2. The absolutes. Since the absolutes are non-negotiable, we may not shirk them or subtract from them, or attempt to substitute some other kind of realization for them. We may only add. It is the fear of not being able to fulfill them that, more than anything else, makes it hard for singers to “loosen up.” In their studio work, students of dramatic instinct and teachers and coaches of dramatic awareness have always worked to simulate dramatic circumstances by activating the imagination and incorporating the results into the singer’s preparation. Much can be accomplished that way, especially with passages of monologue. But it’s all in isolation, in fantasy. The singer has had no opportunity to discover what happens if the pursuit of an action under living circumstances is placed ahead of vocal or stylistic goals, actually takes precedence over them. Obviously, “mistakes” can happen that way. A desired climactic effect may not be achieved, phrase shapes may be mangled and words forgotten, a structure may be violated. But mistakes, even when they amount to little functional breakdowns, can be corrected, and order restored. What may have been discovered in the meantime (naturally, it doesn’t always happen) is that an unanticipated outcome is more fundamental, more viscerally grounded, than the technically or stylistically sought-after one, and that far from inhibiting consummation of the absolutes, the latter now have a more vibrant life, to which technique and style may then be accommodated. See the above on “room,” “time and patience,” and “a new way.”

3. Conductor and orchestra. It should be understood from the start that we are working within the framework of a truly integrated production, as earlier defined, and that all participants are in agreement about that. Thus, the conductor must participate with the director and designers in the early production planning, so that the ruling ideas of the production are not set without his input on equal terms, with the music left to conform to it as best it can or (as generally happens) to simply proceed on its own way without serious reference to it. Without this basic unanimity of overall purpose, artistic integrity cannot be achieved. But beyond that, the principle of dramatic action in pursuit of the overall purpose (or “concept”) must apply to the music as much as to the physical elements, to the ear as much as to the eye, and this must carry through to orchestral structures and gestures as surely as it does to the sung ones. The great opera conductors have always done something like that without defining it quite that way—that is, have sensed the dramatic qualities of the music and how they relate to what’s happening on the stage and in the singers’ throats. That’s why they were great opera conductors, and why most of those came up through the opera-house ranks, learning the ropes while working as players in the pit, as répétiteurs and assistant conductors over the range of the repertory, before ascending to a podium with an orchestra for whom said repertory was for the most part native and familiar. But even in opera’s golden times, there was no greater a profusion of conductors of genius than there was of similarly endowed actors and singers. The contribution of the modern acting sensibility in this area would be to go much further into the specifics of “something like that,” of breaking down the training and rehearsal processes into identifiable units of action and working on them as such, conductor and director both present with the performers, and with orchestral elements (section leaders, at least) involved as soon and as often as possible. The transitional points of musical structure would often coincide with the “beats” of the actor (and where they do not would be points of special interest), but redefining these in terms of sung and played actions, and zeroing in on where and how sensory, harmonic, and motivic events in the orchestra can help to determine the qualities of sung actions, would enrich the expressive content of operatic interpretation in manifold ways. Once again, “room,” “time and patience,” and “a new way.”