As I engage with these problems in the posts to come, I will sometimes go into technical detail, especially in my home disciplines of singing and acting. It may seem to some readers that this amounts to excessive attention paid to small matters that don’t count for much in the overall effect, or are of importance only to professionals. But I’m going to try to persuade you otherwise. So much of the final effect of performance is subliminal, and actually consists of specifics of technique. Listening and watching for them, and joining the debates that surround them, deepens the experience of performance. When, as a young enthusiast, I came across criticism that spoke of things I had not yet penetrated, or whose terminology was unfamiliar, I found myself led on rather than put off, and I hope this will be true for many of my readers now.

I am going to try to maintain a biweekly Friday schedule, though since the posts will be the equivalent of medium-length magazine articles, I may fill in from time to time with miniposts on subjects of running interest. (For example: what factors apart from training may be involved in the decline of great singing?) The topics will of course be suggested by phenomena that are coming my way in real time, but timeliness per se will not be a primary concern–this won’t be a place to get my opinion on last night’s performance or my quarrels with this morning’s reviews. And you’ll be coming across occasional references to my book Opera as Opera/The State of the Art, which will be published this winter.

I’ll begin next week, Aug. 4, with the first of two posts on the last go-round of Willy Decker’s La Traviata at the Met, and the singing of one of its protagonists.