RSS
Home
Siggy a team player part II
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
Photo: John Martin, jfmdigital.com
Siggy hangs an architectural print of opera houses near the entry of his place. He ran through the sizes of each house, naming the seating capacity. Lyric Chicago to my surprise is even bigger than the Met. He says the smaller European houses put less strain on the voice.
How has he lasted so long with San Francisco Opera, which seats about three thousand? He seems to have a tough professional attitude about singing and about life. He talks of facing insecurities, taking responsibility. No excuses, not even having grown up poor or being poor.
Holding anger over that would be debilitating. Others sense when you harbor anger so move on, resolve. Resolve with time, work, reading, therapy.
Siggy sees music as therapy. He gives voice lessons and part of it is therapy for those struggling with failure in another arena. He says success in voice has nothing to do with raw talent, it’s a personality thing. A singer needs to work very hard, listen to oneself sing on tape. A singer needs to use the body, no pressure on the throat. You use the diaphragm as you have probably always heard, to aim the sound to the head. So the throat remains free, liquid, relaxed and won’t sound flat or tight. Siggy trained himself with the demanding Lynn Wickhan for ten years.
You have to be able to take criticism without defensiveness. Sometimes you do sound like crap.
Chorus work is enjoyable he says, he doesn’t need to be a soloist. Siggy pictured above right in Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, coming to SFO. No desire to compete when nearing sixty years of age. He notes the grand operas still hire huge singers, the ones who weigh 350 pounds. However they lack believability as romantic figures. Others though say voice is everything. Which is okay for concerts but opera is theater.
He continues. Weight affects the voice especially when weight loss happens too fast. The strain to sing as before when weight supported the voice results in a wobble. Yet a singer cannot carry extra weight if one needs to keep the back strong to move on stage especially a raked stage (sharp slope, remember Flying Dutchman? It was even smooth and shiny and reflective like water). Siggy continues. A singer needs good knees. Or as I have heard for Wagner, a stout pair of shoes. People won’t pay $150 to $200 for that, he continues. His answer, Weight Watchers, the gym. No excuses.
He notes Fiery Angel. The opera hired strippers since no supernumeraries or chorus would do the parts. Germans do more, in contrast. Americans though cancel tickets, they don’t want to see such things dead center front row. No! So sometimes even the healthy are too much so.
Siggy’s favorite singers seem to include other tenors and youthful European sopranos. He lists tenor Franco Corelli, who lived to be 82 and died just seven years ago. Mirela Freni, here on Youtube in a love duet with Placido from Madame Butterfly, she silhouetted modestly behind a screen as he smokes a cigarette while he waits. He finally follows her outside into the tall grass and takes her hair down. Nicolai Gedda, here the Swedish tenor sings Cavaradossi in Act III of Tosca, writing his fairwell letter before execution, hair slick black. Beniammo Gigli, who has a CD of Donizetti arias. Angela Ghiorgou, who is quoted in Wikipedia as saying:
"Because I grew up in a country where there was no possibility of having an opinion, it makes me stronger now. Lots of singers are frightened about not getting invited back to an opera house if they speak out. But I have the courage to be, in a way, revolutionary. I want to fight for opera, for it to be taken seriously. Pop music is for the body, but opera is for the soul."
Although she has a reputation for being difficult with opera management and directors she got a good review from San Francisco's own critic Joshua Kosman after her debut in San Francisco in Puccini's La Rondine in 2007.
The picture is with Misha Didyk, who SF saw with another pretty and vivacious young woman, the courtesan Manon Lescaut. She is a soprano born to a train driver in Romania in 1965.
Angela with chorus . . .
Siggy likes Natale Dessay, who San Francisco saw as Lucia di Lammermoor in the simulcast at AT & T park last summer . . . she's the French coloratura soprano born in Lyon in 1965 . . .
Placido Domingo and Alfredo Kraus, another Spanish tenor but of Austrian decent, here singing Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment which comes to SFO this year. Leontyne Price, who was born in Mississippi to a carpenter and a midwife. Her mother sang in the choir at St. Paul Methodist. Siggy likes the soprano for her Verdi—Aida and La Forza del Destino, big sweeping roles.
His favorite director is Francesca Zambello, who debuted at the Houston Grand Opera. Francesca is the artistic advisor with SFO. She's directing Porgy & Bess at SFO in a few months, June of 2009; Die Walkure at SFO in June of 2010.
He notes some challenges for a chorister. Metre changes all the time or if the role is very physical with movement. He mentions Adams’ Death of Klinghoffer. This Adams/Sellars collaboration opens with a chorus of exiled Palestinians and a chorus of exiled Jews. Siggy says, he couldn’t hear the cues, musically he could not hear his part.
Rehearsals will be starting in a couple of months and he keeps busy not only with teaching but also with the East Bay Opera League. He’s on the board. He sings in church a lot too, St. Mary’s for example. Each church has a personality he says, but with the echo a singer cannot hold long notes, they come back at you.
When rehearsals start, it’s the bigger parts first. One a day. Tosca, La Traviata, Otello, Abduction from the Seraglio. Choristers learn each by heart then staging the summer operas begins. Then the fall. Once performances start there’s no time to learn, with rehearsals with the orchestra and principals.
I first met Siggy when I supered in Rigoletto a few years ago. He was nice to me backstage. It was my first time on stage with SFO and the comfort level of these senior choristers emanates throughout the cast. They are well seasoned and one feels it. He and I talked of New Orleans back then too. If there is one thing I learned after meeting performers of all kinds, is that it’s so much fun going to the opera when you see the individual personalities. It’s a thrill being next to them on stage, and isn’t that what the choristers said about being next to the principals in Shadow of the Stars?
You just don’t want to go home alone, one said.
Tosca featured in film Milk
Tosca and how opera's embattled stay in fighting shape
Fred Matthews sang Porgy & Bess 756 times
Fred Matthews produces Cavalcade of Stars III February 2009
Opera announces 2009/2010 season
Photos courtesy of San Francisco Opera.
Headshot of Siggy courtesy of Sigmund Seigel.
Contact the writer at SFOperaExaminer@Yahoo.com.
Related Articles:
Add a Comment
