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SFO's Alek Shrader wins big in "The Audition", cinema verite by Susan Froemke
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Alek Shrader the tenor currently at SFO looks like a winner after seeing him conquer The Audition on Sunday, broadcast to over 400 theaters by The Met. You see him backstage with the other finalists, eleven of them narrowed down from 1800 nationally for the National Council Auditions. Alek will sing in New York at Central Park on the SummerStage with the Met, Monday July 13, 2009.
If you want to catch up and coming young stars like Alek, Michael Colbruno says SFO features such talent in the Schwabacher Debut series, which Alek sang in back in February. Lucky for us the 2009 season has yet to begin. Here's the writer with Michael at The Audition. Somehow looks as if The Audition is more fun for the audience than the contestants. I learned some life lessons, emailed Michael afterwards.
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The Audition showed one time only on Sunday morning around the country. The director/producer Susan Froemke has made over twenty nine documentaries; won four Emmys and was nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for Recording The Producers.
The Met says she uses a cinema verite style, it’s French and presents real life drama as it unfolds before the camera with minimal intervention. It’s a direct cinema style pioneered in the 1960s by the Maysles Brothers.
They created a cult classic called Grey Gardens, the 1975 documentary about the reclusive, eccentric aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. She lived in a squalid and decrepit 28-room mansion in East Hampton, New York.
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Froemke’s work ranges to Baroque Duet (1992) with Kathleen Battle and Wynton Marsalis; Froemke’s covered the Beatles . . .
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and the Rolling Stones.
So about cinema verite and unfolding reality before your eyes. When I attended The Audition on Sunday with Michael Colbruno, he and I heard the audience gasp audibly at the end of the documentary. Their hero was dead. Dead at 31, a dramatic tenor who had garnered their enthusiastic applause throughout his trial by fire at the Met and in life. A year after he won, one of five from the 1800 singers nationally, he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Ryan Smith died in November of 2008, a year after the documentary was filmed.
This is a man turning 30 competing with men as young as 22. That would be the feisty and opinionated Jersey boy Michael Fabiano. It’s also our 25 year old with aww shucks ma'am charm, blue eyed Alek Shrader.
I’m a tiger
he told them. I’m a tiger. Alek had gotten laughs of delight with his charm throughout the documentary. He asked for help with his buttons right before his performance of La Mes Ami with it’s nine high Cs. Buttons are hard for me, my hands are a little shaky . . . However it’s Alek who makes the knees of his audience go weak. Since winning he’s been ensconced by SFO’s Adler Fellowship for advanced young singers. He won big with his spirited La Mes Ami, a seven minute French aria from Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment. My only complaint about the documentary is that we never see the entire aria of any performer.
Ryan Smith was a Black man from the South with little formal training and no acting classes. Yet when he sang so dramatically and poignantly I felt the spirit of Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma. You could feel his pain. Even with Ryan Smith's notable and heart felt determination he had to stop singing for three years. That was back when he declared bankruptcy and took some hits to his confidence. Nevertheless he rose again like a phoenix from the ashes to win the big time. It’s done he said with triumph and relief. It’s done.
In rehearsals with the actual Met orchestra along with his fellow finalists, he commented
Go out with a bang.
He said to his colleagues, this is the biggest bang I can think of.
But wait it's not over . . .
Some people walked out of the theater at the end of the documentary. They seemed to think it was over but in the world of opera is it ever? They left not realizing the panel would appear after the credits. Renee Fleming, Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson went on with pearls of wisdom from the parterre box. That’s a combined sixty years of wisdom gleaned from each of their twenty years since winning at the Met. That’s sixty years of experience coming at you in soprano, mezzo and baritone. Susie talks of the enormous confidence winning gives a young performer. The sense of belonging.
Renee talks of letting go of mistakes and tells the story of auditioning for Lotfi Mansouri at SFO in an audition space. She sang her song and forgot the words and got hired anyway. Mistakes can be overlooked. It’s more about musicianship, expression, voice. She tried to dismiss the sports world’s habit among singers of paralysis by analysis.
Thomas agreed that young singers tend to grind themselves to a fine point. It’s like cocker spaniels going out seeking approval. Just get into a zone you want to be in, as Ryan Smith who came out and said 'that’s it, that’s the best you can do'.
Thomas echoes what other singers have told me, such as long long time choristers Fred Matthews and Siggy Seigel at SFO. Stay healthy, rested. Sleep is the most important. You sing from the subconscious anyway.
Speaking of which, Renee talks of debilitating backaches she suffered but cured herself of by reading Sarno. It was psychosomatic and I knew it she said.
Release is the word.
They commented on winner Amber Wagner’s statement about other singers being competition. Renee disagreed saying the collegiality is nourishing. Her coach Jane Dornaman said if you are nervous the best thing to do is go up to somebody and say what you loved about their performance. It breaks the ice.
Thomas agreed with Renee. It’s unhealthy to focus on others as competition. We don’t compete, it’s against yourself.
Note from Cindy, I remember this philosophy myself amid marathon and other runners from the 1970s. Remember the concept of personal best? Growing up in the 70s I was taught non-competition in public school and at Berkeley.
Susie added every performer is unique and brings something different to the table but if she had to put her philosophy into a nutshell, she says,
Say what you mean and mean what you say.
Note she will be performing with the Philharmonia Baroque next season.
Thomas adds, people come, to come to your world. Let people be part of your world.
Michael Thomas and Gavin Delgado sat next to Michael Colbruno and me and enjoyed the production; I also ran into Nora Lennox Martin who sang the muse recently in Berkeley Opera's Tales of Hoffman. She's off to New York.
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The gentlemen chatted away with Michael and me as soon as we sat next to them; Michael T. and Gavin D. seemed to love the backstage world. They also liked seeing it large, not on a computer even in HD. It’s just a large medium. Last Met broadcast they had to go to Daly City since SF sold out. The next live one is May 9, La Cenerentola.
The Met will broadcast The Audition to Canada on June sixth.
200 operas are available in HD on the Met website and viewers can ask for a free trial. www.metplayer.org
For more info: www.SFOpera.com, www.Philharmonia.org
Photos by Cindy Warner
Photo of Alek Shrader courtesy of the Met
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