From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Subject: Re: Original cast recording of "Follies" on CD
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 15:29:37 GMT


In article <1993Jan21.102114.13589@athena.mit.edu> devo@athena.mit.edu (Robert Devivo) writes:

>	Looks like I may be right -- certainly no one on this board
>seems to agree with my opinion.  But before you all write me off as a
>loony, let me elaborate on this point a bit.

I'm afraid you only delayed the loony classification, Bob, didn't deter
it.  (Not to worry, some of my best friends are loonies. :-)  )

>	Vocal limitations do not a bad singer make.  

The hell they don't.  Limitations are exactly that.  A singer without a
particular limitation is a better (freer, more able to carry out
artistic intent) than one who has that limitation, *in that particular
respect.*

>A talented
>performer can take the technical shortcomings of his or her instrument
>and use them to portray the conflict or struggle in a song with a
>thousand times more poignancy than a singer with perfect technique
>but no sensitivity towards the song.  

False, harmful dichotomy.  Yes, a performer with technical shortcomings
can do this, and if we're feeling indulgent we'll let them get away with
it while it's happening.  Not by ignoring facts, though, or pretending
everything is ok.

But fundamentally I say you are wrong wrong wrong.  The way to convey a
conflict or struggle is through technically and artistically controlled
work, by a sensitive performer who has options other than struggle.
This is what high artistic standards are all about -- choosing someone
in control of their results.  Your sort of attitude is responsible for
the drastically lowered standards we see around us today, where
everybody has a wobble and nobody has dynamic range.

And where did this person with "perfect technique but no sensitivity"
come from?  The place straw men always come from -- nowhere.  What about
the real-life antithesis: a person with good technique (nobody has ever
had a perfect one) WITH sensitivity?

What we're looking for is someone who sings well AND acts well.  Such
people exist, even if certain directors prefer not to cast them.

>This is hardly an original thesis,
>and it's been argued much more forcefully elsewhere, 

Never convincingly, however.

>but I would
>extend the argument to claim that in certain cases a powerful, trained
>singer, even a sensitive one, is not warranted for every song.  

You'll never get agreement from me.  (Assuming reasonable interpretation
of your tendentious word "powerful".)  Better singers are always more
desirable, assuming their range and timbre fit the needs of the part,
because they will have more control over what they're doing.

>Barbara
>Cook and George Hearn, while certainly no longer in their prime, are
>still quite secure in their vocal technique; one (okay, I) cannot listen to
>them sing and feel particularly wistful for what they may have lost.

Then you're very good at blinding (deafening?) yourself when it suits
you.  Listen to the early Cook and the present-day one and honestly tell
me she has lost nothing in terms of interpretive options.  She's still a
highly enjoyable performer, of course, but let's not kid ourselves.
Hearn is ok; I never thought he was all that special to start with.

>Mandy Patinkin is still fully in the midst of his prime.  These are
>performers who are capable of conveying a tremendous complex of
>emotions when they sing, but in "Follies" the loss of youth and power
>and the fight against that loss are embodied most immediately by the
>voices themselves, the medium by which the emotions are carried, and
>only secondly by the emotions communicated via that medium.  The
>singer is bound up very personally in the meaning of the song, much
>more so than in most musical theater music, and the tension between
>what's in the singer's heart and what comes out of his or her throat
>becomes an almost unbearably strong dramatic force.  

True.  Which means that one has to cast more carefully than that concert
did.  I still maintain that Cook was good casting and Hearn and Patinkin
were not, for very specific reasons.  And the rose-colored glasses are
blocking things for you again; Hearn was no older at the time of that
concert than John McMartin (the original Ben) was in 1971.

>One has only to
>compare some of the later recordings of Billie Holliday with those from
>her youth to know exactly what I'm talking about.

And even here, one can feel that something was lost.  I certainly miss
it, as I do when comparing the poised singing of the young Judy Garland
to the strained, desperate work of her last years.

>	As for the poor technical quality of the original cast recording,
>my point here is simply that an aura of fadedness, of age, of reflections
>of the past can be sensed, or at least imagined, in the sound of this
>recording.  

How disappointing actually attending the original production would have
been for you; none of that faded sound, and a super-deluxe physical
production.

>	It's true that the production I saw was thoroughly amateur, and
>this may have contributed to my low estimation of the book.  

>Skilled actors, however, can make all the difference, and I admit my
>judgement here may be precipitate.  

I would suggest that it is.  But I can understand your reaction here,
because I saw the original production and then an amateur one, and could
hardly believe it was the same book even though not a line had been
changed.

>Surely someone will produce this
>show again on Broadway before I die, and when they do, I'll be first on
>the ticket line.

Let's hope so.  Shall we play the casting game?  :-)

Apologies for my intemperate tone.  The discussion happens to combine
the musical I love above all others, and an artistic question which I
find very important.  I write about opera as well as musicals, and the
idea that inadequate singing is somehow "compensated for" by some other
quality is gaining appalling hold even there.  The results of which are
audible on the broadcasts from the Met each Saturday.

Check out some original-cast recordings from the 1940s to hear that they
had people who could sing well in the leads then, and they didn't have
any problems with expression either.

Jon Alan Conrad
>
>Bob De Vivo
Newsgroups: rec.arts.theatre