

Maestro Peyton Hibbitt of Tri-Cities Opera works with young tenor, Mark Schmidt

"The voice is fifty percent. The rest is attitude, physicality, understanding. Go to concerts, recitals, operas - Watch. Understand. Read the poetry without singing. If you don't understand, there is no reason for you - the words don't need you."

- Maestro Edoardo Müller
to a young tenor

INTRODUCTION

THE AUTHOR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Author/photographer ML Hart brings a passion for her subject matter and a rapport with the individual artists that was so evident in The Art of Making Opera to her new book about tenors. Her sensitive photographs and intelligent text in that award-winning book generated international critical acclaim. The intrigue is perhaps even more tangible for Passion and Glory at the Opera.

By working with the opera world's singers, conductors, directors and administrators on a daily basis, the author is witness to the decisions, large and small, that shape the finished operatic production. The tenors, accustomed to Ms. Hart as a photographer, also trust her as a writer, and bring an unusual candor to the interviews.

Bringing the audience backstage and letting them in on the day-to-day work is what Ms. Hart does, in both words and images. The photographs follow the tenors and their artistic colleagues throughout the passion of the rehearsal process and the glory of their onstage experiences. Portraits of the dozens of other artists contributing to this book will also be seen. Ms. Hart weaves words and makes images that have been called "fascinating," "intimate" and "revelatory," creating a complex, multi-layered portrait of the powerful art form of opera... and, especially, the magic of tenors.

"The art of taking stage photographs is a difficult one, as can be seen by the often far from ideal results emanating from the highest quarters. San Diego's ML Hart is clearly up there with the best. Superb as her production shots are, probably the most fascinating photographs are the informal ones -- performers getting dressed and made up, in rehearsal, relaxing, and all the areas of backstage activity."

- Alison Jones for Opera-Opera (Australia),
review of The Art of Making Opera

the Amazon.com author interview - read it here | more About the Artist

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AUTHOR'S JOURNAL "The Great Caruso"

"For me, The Great Caruso was the major revelation of my youth. The quality of it... He was charming... He sang like a hero... it was filmed in color… formidable!"

- Roberto Alagna

It all started with that movie.

When I was 12 years old, I was captivated by the story told in The Great Caruso - by the time of the impromptu performance in the pizzeria, I was hooked. When Lanza as Caruso, in the first montage of opera roles, stood on the prow of a make-believe ship in his blue, red and white costume and sang what I would later know as Cielo e mar, I knew my life had changed - and all in less than 20 minutes. From that afternoon on, I started listening to recordings and to the Saturday broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera; I saw my first opera in the theatre about a year later.

Did the appeal lie in the magic of theatre - the costumes, the escape into another world? Was it the power of the tenor voice? Was it Mario Lanza himself? The correct answer is probably a combination of all those factors.

Many years later, I find myself still wondering what it is that speaks to me. While I was finishing up the first book, I thought I'd be crazy to ever do another. Here's that story. Little did I know... only a few months later, I was outlining chapters and starting the interviews on a quest to find out just what it is that generates that excitement of the tenor sound, and what makes a tenor want to sing.

The single word heard most frequently in the interviews is "communication" – communicating with colleagues, interpreting the music, understanding the words, and most of all, getting that across to the audience – and all in a way that's entertaining. Maybe that's the happened to me many years ago. There are a hundred stories from these singers, and many of them had that passionate spark lit the same way I did: being inspired by Mario Lanza in The Great Caruso.

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THE INTERVIEWS MARIO LANZA & THE THREE TENORS...

.... NO, NOT THOSE THREE !!

MARIO LANZA

7½ films, 11 years, millions of people

"The Tenor of the Century," Enrico Caruso, inspired hundreds of thousands of people. The same year he died in Italy, 1921, a boy was born in Philadelphia who would grow up to reach an audience of millions in his short life and in turn inspire hundreds of opera singers.

That singer was Mario Lanza. On October 7, 1959, he died in Italy. But a generation or two forward and worlds away - in California, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union - three boys were born who would fall under Mario's spell and grow up to be tenors.

So many of the singers I talked with were inspired to pursue a career in opera because of Lanza's records and movies, inspired by Mario Lanza's legacy. Here are just three stories.

RICHARD LEECH: Hollywood, California

RL: It was the only tenor voice that I knew anything about. And The Great Caruso, I had seen it on TV. Somewhere in my early teens, 11, 12, 13. Before I ever even knew I would sing. Or could sing. And it made an impact. I loved it. It was great. It was really cool. It was great in the sense that kids like Batman. You know, it was neat like that. It was cool. It was something, somehow, something inside of me related to it. He was like a superhero in that sense. Of course, it was Caruso, not Lanza. It was the character that he was playing, they sort of became one.

Richard Leech backstage, Act II of "Tosca"

mlh: What do you specifically like about it? What is it? In what way does it reach you?

RL: I think what attracts me to his style of singing is that he never sacrifices the passion or communication for the style, for the imposition of style on the music. And for some, that’s not acceptable and for others, it’s not acceptable any other way. I use his recordings, several recordings - Gigli, Björling - more for inspiration than interpretation. Which is why Lanza’s also still a valid source for that purpose. Regardless of how a classical historian may criticize his various interpretation of a piece. Or his singing in general.

JEFFREY STEWART: London, England
		mlh: When did you first encounter Mario Lanza? JS: When I was tiny, I was obsessed with records when I was a kid. I used to sit in front of a record player all day – Mum and Dad had hundreds of records from the '60s and stuff. And they had this one of Mario Lanza doing The Student Prince and The Great Caruso. And I sort of would play it every now and then, not take that much notice. And then, as I was just about to start the Guild Hall, they gave me a copy of The Great Caruso which I’d seen on telly before, and loved, and this time I just absolutely went for it – for the first time, I really thought “I really want to do opera - that’s fantastic.”
And that’s what the attraction of Mario Lanza is, it’s that everything he sung was as if it was... as if he’d been told it was the last thing he’d ever sing. And there’s so much commitment to it… and there are sort of technical flaws, yeah. But I put on a 78 last week of Gigli, who I think is marvelous, singing Faust and Bohème and it’s…. appalling in many ways! Just in the things that they got away with then you wouldn’t get away with now. In terms of, I don’t know, giving yourself more space or throwing up loads of weight onto notes that… and lack of finesse. But when you hear Gigli do it, they say Oh that’s marvelous, and when you hear Mario Lanza do it, they say Oh dear, well, you know….
It simply is wonderful singing in the rawest form, and I don’t think you touch people unless you let that go, let it happen.


SERGEJ LARIN: Daugavpils, Latvia
mlh: Let me ask you first if I can… can you recall a moment, some time, when you first knew you wanted to sing. SL: This is interesting - for me the moment in the dark cinema in, now it’s free state in Latvia, a small Latvian city Daugavpils. I was sitting there with my childhood friend, Alexander – we had plenty of time so we decided to go to the theatre because there was no other interesting movie at this moment. And so for me, it’s also interesting, because it was not first time I’ve seen Mario Lanza on screen. The first time was, maybe one year before, it was Toast of New Orleans. Later I understood it was Toast of New Orleans with famous Mario Lanza. I remember it was musical film but was beautiful voice...
But now you know, with the movie For the First Time in the central scene when he, when Tony Costa is suffering… and he is singing his famous, one of the best of his singing, “Ridi Pagliaccio,” from Pagliaccio of Leoncavallo... and I cannot explain why, I began crying so, I couldn’t stop my tears. And I was so ashamed! because what the other people will think about, what a strange boy! But I think that at that moment... you know, I believe in the unique character of destiny of everyone who lives on earth, and I think that since I was born, I was destined to become later a singer, especially opera singer. So at this moment, this grain of the future singer, the future performer, practically exploded. This small grain.

And you know, from that moment, I can count that music slowly – very slowly – came to my life. So, if before I always switched off my TV set when was serious music or maybe concerts from Bolshoi on... I remember that when I heard Puccini, it was strange names, everything was strange. But Mario Lanza entered in my life. And I remember that I was searching for his recordings in our shops. I found maybe two, not the big LPs but of medium size. And I listened. I listened because I understood that I like this way of singing, especially the color of the voice.
And also all the singing was in Italian, mostly Italian. English for songs, and some not-so-good French. [laughs] Yeah! You know, the beauty, this creamy tone, this something very special moved me every time I listened to it. And later, when I heard for the first time opera in my life, I heard Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky, Rusalka by Dargomïzhsky, Barbiere di Siviglia, so… but Mario Lanza was always with me. He was always in my soul.
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EXPLORE MORE

Interested in more? Just below, there's basic information about enjoying opera in general... there are photographic essays in connection with individual operas with links to stories of the operas... there are more pages in this Tenor Book section... and in Words & Music you'll find detailed profiles about many of ML Hart's favorite singers throughout history. And still more. Wander through, and enjoy.

NAVIGATION

OperaBasics - An Introduction
The Art of Making Opera - Inside the Book

Explore More: Top 10 Ways to Fall in Love With Opera

Principal Singers & Singing
Invitation to the Rehearsal Hall

INDIVIDUAL OPERAS IN PHOTOGRAPHS... AND MORE

CONNECTING

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PRIVACY STATEMENT

ML HART HOME

WORDS & MUSIC SHOP
recommended recordings by tenors & Artist Profiles of many favorites

MARIO LANZA Profile
and recommendations for listening

All Tenors, All The Time!
CD choices for favorite tenors

Roberto Alagna Profile

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"This is the ideal book for everyone who loves opera."

"... a distinguished book with heart."

THE ART OF MAKING OPERA

Your invitation backstage to learn how opera - and art - is made.
THE ART OF MAKING OPERA garnered international praise and won awards. Get a glimpse of what's inside. Or get your own copy - click on the book cover at left for a special offer on orders placed through this website.

The OperaWest critic says:
"Hart's observations about what goes on backstage, frontstage and all around the theatre are - I can only say - truly revelatory. This is one of the best books I've ever read on the creation of opera."

exclusive excerpts from ML Hart's interviews with:
George Jellinek - November 5, 1998
Edoardo Müller - March 1, 1999
Roberto Alagna - December 15, 2004
Richard Leech - December 31, 1998; January 3, 1999
Jeff Stewart - October 4, 1999
Sergej Larin - April 29, 2003