I am taking the role of Gilda in Rigoletto as my working example here, and only a single scene of it, but a key one that provides quite enough to chew on in one bite. The character is familiar enough that professionals and devotees will be able to apply mind’s-ear-and-eye to it without elaborate description or musical example. It is also a character that contemporary young women are apt to feel distanced from, in a dramatic situation they find hard to connect to, or tend to judge from the perspective of modern social values. Finally, it happens that in addition to the attention I’ve given it over the years in a critical capacity, it is a role I’ve worked on in whole or in part with a number of students. Since I’m a voice teacher, much of my instruction has naturally been on matters of vocal execution. But beyond a fairly primitive level, nothing about how the voice behaves can be separated from interpretive intent. So I’ve had occasion to think about Gilda from the point of view of helping find a singer’s way into the role, into her way of becoming Gilda, so that her singing and acting seem to come to us directly from Gilda’s insides, without the intercession of written page or convention, and she feels released from those, as well. To make the communication as personal as possible, let’s pretend that you, the reader, are the aspiring Gilda, and I a sort of teacher/director trying to help you.

A few grounds rules: 1) You must be prepared to give yourself over to Gilda’s thoughts, fantasies, emotions, and impulses without reservation. In this phase of your work, any preconceived notion you may hold of her must be set aside; the more you “know” about her from the outside and the more received wisdom you have of her, the more you have to toss out. Your own beliefs and opinions must also be dispensed with. You are not taking the stage to represent yourself, your ethnic, religious, or political group, your generation or set of values; in fact, you are not representing anything or anybody, and are assuming no stance except that of a transformative artist. We are not looking for perspective or analysis, but for submersion. 2) Your imagination must play strictly within the bounds of the given circumstances of the work and character, which are stipulated by the creators of the opera. Your goal as a singing actress is to persuade the audience that if the circumstances are as represented, your actions will seem the inevitable results of them—will be “unreservedly plausible,” to steal a term from Walter Felsenstein. So your first job is to understand those circumstances and to feel their weight. The more deeply and precisely you define them, the more your imagination will be sparked in a constructive direction. And to readers: we are concerned only with what Gilda does or doesn’t know, and are proceeding through the action as if we know no more than she.