Passion & Preparation: The Two-Sided Coin of Opera

The following is derived from a presentation I made to the business, civic and service leaders of the Roanoke, Virginia chapter of Kiwanis International in March 2017. Though addressed to an audience comprised largely of non-musicians, I hope my observations may prove thought-provoking to my fellow musicians as well.

I’d like to share some thoughts with you today about what OPERA has taught me—and continues to teach me—about life and leadership. As a conductor, it is in my job description to be a leader, in certain obvious ways. But my lifelong involvement with music—opera in particular—has led me to the understanding and embracing of a few key principles that I think are universal and applicable to anyone who takes pride in their own particular vocation—indeed, for anyone who cares to consider and take stock of their own role in society.

Let us consider for a moment the very word “OPERA.” Its etymology is quite interesting. In Italian, it is a word that means “work,” in the singular. A work of art. In the Latin, it is the plural of opus and means “works”—as in many works of art. So an opera really is the artistic manifestation of a concept that all of us have understood and cherished all our lives: E PLURIBUS UNUM. Out of many, one. A single opera is an entire world in which many entities, both artistic and utilitarian, work and thrive together. They rely on each other to form an identity—a culture, if you will—that is inclusive of tremendous diversity, yet immediately and proudly identifiable as “operatic.”

At work with the Roanoke Symphony

My relationship with opera begins and ends with this concept of work. But I can also tell you that, despite the singular and plural versions of the word itself, opera to me feels very much like a VERB! In many ways it’s what gets me up in the morning and keeps me conscious into the wee hours. There’s just so much that has to get done!

This becomes abundantly clear as we consider the many components of opera:  First and foremost, we have the music—composed, most of the time, by a genius the likes of whom we’ll be very fortunate ever to meet in our own lifetime. It is this genius’s music that  comes to life through the talents of the singers and the orchestra. Then we’ve got the story—the words, if you will. There is the set. There are the costumes. Often we’ll have dancing. All of these tangible elements are what we like to think of as an opera. But within the operatic process—by that I mean, the creating and the producing of a performance of an opera—each one of these various elements has a nearly infinite number of details and technical considerations, any one of which can either make or break the entire production itself.

Everything I’ve talked about thus far is really just a bit of cursory background information to help me lay the groundwork for the real message I hope to convey today. My great uncle Clinton White (his real name is Walter) lives in Max Meadows, Virginia, and was for years the head of the Wythe County School Board. He was also, for decades, the manager of several Kroger stores throughout Southwest Virginia. He would tell you that what I’ve described thus far is not particularly different—in a practical sense—than his own lifetime experience, both in managing the myriad working parts of a big grocery store and in negotiating the land mines of strong opinions (both of colleagues and the public) in working on a school board. It all boils down to leadership.

Leadership, in my view, is contingent on two equally indispensable things: PASSION and PREPARATION. Passion, in some ways, is the easy part. We’re always told that we should find that one thing in life about which we’re really passionate and pursue it—pursue our dreams! Well, let’s assume the validity of that advice and explore its ramifications. 

My one thing is music. But, just as we’ve been talking about the various components of opera, there’s much more to music than just the sound that meets the ear. Integral to my love of music is my dedication to language, to logic flow, to beauty in all forms, to aesthetics in every manifestation, to ethics and morality. The list goes on and on. Furthermore, I relate to people through music; and, more essentially, I relate to MUSIC through PEOPLE! I’m just a conductor—all I do is wave my arms. (If a conductor waves his arms in a forest, would it make a sound? Of course not—the trees aren’t watching!) It requires PEOPLE for me—and for you—and for my Uncle Clinton—for all of us—to do anything meaningful in this world. 

So we’ve got this passion. How do we turn it into something tangible? PREPARATION! Preparation, my friends, is everything. The act of conducting, in its most clinical and technical sense is about preparation. In red letters at the very beginning of my La bohème score I’ve written the word “PREPARE”. (The beginning of La bohème is tricky—a little bit like the start of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.) The physical act of preparation—the gesture that conductors have to make to prepare the musicians to sound as a unified ensemble—is as important technically as anything we do. 

This concept of preparation informs every single thing that I do in my line of work. Why? Because I love music—indeed, I love it so much, that I don’t want to leave anything to chance! Some would say that I’m a little bit of a control freak, but I would answer and say, “maybe so, but I know how life-changing this experience can be! I believe this encounter with beauty and truth is a potential epiphany for anyone at any time! I also know that my dedication to detail and my serious study of every possible contingency paves the smoothest way for the realization of my goal, which is to present the power and beauty of music in as efficacious and clear a manifestation as I possibly can.” As they say, if it’s worth doing…

Preparation has its salutary effects sometimes in practical and even humorous ways. I keep a spare baton on my stand just in case I lose my grip on it and it flies either into the audience or the orchestra. This has only happened a couple of times to me, but I was prepared! I had learned this helpful preparation tip after watching the great Zubin Mehta toss his baton into the audience during a performance of Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. Cool customer that he always is, he picked up his spare baton and kept going without missing a beat.

Once when I was conducting La traviata at the Metropolitan Opera, the world-famous soprano who was singing Violetta became ill and had to cancel at intermission. These things happen from time to time. But the Met is always prepared, of course, and so they had another world-famous soprano waiting in the wings to go on for the rest of the performance. And, of course, she was perfectly prepared in every detail—except for one. She had forgotten to bring her contact lenses, not anticipating that she would actually have to go on stage. Once she started in with the second act, it was pretty obvious that she had a difficult time seeing anything or anyone—me in particular! Yet she managed to make it to the last act without a disaster until the tenor made his running entrance ten minutes before the end of the opera. As the two of them rushed together, she—in her blindness—gave him a titanic head butt in the lip. You could hear the collision outside on Columbus Avenue! Blood was everywhere. The tenor sang gorgeously while holding his mouth to keep from gushing and, through the magic and adrenaline of “live performance,” we stumbled across the finish line. But I believe that my soprano friend will forevermore be PREPARED with a spare pair of contacts every time she comes to the theater.

Preparation is the key for EVERYBODY involved in an operatic experience. I spend hundreds of hours preparing the orchestra parts. I make sure that my orchestra gets these parts weeks in advance so they can be prepared. Just imagine the amount of preparation that it takes for a singer to memorize an operatic role. Sometimes people are surprised to find out that, in opera, singers show up to rehearse with the music and text already memorized on day one. If even one of the singers is not prepared in this way, it creates a drag on the entire process.

But preparation is even more important from an institutional perspective. Whether it’s the Metropolitan Opera or Opera Roanoke, the company leaders have to prepare YEARS in advance for every single production. There’s market research that has to be accomplished before a decision can be reached about what operas to produce! There are cost analyses that must be generated. Then there is the coordinating of schedules—not only with the collaborating arts organizations, like the symphony, the ballet, the children’s chorus, etc.—but there is the civic calendar that must be considered. 

I was recently in one east-coast city to conduct The Marriage of Figaro—a production that had been planned well in advance. But just a couple of weeks before I showed up to rehearsal, I got an email from the company saying that the last performance would have to be canceled due to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade! You can imagine my astonishment! Excuse me, how can something like this possibly have slipped through the cracks? It would be tantamount to Opera Roanoke trying to take a performance to Blacksburg on the day that Virginia Tech hosted the Clemson Tigers! Not wise. Trust me, as Artistic Director at Opera Roanoke, if people ask me whether or not we can do something on a certain weekend, I generally say, “Let me check with Frank Beamer.” (Frank Beamer was for  years the respected and greatly beloved head coach of the Virginia Tech football team.) In the case of this other city and the St. Patrick’s Day parade conflict, it was the city “planners” who had failed to plan in a timely fashion. But my colleagues and I rolled with the punches and were able to delay the start time of our matinee performance so as to accommodate the unfettered flow of both green beer AND Mozart.

It is through preparation that EVERYONE has the opportunity to show leadership. If my last chair second violinist shows up fully prepared with his or her music, the playing of the entire orchestra will be better. Just imagine if everyone showed up fully prepared. We speak all the time about players on a sports team whose attention to the details of the game make everyone on the team a better player. This is exactly the same in opera, and no doubt, in your line of work as well.

The principal of preparation is most efficaciously encouraged early in the lives of young people. Right now I’m working with the Virginia Tech Orchestra on a concert we have coming up in a couple of weeks. This is the third year now that I’ve been hired as a resident guest artist to work with these young people. The other day I had to do an interview about the upcoming concert, and I was asked what advice I’d give for budding artists wanting to make a career in music. What advice do you think I gave? “Prepare, prepare, prepare! Now is the time when they are working with their teachers to hone their technique—to develop the tools that will allow them to be the expressive artists they dream of becoming.”

You see, I believe there are two sides of the coin when it comes to most professions, but especially in the arts. There’s the technical side and the expressive side. Let’s say that I love nature more than Shakespeare and Percy Bysshe Shelley combined. And I have a lot I want to convey about my love of nature—indeed, I want to write volumes of beautiful poetry on the subject! Well that’s great, and to be commended. But if I don’t have a good vocabulary—if I don’t have synonyms for the words “pretty” or “nice,” well then the true content of my heart is going to be compromised. But when the contents of my heart are turned into real passion—genuine love and ardor for something bigger than myself—then I am inspired to PREPARE. I work to expand my vocabulary. I fall in love with the details! I take pride in finding the best and most convincing procedures. And, I inspire others with my passion.

For me, preparation is my biggest safety net. You need to know that every time I conduct an opera, I am terrified. Do you have any idea the number of things that could go wrong? First of all, the very act of coordinating the singers on stage—all of whom are running around committing acts of love, violence or both—coordinating all of this with an orchestra which is dependent on ME to keep the whole thing together—this is like jumping out of an airplane, hoping that you’ve prepared your parachute in such a way as to increase your chances of survival. Let me tell you, any clown can get on stage and conduct an orchestra and draw attention to himself as he dances his way through a performance. But in opera, we—the orchestra and I—we’re in a pit—a dungeon, if you will, and very few in the audience seem to notice us. But I have to say I’m grateful for the anonymity! It allows us to focus on our job—to pack our parachutes with confidence. And LEADERSHIP encourages others to pack their parachutes with the same kind of dedication as you do your own. 

Leadership seeks out other leaders! It’s collaborative. The great thing about opera productions is that it is as much about the stage—the dramatic components—as it is about the music. Which means that I, as the musical leader, work with a stage director—the leader of the theatrical elements. Together we form not only a unified concept where we learn from each other, but we also engage other leaders— choreographers, set designers, costume designers. We share our vision with them and they share their vision with us. We all learn, and we all grow. 

But leaders also CREATE other leaders. Recently I was conducting an opera in which the chorus was required to run around all over the stage while singing some very difficult music. There was one young woman who was so well prepared and was always right with me, regardless of what was happening on stage, that I drew everyone’s attention to her and asked them to focus on her and to sing with her enthusiasm and her energy. Instantly, everything coalesced and the ensemble tightened up. In thanking her privately for her excellence and superior preparation she told me that she was taught to give nothing less, because she grew up singing in a children’s choir. Wow, that did my heart some good.

Leaders show empathy and are willing to compromise for a greater good. I am someone who takes great pride in trying to do exactly what the composer wants. I am not one to quibble with Mozart or Verdi. In the Marriage of Figaro there is one character, Don Curzio, who is a notary. Mozart asks him to stutter during some of his lines. It’s quite a comedic bit, and always gets good laughs at Don Curzio’s expense. Well, most recently as I was conducting this, I had a young player in the orchestra who had a fairly pronounced stutter, and was obviously and understandably self-conscious about it, as I noticed from several of our conversations. Finally when we got to performance and we got to the stuttering bit on stage, the audience laughed just like they were supposed to, and the other characters on stage expressed exasperation with the stuttering character just like they were supposed to. Then I happened to look down and saw this young person in the orchestra trying to hide what could only be described as a very discouraged countenance. My heart shuddered. Why hadn’t I been attentive to this earlier? I don’t know. But in any case, despite the intentions of Mozart and his librettist, I will never again have my Don Curzio stutter on stage. If the spirit of one of my colleagues in my orchestra can be wounded, who knows who else in the audience might also be affected?

Perhaps the biggest thing in common that preparation in opera has with the real world is this: preparation saves money! The expense involved with opera is gigantic. The orchestra costs alone threaten to break the bank. So we as planners have to plan on the LEAST AMOUNT OF TIME POSSIBLE to insure the most excellent result. You can just imagine the amount of preparation that is required for this. The venue costs money—we have to rent the theater, and we want to rent it for the exact right amount of time—too much time wastes money we don’t have. Too little time compromises the product that we MUST get right!

We have to be so prepared that we know exactly how long we need to have our singers coming to rehearse. Why? Because we have to house them, transport them and pay them! All of which requires precision of prognostication!

But we are also dependent on the leadership of volunteers, without whom so many important tasks would not get accomplished. And what about the leadership of donors and patrons! This would require another entire sermon.

There are certain operas that are called ensemble operas. You’ve seen it in movies, some of which are said to have ensemble casts—where all of the roles are of equal or near equal importance and stature. But every opera is an ensemble opera, when you consider the infinite number of elements of near equal importance that must work together to create a unified whole. 

So, to conclude, I would humbly encourage all of us to live “ensemble lives,” in which we find leadership opportunities in our own activities—large and small. Let’s encourage preparation—let’s inspire passion! In short, let’s live operatically! And one of these days we’ll write an opera together: E PLURIBUS UNUM.