When I teach voice, I frequently refer to, even channel, my past teachers. I hope my students will enjoy learning a little more about whence my teaching knowledge came, so ..
My Teachers 1975-2010 Ann Arbor -Barbara Hilbish
Was a local in-home voice teacher in Ann Arbor. She taught classical singing based on the old Italian school. All of her pupils started on the Schirmer Anthology of Italian Songs and later progressed to German Lied. She was a beautiful and highly cultivated lady whose wit and joy in art were infectious. I was lucky to find her and lucky that she patiently endured my boyhood distraction and lack of musical skills. In the Hilbish home, I learned what a concentrated hour of vocal technique is, and I found my love for singing and German Lied. Ann Arbor. -Carlos Chausson
Spanish baritone Carlos Chausson was born in Zaragoza. He began his musical studies at the Escuela Superior de Canto in Madrid and then moved to the USA where he got a Master of Music degree at the University of Michigan. Carlos Chausson is an incomparable artist in buffo Italian roles and Mozart roles.
Carlos taught me at age 16 Italian diction and my first Mozart arias. He is a major Mozart and Rossini
artist.
Ann Arbor -Eva Likova
Likova, a soprano, sang with some of the top opera singers, including Jussi Bjorling, Dorothy Kirstin, and Cornell Mac Neil. She was best known as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" and Manon in "Manon Lescaut." She was one of the only opera singers to use her ballet training and do a toe dance in "I Pagliacci." After giving birth to her daughter, she became a professor at the University of Michigan's School of Music where she taught for 17 years before retiring and moving to New York City. U-M later named her a professor emeritus.
Born in the Czech Republic and trained as a Shakespearean actress and ballerina, Eva Likova debuted in opera at 23 at the Prague National Theater during World War II. Likova’s American debut in 1947 was in Detriot. Her career spanned more than two decades and included 19 singing roles.
With her, a lesson wasn't just a lesson. It was like being with your coach, your mother, your best friend. She was extremely demanding. She warned me on the first day that she expected to see progress in every lesson, and I soon understood that as reciprocation for s her high energy and enthusiasm. All her students learned high-forward placement and pure vowels.
Ann Arbor -Lorna Haywood
Lorna Haywood is a Grammy Award winner for performing Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem." Haywood was a star at the English National Opera and the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Later she took to stage directing at Glimmerglass Opera and other American opera houses. Her long association with conductor Robert Shaw made her a regular soloist in such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Haywood saw me through the difficult role of Nick Shadow in Rakes Progress and other projects that were over my head as an unfinished undergrad in a big school.
I am sure it was disappointing to see my attention divided between outside gigs, technical and spoken theater. She was always in my corner and gave great advice.
New York- Ellen Faull
Soprano Ellen Faull was primarily associated with New York City Opera, where she sang from 1947 until 1978. Amongst her many students were Dawn Upshaw, Gianna Rolandi, Young ok Shin, Ashley Putnam, Beverly Hoch, Sarah Brightman, and Veronica Villarroel. I met Faull when she filled in for an ailing Eva Likova at Michigan. When I graduated, I immediately left my Ann Arbor home for New York to study with her. When she moved from the Manhattan School to Juilliard I auditioned for the Juilliard Opera Center, where I enjoyed the amazing Juilliard Faculty and had lessons with her. Ellen Full studied under Anna Schoen-René, at the Juilliard School. Rene’s teaching tree reaches back to Manuel Vincente Garcia, who was a seminal teacher of the second Bel Canto period and inventor of the laryngoscope.
My lessons with Faull solidified my mezza voce and advanced my progress in high-note and passaggio singing. She taught me to modify vowels in extreme registers and my first year with her marked a clear breakthrough in my technique.
Bloomington -Margaret Harshaw
Margaret Harshaw's training also came from Anna Schoen-René, who taught at the Juilliard School. Anna Schoen-René studied under Pauline Viardot, the daughter of Manuel Garcia. Pauline Viardot was also the sister of Maria Malibran, the celebrated soprano.
Harshaw began her career as a mezzo-soprano before switching to soprano. She holds the record for most Wagnerian roles sung at the MET by one person. In those Juilliard years, I hit a plateau in my progress and as a 28-year-old baritone, it was obviously time for a new point of view.
The first thing Harshaw told me was “If you are going to walk to Chicago, you don’t start out on your tiptoes!” She emphasized that the voice is to be used not just preserved at all costs. I soon found a strong connection to my chest voice and began vocalizing with a richer sound from top to bottom. My sound became more viral and with the same carrying power the high notes, opened to my chest finally grew exciting and operatic. I learned a skepticism toward singing teachers in general and especially for those who foreground vocal preservation over function.
The contrast between Faull and Harshaw could not have been greater and yet, both Faull and Harshaw studied at Juilliard with Anna Eugenia Schoen-René (1864-1942), who studied.
with the prima donna and great pedagogue Pauline Viardot. Viardot traces her technique to the great
Manuel Garcia. I am proud of this, a branch of my teacher tree. I wish I knew more about my other teacher’s lineage.
Now I can see that my succession of soprano teachers had led me down a path perhaps better suited to soprano or tenor singing technique. Still, I believe that, without the influence of Harshaw, even if I had trained as a tenor the lack of developed chest sound would have stifled my growth. I know that my teachers all sang with a highly developed chest voice though most didn’t explicitly address it in lessons. I see it as a symptom of academic culture an “inutile precauzione” -a useless precaution born out of fear of an unknown and sometimes risky practice. When my soubrette students begin to realize that more dramatic repertoire is within their vocal compass I warn “With great power comes great responsibility” United States, only Harshaw explicitly taught me this essential facet of the Italian school and how to teach it. Harshaw opened my eyes and voice. Among my teachers only she sang the most dramatic Mezzo-soprano and Soprano roles for decades. As second cast to Flagstadt, Nilsson, and Barbieri at the Metropolitan Opera she had to fill the house with comparable, if not equal sound. believe it is a lack of operatic experience or fear of retribution from inexperienced teachers that have created this terrible blind spot in American voice culture.
My next stop was Zurich, and I was just beginning to realize my potential. Putting together the point from Likova, the cool of Haywood, the easy top of Faull with the power of Harshaw. Just before my third year at Juilliard, I took an audition for the head of the Zurich Opera Studio Marc Belfort. He liked my Mozart and Verdi and practically guaranteed that I would be working full-time in a European opera house if I accepted a scholarship and generous stipend to join up in the Fall.
This meant abandoning several opera contracts, a New York concert debut concert that I had won at the Manhattan YWCA, and Pavarotti had placed me in the finals of his Philadelphia Contest. I didn’t even consider that not finishing my Opera Center program would deprive me of a Juilliard Artist Certificate.
Still, the lure of working and really working was too great even to make me consider options possible compromises, and consequences. I knew so many talented Americans whose ‘Careers” were a few appearances in regional ‘Shake & Bake’ operas who called themselves opera singers when they held down 9-5 jobs in offices. I knew that I would live and breathe opera eleven months of the year and have as many as 10 new roles a season and not just 2-4 performances of those roles but tens of them, enough to really develop a voice in them.
Belfort gave me a left-handed compliment I’ll always remember. He said, ‘You are brauchbar, that's German for usable.”
Usable is the standard for all mortals who sing. Immortal stars like Pavarotti are more than usable, but all that we mortals can hope for is to be used. That is the threshold for working in opera. Ninety percent of singers are not, but if you are in the ten percent, you might not be a star, but you are needed to do the job.
In the first years of my lessons with Harshaw, I commuted from New York to Princeton and Bloomington for lessons. Now, I commuted from Zurich and Aachen to Bloomington for an intensive week every summer. As I moved into a more dramatic repertoire end the demands of guest engagement s added to my workload I looked for someone local who could hear my performances at my fest-repertory house in Aachen.
Germany- KÖLN Hochschule
Rudolf Bautz had a long career as a baritone and bass. He was an operatic Bass-buffo, a media star and recorded lieder, Folk music, and operettas. In Berlin he’d had lessons with the great tenor Beniamino Gigli, among other operatic legends. A world-renowned teacher, he was like an ‘opera shaman’ traveling to New York and all over Europe, to maintain some of the most famous Wagnerian singers of the late 20th century. Regin Crespin credited him with rejuvenating her voice in the middle of her career. My friend, Frauke May, brought me to his studio when I was singing my first Scarpias in Tosca. It was my first major verismo role, and I knew Bautz’s reputation for keeping Wagnerians fresh.
A lesson with Bautz was like the ultimate physiotherapy for the voice. He had hundreds of exercises with copious references to scientific theories and anatomy. He used a Freudian, Id-ego- superego metaphor to refer to chest-head- and falsetto. He explained the Venturi effect at length to describe the correct closing of the “fine edges “of the vocal folds, and many more references while I could not always believe the scientific accuracy of his explanations none less, I found astonishing effectiveness in all of the corresponding exercises. He would relentlessly massage my voice with therapeutic vocalizes, and I always felt vocally renewed after a full hour of nonstop singing. I learned so many “tricks” and tips for myself and my students and had I stayed in Aachen long enough I’m sure I would have figured out Bautz’s overall regimen as a coherent method.
I learned so much from him and his relaxed charming manner that I know much of my current teaching is straight out of his playbook. The names Bautz and Harshaw are as familiar to all my regular students as Callas and Pavarotti.
BERN-Brigitta Fassbaender
Frauke May who is a great Lied singer also led me to participate in a two-week course in Bern with Brigitte Fassbaender. On the first day, Fassbaender sang Winterreise with Wolfgang Rieger on piano.
She was amazing and I spent the next days learning the fine points of interpretation for my own Winterreise concerts with pianist and friend Bernhardt Radzikowski. Winterreise became a staple in my repertoire that I enjoyed singing on tour in Germany. Fassbaender had special techniques for getting easy high notes, and I often employ them with advanced students.
Italy -ROME-Giuseppe Di Stefano,
Lessons with Guiseppe di Stefano were loud and chaotic. He liked to stand in the back of the large hall and shout commands over my singing. In quieter moments over an espresso, he was very helpful in dramatic interpretation and points of diction. Stefano's pure [i] and [u] vowels were incredibly pointed, penetrating, and strangely sensuous. He invited me to a Sunday drive all over Toscana in his Maserati with him and his young wife. Every minute with “Pipo” was a joy he was the definition of a Bon Vivant, and I was very sad when he died. He advised me that Rigoletto and Gerard in Andrea Chenier were my roles.
I will cover Selected Master Classes in a later blog
Sherrill Milnes
Alfredo Kraus
Luciano Pavarotti