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Post by tmesis on Jul 2, 2018 20:00:53 GMT
I was just thinking at the recent performance of Lohengrin that you never see this any more. When I first started going to ROH around forty years ago it was present at virtually every performance. For those who don't know, this was occupied by a person, unseen to the audience, who would, depending on the singers requirements, mouth, sing or gesture the next line of a singer's part a beat or so before they were due to deliver it. I think I saw them use it once last year, but now its presence causes mild alarm, making one think the opera has not had enough rehearsal time. Directors don't like it because it spoils the 'line' of the stage and you rarely see it even when there has been a last minute substitution because of illness. I remember, some time ago, Kiri Te Kanawa saying in interview that she relied on it quite heavily. ENO almost never used it, although I do recall it at the odd Ring Cycle there.
Sometimes, years ago, a less than discrete prompter could actually be heard singing the line (even in the amphitheatre) or you occasionally used to see a hand gesturing (desperately?) outside the box.
Apparently it's still used quite a bit at The Met where they have a greater number of operas 'in rep.'
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Post by harrietcraig on Jul 3, 2018 0:52:14 GMT
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Post by tonyloco on Jul 4, 2018 0:03:37 GMT
I have two stories prompted (see what I did there) by this thread.
Firstly, during the 1960s, one of my Australian pals worked on the stage management team at the Royal Opera House under the legendary Stella Chitty. He told me that the prompter's score for Das Rheingold had written in large letters on the very front page REMEMBER TO PEE.
Secondly, the great diva Maria Callas may have been meticulous about singing the notes exactly as written by the composers of the operas she performed but she was not so scrupulous when it came to remembering the words of the librettists. There are a number of examples in the live recordings of her on stage where the words she sings are at best an approximation to what they should be. She was notoriously short-sighted on stage so it is possible that even if there was a prompter, she probably couldn't see him clearly anyway! If I remember rightly, one of the pieces that gave her trouble remembering the words in concert was the aria 'Tu che invoco' from Spontini's La vestale and of the several different versions that EMI has released she can be heard improvising on the words from time to time. This is obviously not going to trouble the audience at a live concert but it does give a headache to the editor of the booklet accompanying the CD if it has to include the sung texts where a decision has to be made whether to print the words exactly as heard on the CD or as shown in the printed score.
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Post by tmesis on Jul 7, 2018 10:49:02 GMT
It would be in 1984 at ROH and Geriant Evans was singing Beckmesser in The Mastersingers. I had already seen this great singer in Falstaff and as an excellent, but impossibly long-in -the-tooth, Figaro. Everything was going well and we are now in Act Two where Beckmesser is trying out his prize song effort. Because Wagner here deliberately writes quirky, angular music, most of it thinly score with harp, it was difficult to ascertain exactly where Sir Geriant went off the rails. However, suddenly the aria came to a complete stop and you could hear the prompt say something incomprehensible. Then the distinguished bass-baritone said to the prompt, in English, and with his characteristic Welsh accent, 'Yes I know dear, but I'll have to go back to the start of the aria.' Which he promptly did and the rest of this magnificent opera was performed without hitch.
Around ten days later he gave his final performance at The Garden in that role before retiring.
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