JAVS Spring 2013

O RCHESTRAL T RAINING F ORUM T HE O PERA M USICIAN

by CarlaMaria Rodrigues

be overcome. Consistency in hearing where certain instruments are around you and your need to rely on those voices as they pertain to yours is often cur tailed by where you are in the pit and how high or low you are placed in the pit. The ever-changing configuration that can occur either in orchestration or location is just one more dimension that one must adapt to and requires incredible flexibility on your part. On facing the challenge of staging, a stage director who may not be a musician may implement stage action that is completely contrary to the music. This in turn can directly impact you as it relates to the ensemble and intonation between the orchestra and the singers. For example, in any given production difficulties can arise when the singer is being direct ed to sing so far upstage that the two of you cannot hear each other, and your only option is to rely on the conductor. This can be particularly unsettling as the very thing that identifies a musician’s craft, i.e., our ears, is being usurped by circumstances that are not necessarily musically oriented. Staging awareness: It is essential to watch the conductor in any orches tra. However, the conductor is only one component in the process of playing in an orchestra and even more so in an opera orchestra. The technical demands required of an operatic conductor are mag nified by the various elements he or she will have to bring together in order to achieve the successful out come of an entire production. The world of the opera involves many more chal lenges and technical difficulties to a conductor than the ones emanating from the written score and the Conductors:

There are many directions for a musician to follow in the world of orchestral playing today. The sym phony, chamber, opera, and ballet orchestras are all connected as an art form, but the ways in which they are presented can be strikingly different for an audience to appreciate and a musician to master. The distinctions that each medium offers, in spite of several crossovers, is what make the specific genres so fascinating to explore. Being aware of the significant differences in technical approaches to these media can be very helpful and useful to know in preparing for an audition. orchestra and to hopefully open the door to a genre that is full of richness and challenges in its musical drama in spite of sometimes being perceived as a lesser form of fulfillment than that of the symphonic world. I will also include some examples on how to prepare for an audition in a general sense and what you may need to know in order to survive and enjoy the very long hours of physical playing that comes with performing in an opera orchestra. This will include several specific excerpts from various operas—with suggestions for bowings and finger ings—that often appear on audition lists. They will demonstrate the stylistic and orchestral differences that a composer will use to depict the art form and will directly influence your approach in preparing the repertoire. My focus in this article is to present to you the diverse aspects involved in playing in an opera

Requirements of the pit musician:

As far as playing in an opera orchestra, the reality is that no performance is the same from one day to the next. This also includes the physical setting of an opera. For this very reason, many obstacles have to

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