She Dreamed the Dream, But Others Have the Talent
April 20, 2009
It’s not easy being a fan of opera. Why would a thirty-two year old such as myself associate herself with an over-the-top art form stereotyped by a well-fed house frau whose Wagnerian horned helmet wiggles as she warbles and shatters glass?
But for me, there is nothing finer. The fact that the average contemporary listener no longer recognizes the authenticity and skill of the trained operatic voice is heartbreaking. As the daughter of an Metropolitan Opera singer and a Juilliard-trained musician myself, I know firsthand how much work and talent goes in to making a beautiful, natural sound that can be heard without the help of any amplification in an opera house filled with four thousand people. My husband first gained an appreciation of opera when he sat in my living room and listened to my mother sing Carmen’s Habanera aria from ten feet away. The sheer physical power of the performance has stayed with him to this day.
So was I delighted or dismayed when audiences all over the world went wild for a 47-year-old house frau from “a pig town” (according to Simon Cowell) in Scotland, complete with black hose and white shoes? Susan Boyle sang the lovely “I Dreamed A Dream” on the blockbuster TV show Britain’s Got Talent and since her performance, 100 million people have watched the clip on YouTube and she has had invitations to appear on Oprah and the Today Show. What did Susan Boyle do to garner such worldwide attention? In short, she sang like an opera singer. Although the piece she chose was technically from the musical theater repertoire, she sang it operatically: No melisma, no scooping, a straight vibrato and very little showmanship.
On the one hand, it is encouraging that so many people (and let’s be honest: so many young and beautiful people) recognized that this odd older woman was making beautiful sounds. On the other hand, it is disheartening for those of us in the business who know that there are probably ten thousand singers in New York City alone who can sing even better than Susan Boyle. Why is their talent not being recognized by international audiences?
In this case, context was the key to Boyle’s success. She braved the beautiful people of popular music culture to stand apart. Her appearance and demeanor set her up to be laughed at, and so it was the contrast -- both with her own fumbling introduction to Simon Cowell and with the showbiz style of the rest of the program -- that so surprised the audience when a decent sound came out of her mouth. But when struggling classically-trained singers go to auditions in New York City, they present themselves as professionals to people who listen to beautiful sounds all day long, and their competition present themselves similarly. When classical singers perform in operas, they are surrounded with the trappings of a dismissed art form, so uncool and misunderstood that there are no beautiful young people in the audience to appreciate them.
Perhaps the lesson for these other talented opera singers is that popular musical appreciation is so pidgeonholed into marketable genres that most of us are no longer sensitive to skill across a variety of aesthetics. We choose our genre -- rock, hip hop, R&B -- because of what it represents, not always for the fulfillment we get from its sounds. When a sweet sound is taken out of the commercially disregarded genre of opera and plopped into the the world of international pop television, it is heralded as a swan from an ugly duckling. But how can an audience truly appreciate the swan if it has never seen any others to compare it to?
I wish the best of luck to Susan Boyle, but on behalf of those ten thousand singers who deserve a similar break I encourage those who have watched Susan Boyle’s audition online to ask where else we can find unadulterated, honest sound in the music world. The beauty she offers is not nearly so rare as it might seem. Any night at the opera will prove that.
