Emotions
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Butterfly and Liù kill themselves, so does Lucretia, Gilda and Lucia die, Tosca leaps to her death, Katia walks into the river, Violetta and Mimì die of Tuberculosis, Isolde dies the love-death, Marie and Carmen are stabbed to death, Desdemona is strangled, Kostelnička kills a baby…
Posa and Simone Boccanegra die, Lenski is shot, Romeo dies of poison, Werther shoots himself, Edgardo perishes, Manrico is burnt (good luck with trying to understand the story of Trovatore!), Seneca poisons himself, Otello kills himself, Giovanni goes to hell, so the list is long for the gentlemen too.
Then there are the corresponding counterparts – the stage murderers. And, even worse, the moments when the dead are discovered:
Rigoletto discovers his dead daughter, Jenufa her dead child, Azucena realises that she has unknowingly killed her own son (Trovatore again…) etc.
Moments of too overwhelming emotion: Sieglinde and Siegmund recognise the twin they each thought was dead, Idamante the father he thought dead, before committing suicide, Butterfly leaves her child in the care of Suzuki (the moment where the child on stage wonders what’s wrong with these singers)…
In the field of song, there are an enormous number of ‘trigger songs’; but you can protect yourself better by deciding in advance whether you can emotionally manage to perform Kindertotenlieder, Allerseelen or An die Musik – or not.
In opera, we carry these conditions around with us for 6-8 weeks of rehearsals, 6-7 hours a day, and of course these fates and situations gnaw at us even during the preparation time.
They affect us, that’s great – but how do we manage not to let them affect us so much that our voice fails?
Singing while crying/sobbing is simply impossible because the physiological processes involved in crying are diametrically opposed to those of singing.
There are clever videos on this topic, here is one of them:
What Causes the Lump in the Back of the Throat When We Cry?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRFBjfc7TAI
The video is very informative, but this knowledge won’t help us if the sobs get the better of our singing.
What can we do?
We must always be clear about WHY we are on stage:
We convey the emotions in the music and libretto to the audience through our voices, the text and acting. When the people in the audience are moved, some of that emotion comes back to us, and the magic of opera is complete. We are not there to move ourselves! (That’s a bonus;)). To reach the audience, we need to be open and maintain a certain distance from our own actions.
During rehearsals, tragic opera scenes are often very funny – rehearsing how you die or how exactly you technically ‘murder’ someone often leads to particularly relaxed, even silly rehearsals. But as soon as the first uninterrupted runs come, we quickly realize where the dangerous moments are, where we are gripped and where the emotion might get the better of us. Puccini is particularly merciless, when he makes all violins double the lines of the soprano when the emotions are high!
How can we protect ourselves?
- We ARE not these characters; we are playing them. It helps to wear a rehearsal costume; if the theatre doesn’t provide one, buy something cheap and comfortable to wear during rehearsals. Then let the emotions stay in your costume; taking it off after the performance/the rehearsal will help you to let go so you don’t take them home with you.
- We should use the rehearsal time well to try out where our emotional limit is, how far we can go before we can’t sing anymore. It is important to get to know our trigger points, i.e. to know exactly which phrase triggers crying (usually it is reliably the same) and to act BEFORE we reach the bars with the triggers by keeping our emotions at a distance. Only then can we continue to function as singers and convey emotions without drowning in them. Once the trigger point has been crossed, we are helplessly at the mercy of the emotion, especially since good music emphasizes the ‘dangerous’ parts.
We should rehearse our emotions in rehearsals!
If we cry in rehearsal, it’s not a problem; we are usually in good hands with our colleagues and will be supported. You can ask for a short break, step out for a moment, take a few small sips of cold water (which helps with overstimulation), and start again.
Maybe we’ll do better the next time around, but maybe some pages will always be dangerous. Then the only thing that helps is distraction, either by focusing on the technical difficulties of the passage or by starting to think about something else EARLY ENOUGH – I always found thinking about my next tax return extremely effective in the sexton’s final scene (I can admit it now…). For the parents among us singers, thoughts of upcoming parents‘ evenings, vaccination appointments or children’s birthdays are also good distractions. Once the “bad bits” are over, things can get back to normal, but what is normal in our job anyway?
I hope you have super-emotional experiences on stage that still allow you to keep your cool!
See you soon,
Hedwig
