Just a Little Respect

As Aretha would sing, "R.E.S.P.E.C.T." That's exactly how I feel about by colleagues in the opera field.

A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of conducting a concert, featuring tenor Dan Snyder (check out his website at www.dansnyder.com). He joined my two orchestras, the Bowling Green Chamber Orchestra and the Murfreesboro Symphony Orchestra, is an evening of Neapolitan songs. He sang great tunes like Mattinata and Core 'grato. Now, before you musical snobs say anything, let me clarify. These songs are not from operas. Although many were written by opera composers, they were composed as stand-alones. However, the style of the songs have a lot in common with their operatic cousin, the aria.

The primary similarity between Neapolitan songs and opera arias is that they contain much rubato (flexibility in tempo-another way to think of it is stretching of time). This makes sense since Leoncavallo, for example, wrote opera arias like the famous Vesti la giubba from Pagliacci and the Neapolitan song Mattinata.

My respect comes from this similarity. The rubato and flexibility of the music requires the conductor to follow the tenor soloist's tempos at all times. This requires a type of sixth sense from the conductor. The conductor must anticipate whether the soloist will linger on a certain note for a while, take time with a certain passage, or press forward. Although the soloist, orchestra, and conductor rehearse in preparation for the concert, details change a bit with every performance. Dan and I rehearsed and performed the same program twice, but some things were different each time, as they should have been. After all, we are human beings who, as musicians, have the right to express ourselves differently, depending on how we feel the music.

So, hats off to my colleagues who do this full time. You have my respect. And, by the way, hats off to conductors of Broadway shows. You are made from the same cloth.