On Being in the Houston Grand Opera Studio

     Well, it was somewhat different in 1989 than it is today. First of all, it was called simply the Houston Opera Studio; they added "Grand" years later, I suppose to clarify that it is indeed the training program of the Houston Grand Opera. The second big difference is that back then, the Studio was a joint program of HGO and the University of Houston; its directors/founders were David Gockley (General Director of HGO) and Carlisle Floyd (UH). Studio members took their language classes on campus with UH faculty (they had their own private classes apart from the university students). Studio singers also sang roles in UH opera workshop productions, for which the Studio pianists served as coaches and repetiteurs. To complicate matters further, the singers studied voice with Elena Nikolaidi who, due to her advanced age and lack of a driver's license, had to have all lessons (for which the Studio pianists played) at her home, twenty minutes from UH and fifteen from the opera house. All this was in addition to the members' work with HGO: singers, as they do today, performed small roles and covered principle roles; pianists served as assistant coaches on various productions as assigned.

     Needless to say, there was a lot of driving involved. A typical day for me would be to go to the opera house in the morning for a coaching, then drive to UH for Italian class; after lunch, to Niki's (Nikolaidi) house to play a couple of voice lessons; dinner; then back to UH to play the last hour and a half of the opera workshop rehearsal; and finally, back to the opera house to play for a two-and-a-half-hour chorus rehearsal. Somewhere in there I also had to find time, either at UH or at the opera, to practice the shows I was assigned to. By the time I got home, around 10:30, I'd usually be too wound up to sleep right away.

     The Studio terminated their affiliation with UH in the early '90s, so now the members have all their classes and lessons at the opera house, which makes their lives ever so much easier.

     My first year began with the 1989 fall repertoire, which consisted of Giulio Cesare, The Mikado (with Eric Idle as Koko -- pinch me!), and the premiere of Tippet's New Year. I was assigned to the first two, thank goodness; knowing now how stressful it can be to work on a newly written opera, if I had started my first year in the Studio with one, I don't think I would have stayed for a second year! It was also fortuitous for me that Cesare was to be conducted by none other than Nicholas McGegan, with whom I had done Saul a few years earlier, so I knew exactly what to expect musically. Since I felt so comfortable with Handel, and also since Mikado is a very easy "play" pianistically, I wasn't unduly nervous about my very first assignments with a major company. (Sadly, McGegan's mother passed away just before tech rehearsals, so Craig Smith came in to conduct performances.)

     I remember waiting to play the second half of a run-through of Cesare. It was only a rough run in the rehearsal room with piano, and the singers were marking (not singing full out), but the sheer beauty of the music suddenly brought tears to my eyes. It was at that moment I knew I was in the right place, doing the right thing. All the doubts I had had till then about my own abilities shrank beside the pure love I had for the music.

     Later that first year I played for Rigoletto and Butterfly, then they contracted me to stay through the summer for an unforgettable production of Carousel. What made this show special was that we hired one of Agnes de Mille's dancers, Gemze de Lappe, to remount de Mille's original choreography. (The dancing you see in the 1950's film is not hers, and really can't compare, in my opinion.) Playing dance rehearsals for Carousel was one of the highlights of my career, mainly because of the thrill seeing that incredible choreography come to life, but also because of Gemze herself -- such a lovely person. It was a pleasure and honor to work with her.

     My memory of my second year is rather hazy; I just know that I worked as hard as I could, even giving up my one free day a week to practice. Being in the Studio, whether you are a pianist/coach or a singer, means that you're constantly scrutinized and evaluated. You are essentially being paid and given free coachings and lessons so that you may become the kind of singer or pianist/coach any opera company in the world would be happy to have work for them. You are accepted to the Studio in the first place because the staff of HGO believe you have this potential.

     All my hard work paid off -- near the end of my second year, I was asked to join the  music staff as an Assistant Conductor for HGO, and as a full-fledged Coach (faculty) for the Houston Grand Opera Studio.

 

The Move to Houston

     This will be a short one, due to my father's illness.
     I didn't keep a regular journal around the time I auditioned for the Houston Grand Opera Studio; for that reason, and also because my memory has gone bye-bye, I don't exactly recall the timing of events. I know I had to do two auditions, because there was no vacancy for a new coach in the Studio when I auditioned the first time. What I can't remember is exactly how long it was between auditions.
     But I do remember that first audition quite clearly: I had to prepare the Composer's Aria, the Act II Finale of Figaro, and the whole first act of Boheme. I had to be ready to sing any of the parts while playing, show how well I followed a conductor, and also sightread. To start the audition, I had to play a solo piano piece of my choosing to demonstrate my basic technique and musicality. I chose the first two movements of the Beethoven Op. 109 Sonata.
     My flight into Houston was a bit late, and the auditions were running a bit early due to a couple of cancellations; consequently, when I got off the elevator on the sixth floor of the Wortham Center, Shauna Bowman, the Studio's administrator, was right there waiting for the next victim. Which was me.
     "We're running ahead. Are you ready to go in right now?"
     Maybe someone else would have answered, "Actually, could I just have ten minutes to warm up?" But I, knowing my nerves and not being a big warmer-upper, said, "Sure!" Better just to go in and do it before I had the chance to get nervous.
     Anyway, it went very well (by the way, my sightreading piece was an ensemble from La Rondine), and they did ask me to come back and audition again when they had a vacancy. Some months (or maybe a year?) later, I got a call from Shauna saying that one of the Studio coaches decided not to stay a third year (three years is usually the maximum a coach or singer can stay), and could I do another audition in a couple of weeks? Sure!
     The real reason for the second audition, since they already knew my playing, was so that the Music Director of HGO, John de Main, and the co-director of the Studio, Carlisle Floyd, could hear me and give final approval. And approval they gave.
     I moved to Houston in the autumn of 1989 to embark on what was to be one of the greatest and most rewarding adventures of my life.

Handel and a Turning Point

     The San Antonio Festival's production of Handel's Saul (sometime in the mid-1980's; I can't remember exactly when) was an invaluable learning experience for me. Although I had already played recitatives in performances of Mozart and Rossini operas, Handel is another animal altogether, and I had zero experience with him going into rehearsals. Nor was I well-informed at that time about the world of Baroque scholarship and performance practice, or about the musicians who specialized in these things. Nicholas McGegan, who was to conduct Saul, was simply a name to me; I had no idea that he was and is one of the world's foremost Baroque specialists. I suppose being ignorant of this was better for my nerves.
     He had no quibbles about my playing of the arias and other set pieces; Bach was one of my specialties as a solo pianist and this helped me in playing Handel. But I was playing the recitatives (recits) as I would have played Mozart recits. McGegan taught me the correct way to do Handel recits: play chords only where indicated, no adding extra chords or improvising; the chords should be short and solid, or rolled quickly, or rolled moderately slowly, depending on the text and dramatic situation. They should never be sustained for long, and your cellist sustains the bass note only as long as the you sustain the chord. I have never forgotten this teaching, which served me well when years later I played continuo for such luminaries as Christopher Hogwood, Craig Smith, Patrick Summers, and once again for McGegan himself.
     I should say that the woman who sang the role of Michal was a still unknown Lorraine Hunt (later the great Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, whose too early death from cancer left a deep void in the music world). That production of Saul was the beginning of her long, successful collaboration with McGegan and her reputation as a specialist in Handel, though she sang anything and everything with uncommon grace. I remember being particularly impressed, even at that early "soprano" stage of her career (she became a mezzo later on), with her liquid legato and warm, unforced sound.
     It was around the same time as Saul that I began serving as coach/repetiteur for Opera Theater of San Antonio. One season, we did The Barber of Seville and our Rosina was the delightful Stella Zambalis, who at that time had recently completed two years with the prestigious Houston Grand Opera Studio. She was impressed with my playing, and told me I should consider auditioning for the Studio, which trains coaches as well as singers. Being a master procrastinator and all-around yellow-bellied chicken, I mulled over her suggestion for a few years, meanwhile continuing to freelance. Despite Stella's confidence in me, and the encouragement I received from my teachers and elder coaches at AIMS (the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria, which I attended for three summers), I myself was still unsure about my abilities. In my own mind, I was merely a big fish in a very small pond. The thought of testing the waters of a much larger pond, i. e. the Houston Grand Opera, brought out my extreme fear of drowning. Was I a good enough swimmer?
     On a particular day in the late '80s, around tax time, I was organizing the piles of receipts and paycheck stubs from all my freelancing jobs, when I came across a note from a coach whom I considered to be a mentor. This coach, who during the regular season served on the music staff of Lyric Opera of Chicago, was one of my teachers and my sounding board during the first of my three summers at AIMS. At the end of that summer, she left a note in my box which closed with, "You should have a great career in opera, if you want it."  I read the note again, sitting on the floor that spring day, surrounded by receipts and check stubs, and thought of all the piddly little jobs I was doing in order to scrounge up some sort of living -- a living which mostly got eaten away at tax time. I thought of all the tedious hours I spent coaching voice students who had little or no talent, who certainly had no hope of ever making a career in opera. I thought of all the miles I drove from job to job, burning up tankful after tankful of gas, grabbing fast-food lunches on the way. And I said to myself, "What the hell am I doing?"
     When annual auditions for the Houston Grand Opera Studio were announced later that year, I sent off an application.