Living Opera by Joshua Jampol (review)

Opera, a venerable musical and theatrical art form, perpetually seems to remain mysterious and inaccessible to many people, including much of the audience for symphonic classical music. It is very elaborately staged theater where most, if not all, of the dialog is sung, often in a language other than English; the dramatic pace is slow and musical expression can have an exaggerated quality. Living Opera is a book of twenty interviews with current internationally prominent singers, conductors, and directors involved in opera production, such as Plácido Domingo, Renée Fleming, Pierre Boulez, and Seiji Ozawa; there is also a fascinating interview with phoniatrician (voice therapist) Elizabeth Fresnel about her work with Natalie Dessay (this interview is not listed in the table of contents but is part of a chapter on Dessay). From Jampol’s perspective, “The interview … will reveal a personality—call it the voice. The point of the interviews here was to get the voices … to disclose something about their work and why they do it the way they do” (ix).

Published interviews with opera professionals are not uncommon: the monthly magazine Opera News frequently has them; major newspapers sometimes do; and, occasionally, NPR will do a story on an opera singer. Jampol is an experienced commentator on opera who keeps the interviews focused on professional topics, although he does explore his interviewees’ personal lives to a lesser degree; the interviews are not in-depth but are longer than more typical media interviews. As such, an appeal of this book may be, in large part, the number of well-known individuals covered. While likely intended for a lay audience with a dedicated interest in opera, some musicians, and possibly some scholars, may find the book useful, given the notable interviews with Reneé Fleming, who compares jazz vocal technique and baroque canto singing, and with conductor William Christie, who provides his thoughts on performance technique and practice in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century opera.

Jampol is good at drawing out discussion of what motivates these artists, and we get insights into the opera world’s inner workings and practical realities. His questions are largely focused on pragmatic topics, and thus not of a scholarly nature. There are many thoughtful responses from these opera professionals, even to some of his more fairly simple questions. Conductor Kent Nagano, for example, has much to say on the viability and relevance of opera today (as does James Conlon), an important subject and a recurring theme in the text. In response to Jampol’s comment dismissing all twentieth-century classical atonal music out of hand, Nagano advises Jampol to take a broader historical perspective, providing examples of pieces of music, such as Stravinsky’s Le sacre de printemps, that now are generally accepted by audiences but were initially rejected. Jampol’s limitations as an interviewer are apparent as some of his questions are a bit simplistic or too broad to give purposeful answers, such as when he asked singer Samuel Ramey, “What do you like about opera?” (266). Additionally, a marked absence of interviews with some of the dedicated professionals who work behind the scenes, such as set designers, makeup artists, or musicians who play in the pit orchestra, is a notable failing in that it gives a limited picture of the workings of opera.

While it may not be expected of interviews such as these to meet the standards of oral history, it is somewhat surprising that there is no documentation of interview dates or places and nothing about how the transcripts were edited. Jampol shows his literary flair with chapter titles such as “William Christie, or going for baroque,” and “Samuel Ramey, or the lion at twilight,” but they give no hint of these people’s operatic professions. In the preface to each chapter, he tries to paint a picture of each subject, but basic biographical information is missing, such as the interviewee’s age and where he or she started his or her professional career, which would help provide context for readers unfamiliar with the...