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From Devil’s Child To Star Ballerina
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3 Opera Stars Who Created Iconic Cinema Roles
1. William Shimell
A leading baritone in the world, Shimell made an unexpected transition onto the silverscreen when he was cast in Kiarostami’s “Certified Copy” alongside Juliette Binoche. The film earned rave reviews and competed for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. He later appeared in Claudia Llosa’s “Aloft” alongside Jennifer Connelly and was also seen in the Oscar-winning film “Amour” by Michael Haneke.
2. Fabio Armiliato
The Italian tenor played the role of Giancarlo in Woody’s Allen “To Rome with Love.” In the film, he played an opera singer who was only good in the shower. Despite mixed reviews for the film, Armiliato and his co-stars were praised for their performances and the Casting Society of America nominated the film for outstanding Ensemble casting. Since then the singer has not been seen in any other film.
3. Maria Callas
Arguably the greatest icon in opera, Maria Callas can be heard on numerous film soundtracks from “Avengers” to “Milk” and “The Young Victoria.” But she can also be seen in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s adaptation of “Medea.” It was a big return for the diva and while the film was a flop, one got to see the nuance and subtleties of Callas as an actress on the silver screen.
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Can Anyone Learn To Sing? For Most Of Us, The Answer Is Yes
The act of singing looks simple but actually involves highly skilled control and coordination of muscles – and these muscles need to be both flexible and strong. True control comes from training.
A person needs to be able to control the air pressure in their lungs and use their abdominal muscles to push air through the trachea, where it meets the vocal folds, which start to vibrate. In a really good singer, vocal health, posture and alignment, breath management are matched with imagination, self-expression and creativity.
As singing voice teacher Jeannette Lovetri writes:
It takes about 10 years to be a master singer. Ten years of study, investigation, involvement, experience, experiment, exploration, and development, and in some way, that’s when you start really being an artist.
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Interview: Juliana Hall, Composer
How do you work?
Before beginning on a new song or cycle, I choose a subject, poet, or idea and find a text that seems to illuminate what I have in mind. I look for texts that are primarily lyrical, and texts that seem to me to have music in them. Then I study the texts, looking up definitions of various words where multiple meanings may apply, reading them out loud to hear the actual sounds of the words and feel the rhythms in my voice in a very physical way, and arranging them in a way as to form either a concrete narrative arc or at least a logical progression (where a continuous story is not as strongly implied).
Because I’m a pianist by training, I’ve found the most natural way for me to write music is to improvise – playing various possibilities at the piano, while singing vocal lines until I find a combination of piano and vocal music that seems to fit the text properly. I usually do this very quickly (what my first teacher, Frederic Rzewski, used to call “crashing through”), often getting an entire song done in a day or two.
Editing is next, and here is where everything slows way down. After writing a song in a day, I can often spend a week or two inputting the music into Sibelius software, and then going through and asking all the appropriate questions. Did I get the right notes? What are the dynamics? Are tempos such that text can be easily sung so an audience doesn’t have to strain to hear the words? Is that vocal line going to be enjoyable to sing?
Once the details of the music have been established, I hand off the Sibelius file to my husband (a highly trained musician) who also works in electronic publishing. He prepares the final layout for the score before we proofread it.
The proofreading stage can also take a while. It is so hard to see one’s own work in an objective way. Here, too, my husband works with me. Between the two of us, we usually go through a series of round-trips through correcting, revising, and updating the engraved score…and after each update, we proofread until there is nothing remaining to change. We sometimes perform as many as six round-trips back and forth between us, correcting and revising as we go.
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Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz