The Performance Space: Character Building
For a long time now I’ve been wanting to create a space that shares all things dealing with the vocal arts. This content sharing ranges from blogs, videos, study documents, book recommendations, podcast, performance reviews… you name it, I want to include it. The plan isn’t to randomly release content but instead have a steady stream to build upon daily, weekly and monthly. My new tab “The Performance Space” will include free material and content pertaining to the topic of the month. We are kicking off the month of August with “So you want to learn an Opera Aria?”. During the month of August we will dive into best practices for learning an Opera Aria; which can be a complex and daunting task. This weeks blog we are focusing on “Character Building”.
So you have an opera aria picked out that you’re ready to dive into. Maybe it was assigned to you or recommended by a voice teacher. Perhaps you came across your aria of choice on youtube. No matter how you arrived to said aria, here are some steps that will help ensure success (and fun!) when starting a deep dive into this complex musical endeavor.
The first thing I cannot stress enough is to do a thorough job of building a character. To do this, you need to have a good overall understanding of what is happening with the character through out the opera and not just in the moment of the particular aria you are singing. That means you are now tasked with the fun part of the process which is WATCHING the opera in which your aria comes from. Disclaimer, I will be releasing a podcast with my good friend Hannah to go over why opera is boring.. but trust me when I say, I encourage you to watch the full opera (and probably various productions of said opera) to guide you in understanding the character you’ll be portraying. If you refuse to watch the opera, well then you have to read the libretto. Honestly, it would be good practice to read the libretto anyway. To be very clear, viewing various interpretations of the opera is not meant to encourage you to try to copy a famous singer’s performance and portrayal of a character. Getting artistic ideas is great but this is your opportunity to create a character unique and specific to you and your artistry. Also, it’s impossible to replicate a performer exactly so just don’t even bother wasting your time trying.
Now that you’ve had a wonderful long weekend of watching your new favorite opera 2-3 times, and have read through the libretto along the way…the character building process begins! Hopefully you’ve taken a few notes so you can be as thorough as possible.
The below template is a great starting point. There are many specifics that will form the backbone of your character analysis. Once you’ve filled in the specifics like setting, time period (keep in mind this can easily change depending on the production), interactions with characters etc. you’ll be venturing in the realm of creativity to fill any gaps. If there is information blatantly missing from the libretto then you get to make some fun choices based on your current research. For example, do we always know what motivates a character to sing their aria? Often times there is a specific event but there can also be an internal struggle that you as the performer need to create for the performance to become real. You’ll see the below template isn’t very long but by the time you’re done turning over every stone your character has to offer, you should have a solid 2-3 pages of information.
If you want a downloadable version go check out “The Performance Space” tab and click the button “Character Sheet”. This will download as a word document and you can fill in a save directly to your own desktop.
Name of Opera:
Librettist:
Composer:
Summary of the Opera plot & production interpretation:
Character Sheet
Character’s Name:
Age:
From/hometown: Current location:
Future destination(s) & why:
Personality & Background:
Motivations:
Relationships with other Characters (list specific names):
Paraphrased explanation of Arias/duets/recitatives/choruses (etc):
-Laura
