Philip Glass at 80: Reflections and Predictions for Classical Music’s Future
Show Up, Look At The Camera, Face The Music
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1,000 Musicians Play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Live, at the Same Time
10 of the Greatest Bass-Baritone Roles
- Figaro – Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro
- Dulcamara – Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore
- Boris – Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov
- Escamillo – Bizet’s Carmen
- Hans Sachs – Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
- Sir John Falstaff – Verdi’s Falstaff
- Scarpia – Puccini’s Tosca
- Jokanaan (John the Baptist) – Richard Strauss’s Salome
- Nick Shadow – Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress
- The Protector – Benjamin’s Written on Skin
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The “Subtleties, Complexities and Paradoxes” of Playing Villains
One unique way Hardy approaches his characters is by drawing them to figure out how they should visually look, particularly characters that are fictional. He says:
One has to have a silhouette, you know? Say I’m playing Elton John. You know what he looks like. Playing Al Capone. You know what he looks like. But what about characters we’re making up from scratch, who you don’t know what they look like? You have to create a memorable silhouette for them, too.
When I was at school I was told, “Tom, when you play the prince or the king, I want to fucking see a king walk onstage before you even open your mouth. What does that look like?” Do you do it literally, with a costume, or through physicality? How do you immediately see the king? Crown? Robes? I have to find an identifier, a silhouette which immediately radiates something for me. Remember, you won’t necessarily know by their clothes that they’re the king. You can walk on in a disheveled homeless man’s outfit, but there’s something about them that radiates a nobility, something that makes you go, “This person’s a king.”
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Makeup for Ballet Auditions | Kathryn Morgan
Dev Patel: “I never went to acting school.”
Patel, who is best known for playing a much-thinner character in 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, had to bulk up considerably to play the Westernized adult Saroo. He explains, “I’m 26 and, like most actors my age, hungry to show emotional range. This role enabled me to play a character suffering real pain, a change from the scripts that want you as a funny sidekick. It took eight months to prepare. I wanted to commit every fibre of my being to getting it right. I had to bulk up, grow my hair, learn the accent. At my last audition, where I met the director Garth Davis, I’d been in The Man Who Knew Infinity and was skinny, with a buzzcut. I had to get myself a personal trainer and started eating like a glutton – downing the protein shakes.”
When asked what he has learned about the great actors he’s worked with like Judi Dench, Patel points out, “They have a curiosity about life, a sense of humour and emotional reserve. I never went to acting school. Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from great directors and my co-stars. Acting is about honesty. When I began, I was trying to squeeze as much emotion out of roles as I could and get big laughs. Now it’s about doing less, cutting away the fat.”
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