As Steven Blier prepares to bring another installment of his ever-imaginative New York Festival of Song to the Schwabacher Debut Recitals on April 21, he does so having amassed a track record of programs that are the envy of art-song promoters on several continents. These, along with his reputation as accompanist and vocal coach to the likes of Renée Fleming, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Cecilia Bartoli, Susan Graham, and Samuel Ramey — you get the picture — as well as teaching at the Juilliard School and with the Santa Fe and San Francisco Opera Centers, have made him one of the most respected authorities on art song in the country.
It was with great anticipation, then, that I engaged Blier in a conversation that began with his latest NYFOS program for four Adler Fellows, and inevitably ventured into the art of great song interpretation. In all my conversations with major artists and teachers, only the Opera Center’s master teacher, Cesar Ulloa, has ever offered so much insight into the foundations of great vocal artistry.
What are you planning for your New York Festival of Song installment at Schwabacher?
I have a program of songs by Italian and Italian-American composers. One of the attractions is that Italian song is not sung very much, and it’s more multifarious than you think. I’ve got a piece in Hebrew by Castelnuovo-Tedesco, a piece in French by Leoncavallo, and a piece in German by Busoni. The Busoni song is beautiful; he was 13 years old when he wrote it. It’s not only lovely; it’s also a really well-written piece of music, and amazing for a 13-year-old. I’ve also got songs from Catalani, Donizetti, Verdi, Donaudy, Alfano, Pizzetti, and Refice.
Then I thought it would be interesting to look at Italian-American composers in this context, and to hear the way Italian cantilena [lines and melodies] meets American rhythms and the English language. That involves, in addition to Castelnuovo-Tedesco, songs by Harry Warren, Dominic Argento, Norman Dello Joio, John Musto, and John Corigliano.
Harry Warren was Italian-American?
Yes, he was Salvatore Guaragna by birth. He wrote Forty-Second Street, “That’s Amore,” and all of Carmen Miranda’s movie songs.
Bless him for that.
The program has a lot of that true Italianate beauty and beautiful cantilena, as well as that quintessential Latin passion. But there are surprises everywhere. The Alfano song, for example, is so fascinating because it’s a bit verismo and a bit Mahler. The Pizzetti song is almost like a tone poem, very orchestral and very pictorial.
When we go over to the American side, you still hear the bel canto origins in the singing line, but also some pizzazz, jazz, and jokes. I think it will be very interesting for the audience to hear Warren’s “I Only Have Eyes for You” in the context of Italian-ness, because it’s actually a beautiful, long-lined song — like a Bellini aria written for the movies. It was originally sung by Dick Powell in the ’30s.
The singers are all Adler Fellows. Tenor A.J. Glueckert, bass-baritone Hadleigh Adams, and mezzo-soprano Laura Krumm are new to the program, while soprano Marina Harris is returning. I had a session or two with each of them when I was there last summer during the Merola program. I’ll have a week to work with them here, and I assume they’ll be up on their songs when I arrive. It won’t be that hard a show for them to prepare because Italian is a language they’re familiar with, and obviously they all speak English.
I do think the songs will suit them well. You get a lot in this program: some real vocal thrills, things that are so beautiful you can’t believe you’ve never heard them before, things that are funny, and a few familiar things that allow you to relax between absorbing something new.
One of the things I love about your programs is the humor, not just in your spoken introductions, but also in the pieces themselves.
There may be certain people who are very committed to serious, unsmiling art song, and some audience members like their recitals to be formal. I do think of myself as a very serious artist — for God’s sake, I’m doing Pizzetti, Alfano, and Busoni! — but I feel that the beauty of song is its humanness, its approachability, and its wide range of feeling, including humor. That’s real humor, not “art-song humor.”
To me, humor needs to be immediate — something that emanates from the stage, not from reading the translation book. I want people to have a reaction to a song in the same way that they’d react to a story, right in the moment. I think that’s important, and I do everything I can to make that happen.
I think of an art-song concert as a place where people assemble for the primal joy of being sung to, not lectured at. I like to do concerts that are very sophisticated, but that nonmusic people can have a very good time at. That’s important to me. I’m not just there for the Pizzetti specialist; I’m also there for someone who hasn’t heard of anyone on the program except maybe Verdi.
You use the term “primal joy.” When I hear that phrase, I think of concerts I’ve attended by the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, and, way back, Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells. Those audiences were primarily young. But when I look at the Schwabacher audience, mostly I see people my age or older; the younger attendees I spy are, for the most part, either in the Adler Program, former Merolini, or people studying this music.
I feel that the beauty of song is its humanness, its approachability, and its wide range of feeling, including humor.
I’ve always regretted that. When I did a program of South American, Brazilian, and Cuban song, I tried to encourage outreach to the Latin community, but the will wasn’t there. The idea that these concerts need to be opened up beyond the people that are interested in the Adler Fellows per se — opened up to people who love music in general — did not take hold. After a while, I just gave up. Instead, I put all my attention on the artists I was working with, in order to give them the deepest and most nourishing experience I can give them.
One problem we face is that younger people are so used to clicking on things and having things pop up for them on a screen, that the idea of actually buying a ticket and going to something that’s not a long-running movie is foreign to them.
You and Marilyn Horne are among the most visible people working assiduously to keep art song alive and vital. What do you see happening?
Ask me in a year. It’s something I’m going to really put my attention to in the coming year. My goal is to make it possible for everyone to understand that a song is a song — Fauré, Schubert, Stevie Wonder, Jacques Brel. …
I want people to have a reaction to a song in the same way that they’d react to a story, right in the moment.
It’s very funny about song, because I think people primarily hear the way a song is “dressed,” as if they are judging the clothing rather than the person. They’ll hear a texture or bells or drums or some sound that they kind of like, so they kind of like that song. I may think the song’s not very well written, despite the bells. Anyone can put bells in a song; what’s hard is to get the song to really work.
I feel, in a recital setting, that songs have to look good just stepping out of the shower. They’ve got nowhere to hide; they have to be perfectly written.
Knowing Claudia Muzio’s recording of Refice’s “Ombra di nube,” I always wonder who would dare sing a song that’s so associated with her inimitable style?
I really do think that Marina can sing it. It’s such a wonderful song. And let’s face it: The percentage of people in the audience who think, like you, “Who dares to sing this!,” is going to be rather small.
I’m actually more nervous about programming other things that people have very strong associations with, and expect to go a certain way. No one really knows Refice that much anymore. It takes courage to program things like Beatles songs or what folks call “Sinatra songs” — things that people know from certain recordings of a certain arrangement that goes a certain tempo. Sure, “Ombra di nube” was written for Claudia Muzio, but if I get 250 people to the concert, three people might have heard her sing it. I’ll bet you $100 there are many people at the opera house who don’t know the recording.
Some people tell me that their voice teachers tell them not to listen to recordings. I say, “Oh really? Do they also tell you not to read books?” How are we supposed to learn style if we’ve never heard it?
When Terry McEwen, former general director of San Francisco Opera, hosted opera previews on the former KKHI-FM, he once told his audience that, when he became head of London/Decca Records, he invited critics to his home to listen to his collection of historic vocal recordings. When he told them he was about to play an aria by Claudia Muzio, several critics responded, “Claudia who?” McEwen then asked his listening audience, “How can you be a critic when you have no standards?”
Exactly. It’s not a question of taste, but of background and depth of knowledge. There are certain standards. If you want to sing “Ombra di nube” differently from Muzio, fine, but you do need to listen to it, because her recording is how the composer intended it. Then, if you have another idea, you’ll know that it’s in contrast to the original. I don’t want Marina to imitate Muzio’s recording, but it’s information she needs to have.
Some people tell me that their voice teachers tell them not to listen to recordings. I say, “Oh, really? Do they also tell you not to read books?” How are we supposed to learn style if we’ve never heard it?
One of the things that makes a Muzio or a [Magda] Olivero so iconic is that the music they sing is in their blood. Their repertoire flows directly out of them, from their core.
That’s the ideal. That’s what I rehearse for. It often occurs when singers get rid of the voices that they have going through their heads. Finally, it will come out, and they’ll ask if they can take a portamento or another liberty.
There’s a difference between “generalized sincerity” and a deep passionate belief … What I’m trying to get people to do is to find that kernel of truth where they sound authentic because they’ve created true ownership of a song.
“Can I do this?” they ask. I hear that a lot. Or I’ll show them how to do something, and they’ll ask if it sounds “cheesy.”
I say, “Well, if ‘cheesy’ to you means stylish, fully felt, authoritative, and emotional, then yes, it’s cheesy. Those are positive values to me. But if you’re not comfortable with that, then we can do it your way, which I would call restricted and kind of uptight. …!”
For songs on the program by people who have passed, specifically those by Donizetti, Catalani, and Verdi, do you find that life today is so different than when they were written — ours is a life of clicks and “hits” — that it’s harder for young singers to connect fully with the music on an emotional level and make it authentically theirs?
That is a very complicated question, with no blanket answer. Honestly, if someone is a beautiful musician, and they’re vocally talented in an operatic way, one of their talents is that they connect with this kind of music, which is the music they’re being trained to perform.
Often, if a singer isn’t getting a song, I’ll ask them to tell me what they think it’s about, and discover that they’re misunderstanding it. I will then put it into a completely different context for them. I’ll make it into a story, and say, “Okay, this is your character, and this is what he’s come to.” That helps them “get” it.
I feel that songs are much like dreams, because dreams are not exactly realistic. They’re stylized; they’re symbolic. Songs are distilled symbols of a personal experience that has been turned into music and rhyme that’s sung while standing in the crook of the piano. You’re not actually having a nervous breakdown, you’re not actually pregnant; you’re enacting a deep, personal moment through this stylized medium. Our quest is to make that moment real.
When I’m rehearsing, I often start talking about a song I’ve known for many decades. I don’t even know what’s going to come out of my mouth, but I say something from my own unconscious that makes the song very alive for them. And I often shock the hell out of myself!
There’s a difference between “generalized sincerity” and a deep, passionate belief. The latter is a lot more specific. What I’m trying to get people to do is to find that kernel of truth where they sound authentic because they’ve created true ownership of a song. To have true ownership, they really need to be on top of the language, and pronounce it with true authority, like a native. They need to understand the magical chemistry of why words are set a certain way, and what they imply in the language in which they’re written.
You’re 61. When did you get involved in art song?
Very early. I had loved Gilbert & Sullivan from the time I was 6 or 7 — I still weep when the overture starts! — and first heard opera when I was 11. I may have been 12 when I heard my first art song. One of the first songs I heard was a very sweet Schubert recording by Elisabeth Schumann on a Great Recordings of the Century LP on Angel Records. Then I got interested in [Victoria] de los Ángeles. I heard a lot of Spanish songs that were quite rare, but that became a part of my musical consciousness. I also heard [Elisabeth] Schwarzkopf in recital, again when I was pretty young.
I was also an inveterate library guy who would schlep records home from school and home from the performing arts library. I didn’t always know what I was hearing, but I drank it up.
Which is what I’ve been doing while chatting with you. It has been a joy.