The Floating Opera - UK

Alcune domande poste al noto agente lirico italiano Franco Silvestri in vista dell’audizione del 5 giugno a Vienna.

1. Se un cantante viene alla Sua masterclass, che cosa dovrebbe essere pronto ad ascoltare?

— Bisogna che sia “open-mind”. Deve saper imparare a mettere in discussione tutte le certezze che ha acquisito non necessariamente per cambiarle ma per crescere. Un conto è lo studio finalizzato a cantare e un conto è lo studio per rendere il canto “teatrale”. Ma soprattutto deve saper essere cosciente che l’opera in particolare non è un genere fisso ma un genere in continua evoluzione e quindi i consigli/suggerimenti che vengono dati poi devono essere applicati. Da ultimo deve imparare a saper ascoltare sé stesso, il suo corpo ma anche a saper ascoltare la bellezza.

2. Qual è la differenza tra cantare bene ed essere davvero “scritturabile” per un teatro o una produzione?

— Che non basta avere tutte le note. Bisogna che il cantante sappia fraseggiare, conoscere gli stili e le prassi esecutive (canta Donizetti o Bellino non è come cantare Verdi o Puccini o Mozart o Wagner). Essere culturalmente preparati: sapere l’origine di un’opera, il contesto culturale in cui si è sviluppata, pronunciare bene il testo e dare il giusto senso alle parole, essere preparati musicalmente specialmente con il solfeggio…

3. Che cosa rende un cantante pronto per il mercato europeo?

— Avere tutte le caratteristiche sopra dette e avere anche una presenza scenica professionale che non vuol dire essere belli ma saper stare con autorevolezza in scena.

4. Che cosa i cantanti spesso non capiscono del lavoro di un agente?

— Che l’agente non fa miracoli! L’agente può aiutarti a metterti in teatro ma poi per rimanerci devi essere bravo tu. Se poi una volta arrivato in teatro non sei preparato, non conosci l’opera, ti muovi in scena senza sapere cosa fare e come stare in palcoscenico, se sei insopportabile e crei malumore nella compagnia, poi non ti devi lamentare se i teatri non ti chiamano più…come dico sempre: io posso aiutarti a salire in palcoscenico ma a rimanerci per più tempo possibile devi essere tu…

5. Che cosa un cantante non dovrebbe mai fare quando si avvicina a un’agenzia?

— Anzitutto presentarsi come il nuovo Del Monaco o la nuova Callas. Poi deve perdere il vizio che hanno la gran parte dei giovani di pensare “se canta quello/a là, allora posso cantare anche io”. Non funziona così. Un cantante che si presenta ad una agenzia deve avere la fame di voler diventare il migliore e non deve fare la corsa sulla mediocrità. Quando fa una audizione per una agenzia deve seguire le seguenti indicazioni:

- portare diverse arie da diversi repertori storici (classico, romantico, verdiano, pucciniano, verista, francese, tedesco, russo);

- non scegliere di aprire una audizione con arie particolarmente lunghe (la pazzia della lucia, la morte di isotta, ella giammai m’amò, etcetc) ma scegliere un’aria breve che metta in luce la linea di canto e, ove possibile, l’estensione vocale ma meglio prima la linea di canto;

- non arrivare con le parti sul tablet o con i fogli della musica non rilegati: il tablet rischia di spegnersi o di non rispondere al tocco, i fogli sparsi rischiano di cadere dai leggii. Anche come si presenta la cura della musica dice molto sul rispetto che l’artista ha per la musica.

- non poggiare bottigliette d’acqua o altro sul pianoforte: il pianoforte è uno strumento sacro!

- non vestirsi in maniera sciatta ma nemmeno in maniera elegante come se facesse un concerto. Sono inutili eccessi.

- non eseguire l’aria con atteggiamenti scenici particolarmente eccessivi da teatro del 1920…meglio una elegante sobrietà che con pochi gesti faccia capire che si è capito che cosa si sta facendo.

- evitare di usare le mani in maniera scorretta: la posizione a mani giunte o il battersi il tempo o il gesticolare da vigile urbano non fa una buona impressione;

- non portare MAI un’aria che si esegue per la prima volta: si portano arie che si è studiato e cantato più volte ed evitare le “arie trabocchetto” come ad esempio l’aria di micaela dalla carmen o la traviata…se chi ascolta la vuole sentire chiede se l’avete ma per chi fa una audizione con un agente non la proponga mai nella lista delle arie che porta.

6. Negli ultimi dieci anni, il mondo dell’opera è cambiato nelle sue aspettative verso i cantanti?

— I teatri non hanno più il tempo di investire nella formazione e cercano, anche nei giovani, artisti pronti che con poche prove sappiano rispondere alle esigenze dei direttori e dei registi. È molto importante molto la precisione musicale e il solfeggio come anche le prassi esecutive e, altra cosa che sta diventando sempre più una esigenza dei registi, è l’aspetto fisico: salvo qualche rarissimo caso oggi i fisici alle Caballè o ai Botha non sono più proponibili ai registi moderni. Poi se hai 25 anni di carriera e sei bravo come la Caballè, Botha, la Cerquetti o la Marc allora passi…ma per un giovane o una giovane anche l’aspetto fisico conta.

7. I teatri oggi cercano artisti diversi rispetto al passato?

— Oggi anche con l’avvento dell’amplificazione che viene usata non solo nei festival all’aperto ma anche nei teatri tradizionali al chiuso la potenza vocale non è più importante come lo era 40 anni fa. Il canto virile, stentoreo, sempre focalizzato sugli acuti da tenere in maniera lunghissima non va più di moda. Oggi si preferisce un canto molto più legato, cantabile anche per quelle opere che venivano viste come drammaticissime (pagliacci, otello, etc)

8. Che cosa distingue uno studente promettente da un giovane professionista emergente?

— C’è una grande differenza fra un bravo cantante e un’artista. Il bravo cantante rimane sempre uno studente perché non cresce, rimane attaccato al cordone ombelicale del maestro di canto o del pianista, l’artista è un cantante che mentre studia cresce e si emancipa trovando un percorso autonomo e poi periodicamente, come le buone macchine, va in officina a fare il tagliando.

9. Qual è, secondo Lei, il ruolo dei concorsi, dei programmi per giovani artisti e delle masterclass nella costruzione di una carriera?

— Molti CONCORSI sono solo delle macchinette mangiasoldi. Ci sono dei criteri per scegliere a quali concorsi parteciapare. Ne dico alcuni:

- evitare i concorsi che hanno in commissione maestri di canto o vecchie glorie del passato;

- evitare i concorsi dove non ci siano a premio scritture artistiche;

- valutare economicamente la sostenibilità di un concorso: se un concorso ha come primo premio 1500 euro ed è richiesta una permanenza di 3 o 4 giorni fra eliminatorie e finale è un concorso in perdita;

- scegliere i concorsi dove in commissione ci sono direttori artistici/casting manager/general manager di teatri o agenti internazionali conosciuti o concorsi dove ci sono opere e ruoli in palio;

- un costo di iscrizione alto non è proibitivo se consideriamo il rapporto costo/beneficio. Faccio un esempio: partecipare ad un concorso che ha in giuria 10 direttori artistici e 5 agenti e pagare la quota di iscrizione anche 200/250 euro è molto meglio che partecipare ad un concorso che costa 70 euro con un maestro di conservatorio, un maestro di canto, un vecchio cantante lirico etc. Quanto spenderebbe un cantante per andare a fare audizione in 15 città? Migliaia di euro. Se invece è bravo e vince un concorso o si piazza bene e ottiene due scritture e di entrare in una agenzia ha fatto bingo.

Per quanto riguarda i MASTERCLASS anche qui bisogna scegliere. E anche qui non sempre i masterclass tenuti dai vecchi cantanti, magari star internazionali, servono a poco perché la gran parte di loro tendono a far cantare i giovani come cantavano loro mentre l’abilità di un insegnante è quella di capire l’attitudine e la fisicità di un giovane e saper adattare alle sue attitudini la tecnica e l’interpretazione.

10. Quali tipi di cantanti sono oggi particolarmente richiesti dal mercato?

— Tutti i bravi cantanti anzi, i più bravi! Poi è vero che i tenori sono sempre i più richiesta ma anche bravi baritoni servono…un po’ meno i soprani…

11. Nota differenze specifiche tra cantanti formati in scuole nazionali diverse?

— Sicuramente. Primo fra tutti le scuole non italiane sono molto più attente alla formazione musicale rispetto alle scuole italiane. Per contro le scuole non italiane non curano il senso della lingua italiana e per cantare il repertorio italiano, che costituisce gran parte del repertorio operistico, è necessario non solo pronunciare bene le parole ma anche conoscerne il significato e specialmente quelle parole che fanno parte del vocabolario dell’Italia del XIX secolo che è molto diverso da quello di oggi. Anche perché anche la parola ha un suono ed è musica nella musica.

12. Potrebbe nominare alcuni dei Suoi punti di riferimento nel mondo dell’opera — cantanti, registi o direttori d’orchestra che considera particolarmente importanti o ispiratori?

— Ho conosciuto e lavorato con grandi nomi storici della musica ma anche con grandi professionisti che mi hanno insegnato moltissimo. Tra i direttori d’orchestra poteri citare Maurizio Rinaldi (forse uno dei massimi interpreti del repertorio verdiano) e Massimo De Bernart, un autentico genio, unico grande interprete del grande repertorio del novecento italiano. Tra i registi non posso dimenticare le lezioni di palcoscenico di Beppe de Tommasi o la genialità di Franco Zeffirelli. Fra i grandi cantanti credo che il professionismo del grande baritono Silvano Carroli o la rigida metodologia di Mariella Devia debbano essere dei riferimenti per tutti gli artisti.

🎭Glyndebourne’s first Tosca: Puccini under the shadow of the state
/Some impressions after the dress rehearsal/

Glyndebourne’s first-ever Tosca is not a museum piece, nor simply an elegant staging of Puccini’s Roman thriller. It is a severe, sharply contemporary reflection on power, fear and the banality of evil.

Ted Huffman’s new production, conducted by Robin Ticciati with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, has an almost cinematic tension. Under Ticciati, the orchestra created a striking fusion of musical and theatrical dramaturgy. At its best, it had the force of a great film score: not illustrating the action, but exposing the machinery beneath it. The tempi were taut, the balance precise, and the dramatic nerve never slackened for a moment.

Huffman, known among other things for Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House and the FEDORA Prize-winning Denis & Katya, works here without directorial self-indulgence. His Tosca is built on concentration: on text, music, the physical presence of the performers, and the precision of their interaction on stage. Political violence is not illustrated bluntly. It gradually emerges through behaviour, space and rhythm.

The associations come quickly: Mikhail Romm’s Ordinary Fascism, Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil, Inglourious Basterds, Life Is Beautiful, and a Remarque-like love story caught in the machinery of history. Yet the production never feels like a collage of references. Its force lies in the recognisability of its world: a world in which violence becomes procedure, cruelty becomes administration, and terror is made all the more chilling by the absurd routines of bureaucracy.

Caitlin Gotimer’s Floria Tosca is compelling both vocally and dramatically. Her beautiful, fresh voice meets the demands of the role with confidence, while her stage presence gives the character immediacy and emotional clarity. Matteo Lippi’s Cavaradossi offers the rare pleasure of a tenor equally secure in piano and forte, and technically immaculate in the upper register. The evening is sharply supported by Kristian Lindroos as Angelotti, Federico De Michelis as the Sacristan, Didier Pieri as Spoletta, Michael Ronan as Sciarrone, and the Glyndebourne Chorus under Aidan Oliver.

But, from my point of view, the evening belongs to Vladislav Sulimsky’s Scarpia.

In this production, it is hard to imagine a more exact interpreter of the role. Sulimsky, who grew up inside the Soviet system, seems to understand this kind of power not as abstract operatic villainy, but as something historically and psychologically recognisable. His Scarpia is neither a cartoon sadist nor a grand villain from Romantic literature. He is more frightening than that: controlled, bureaucratic, intelligent, almost ordinary. His evil is not theatrical. It is institutional.

When I worked at the Mariinsky Theatre, Craig Rutenberg — the former Head of Music at the Metropolitan Opera and a long-time vocal advisor at the Mariinsky — used to reserve his highest praise for a singer: “a true singing actor.”

Sulimsky is not merely a singer with a beautiful voice and life-giving technique. He is a true singing actor, turning every phrase into dramatic action and allowing every emotional impulse to pass through the voice. There is not a single empty note. A role I know almost by heart suddenly sounded as if it had been written anew.

Nadja Sofie Eller’s set design and Astrid Klein’s costumes support the concept without over-explaining it. They are beautiful in their exact minimalism. D M Wood’s lighting works in the same logic: it does not overload the production with symbols, but creates a space in which image, rhythm and atmosphere speak more strongly than any declaration. This becomes especially powerful in the third act.

I must admit that I have often left Tosca after Act II, but here the third act may be the strongest part of the evening. Without giving too much away, its opening lands like a shot to the heart. What Huffman reveals in Tosca and Cavaradossi is not the romantic aura of "the artist”, but the vulnerability of two ordinary people caught in history: by the end, they are frightened, crushed and infinitely alone. Their “Trionfar!” is no longer a gesture of a triumph, but a solitary human voice in a cold, impersonal space, beside the ditch that will become their common grave. For the first time in my life, I found myself moved to tears — not because of operatic grandeur, but because the moment suddenly seemed to contain the total helplessness of an ordinary person facing a cynical state machine.

This is a Tosca about what power does to human beings: to those who wield it, those who serve it, and those it crushes.

I very much hope this production is filmed. It deserves to be seen far beyond Glyndebourne.

About opera, stage direction, and musical dramaturgy.

I recently went to Rigoletto and wrote below about my impressions. The production itself gave me no serious objections, though I didn’t witness any revelations either. But the casting upset me deeply. A discussion then began with a singer friend about Gilda: can Gilda be sung by someone with a warm, mature feminine timbre, when the opera is about an inexperienced teenager with an abusive father?

My point: no, because it simply won’t work — it is not built into the score.

Her point: if the director shifts the focus and presents Gilda as a young woman rather than a teenager, then why not?

Let me explain my thoughts.

In opera, unlike spoken drama, the director is tightly limited by the music — by major and minor modes, harmonic changes, choice of key, instrumentation. The composer has already staged the scene in advance. The music itself already contains suggestions for set design, casting, and so on. There is certainly room for choice — but that choice is bounded by the score.

I remember how a director, who was actually a visual artist by profession, staged Falstaff at the Mariinsky by invitation of Valery Gergiev. Before that he had directed Simon Boccanegra, and it worked beautifully. There was sea, breeze, night atmosphere — and most importantly, nothing interfered with singing. And there was Vladislav Sulimsky — the best Simon ever. One of the rare times when I simply could not stop crying in the final act. Not out of pity for the hero, but because of the perfection of what was happening. (Gergiev was in tremendous form then too.)

Apparently, wanting to repeat that success, they invited the same director again.

But Falstaff is an entirely different creature.

There one must listen — the whole comedy lives in the orchestra. It simply has to be heard and visualised. But only someone capable of truly hearing and interpreting the score can do that.

In the end, the director (an Italian, incidentally — so the language of the opera was native to him) overloaded the stage with décor: antique chairs, symbolic objects, endless details. Yet nothing worked. Because everything missed the point. The music is bright — the stage is dark. The orchestra depicts a fall — nothing falls on stage. The musical tempo is quick — the characters move in lazy slow motion. And so on.

As a result, the photos were beautiful — but the show did not function. It ran a few times and was quietly shelved.

In the direction of Rigoletto I noticed no outrageous stupidity, except that one could very well have done without a ma********ng Gilda. Why? Could she in reality be doing that? Quite possibly — she is a teenager, after all. But in opera it is unnecessary, because it contributes nothing to the final catharsis. So why is it there at all?

Gilda’s age is already written into her music. Both her arias are simple melody, the simplest accompaniment. Giuseppe Verdi was not trying there to depict subconscious psychological movements of the soul. Gilda exists in order to make this story heartbreaking.

And the story is called Rigoletto.

He is vice in the service of vice, yet like any human being, he has something sacred in his soul — his daughter. And this is in the music: whenever he sings of Gilda, the music has unearthly warmth, beauty, fragility.

The opera is about that — not about him being a tyrant.

He locks her away. He does not even tell her his real name. Yet despite his sins we sympathise with him, because all of us fear above all else losing a child. We sympathise because both text and music place the emphasis on love. Holy love inside a corrupt monster.

But for that to work, we need Gilda the angel, not Gilda the woman, because Romanticism above all depends on contrast.

In Romantic works, strong ideas and strong passions are taken, stripped of unnecessary detail, pushed to opposite extremes — and then collided until they explode. At that moment the listener is meant to experience a spiritual or**sm, elegantly renamed catharsis. (It happens to me, though more often from recordings.) Lev Vygotsky describes this process brilliantly in The Psychology of Art.

That is why the failure of the Rigoletto I attended was this: in the final scene, when it is already clear that Rigoletto holds the co**se of his daughter in his arms, there was laughter in the auditorium…

Poor Verdi.

If you have seen the wonderful RAI series about his life, carefully based on historical sources, you will understand why I pity him. What creation meant to him. This was not Gioachino Rossini, for whom opera was also a highly successful business.

So, in conclusion: what distinguishes opera from any other theatre is that the composer limits the director’s imagination through music, in which everything is already there — emotions, heartbeat, atmosphere, weather.

Within those composer-given boundaries one should interpret, not arrive with a cloth, wipe the notes off the board, and paint one’s own reality over them.

And yes — there is also musical dramaturgy.

It happens rarely, only with truly great conductors. When you listen to the music, and it is shaped so magnificently — phrasing, vocal quality, orchestral colours, balance, tempi, metre and rhythm — that you do not need to see the stage at all. The music creates the images by itself.

That is what I expect in the theatre.

And I will never settle for less.

30-31 May and 3 June in Vienna.

Dear friends,

I’ll be available in Vienna for recordings or coaching on 30–31 May and 3 June.

(I’ll be there to play for a masterclass and auditions with Franco Silvestri and Simone Macri.)

If anyone is interested, please send me a private message. The hourly rate will be very friendly.

More information about me:

rebekkamago.com

On a cold afternoon in New York City — February 1, 1943 — a tall, gaunt man stood in a citizenship ceremony alongside 219 others and swore an oath to the United States of America.
He was already dying. His family knew. His doctors knew. He did not.
His name was Sergei Rachmaninoff. And in the seven and a half weeks he had left as an American, he would prove that belonging to a country has nothing to do with where you are born.

He came into the world on April 1, 1873, on a Russian aristocratic estate near Novgorod — a child born into music the way others are born into a trade. His grandfather had studied under a famous Irish composer. His parents both played piano. By the time young Sergei was four years old, he was already at the keys.
By eighteen, he had graduated from the Moscow Conservatory as a concert pianist. By nineteen, he won its gold medal as a composer. His teachers exchanged quiet looks of astonishment. This was not ordinary talent. This was something that comes along perhaps once in a generation.
Then, in 1897, the earth opened beneath him.
His First Symphony premiered in Moscow to reviews so savage and humiliating that Rachmaninoff — just twenty-three years old — went silent. Not just musically. Personally. He stopped composing almost entirely. He retreated from the world, struggling for years under what we would today recognize as severe depression.
For three years, the music stopped.
It came back slowly, through therapy, discipline, and sheer refusal to surrender. And when it returned, it returned transformed. The Second Piano Concerto — completed in 1901 — became one of the most beloved pieces of music ever written. Lush, aching, impossible to forget. Audiences wept. Critics surrendered. The man who had been broken by failure had produced something that would outlast all of them.
But Russia would not let him rest for long.
In 1917, revolution consumed his country. The world Rachmaninoff had known — the estates, the concert halls, the seasons of Moscow life — vanished almost overnight. At forty-four, he gathered his wife Natalia and their two daughters, packed what they could carry, and left Russia.
He never went back.
He settled eventually in America, throwing himself into a touring schedule of almost punishing intensity. City after city. Concert after concert. He became one of the most celebrated pianists on Earth — and one of the most privately grief-stricken. He had everything audiences could admire and nothing he truly longed for.
Russia was gone.
He once wrote: "I am a Russian composer, and the land of my birth has influenced my temperament and outlook. I cannot cast out the old way of writing." He carried that homesickness like a wound that refused to close — even as American audiences filled every hall he played, even as the royalties poured in, even as his name became synonymous with musical greatness.
When Hi**er rose and Europe descended into war, Rachmaninoff responded the only way he knew how — through his art. He donated the proceeds of multiple concerts to Allied relief efforts, pouring his music into the fight against the same kind of totalitarian destruction that had already taken his homeland.
By late 1942, he was gravely ill — diagnosed with advanced melanoma — though the full truth was kept from him by his family and doctors who loved him too much to say it plainly.
He kept performing.
On February 17, 1943, he gave his final recital in Knoxville, Tennessee. He was already in serious pain. The program included Chopin's Second Piano Sonata — the one that contains the famous Funeral March. Whether it was coincidence or something more, no one can say.
Two weeks earlier, on February 1, he had stood in that New York ceremony and become one of us.
He never performed again after Knoxville. He was taken by ambulance back to his home in Beverly Hills, California. On March 26, the composer lost consciousness, and he died two days later — March 28, 1943 — at his home in Beverly Hills, at age 69. Wikipedia He was four days from his 70th birthday.
He had been an American citizen for 55 days.
Soviet and Russian authorities would later make numerous claims to rebury him in Moscow — but the Rachmaninoff family successfully opposed them, citing the fact that Sergei Rachmaninoff had made his choice to be a citizen of the United States. IMDb
He is buried in Kensico Cemetery in New York.
The man who fled one revolution, composed some of the most emotionally devastating music in history, and spent a quarter century giving everything he had to American audiences — he chose this country when he had lost everything else.
Not by birth. By choice. In a ceremony. On a Monday afternoon, in February, with seven and a half weeks left to live.
His Second Piano Concerto still plays in concert halls around the world tonight.
Listen to it once, and you'll carry it with you forever.
That's what immortality sounds like.

You may know these composers — but not like this.

Tchaikovsky is widely known in Britain as the composer of Eugene Onegin and Swan Lake, yet his songs remain a hidden treasure — intimate, direct and deeply personal.

Mussorgsky, best known for Boris Godunov — a regular feature of the Royal Opera House repertoire — reveals another side in his iconic Songs and Dances of Death. Often heard with orchestra, it is presented here in its original piano version — allowing the singer greater expressive freedom, as each song unfolds as a vivid dramatic scene.

Rachmaninoff, one of the most celebrated pianists and composers of 20th century, is widely known for his piano concertos. His songs, however, reveal a more intimate voice — lyrical, direct and deeply expressive.

We invite you to discover this music with us at a Sunday afternoon recital, on 19 April at St Mary’s Creative Space 🎶

Learn more

Buy tickets – An Intimate Live Recital of Russian Art Songs in Chester – St Mary's Creative Space An Intimate Live Recital of Russian Art Songs in Chester – St Mary's Creative Space, Sun Apr 19, 2026 - In Britain, audiences know Eugene Onegin, Swan Lake and Boris Godunov. But the more intimate world of these composers — their songs — remains a hidden treasure, no less rich in beauty and em...

Hello everyone,

On 19 April we are bringing a small, intimate programme of vocal chamber music to Chester.

We don’t often perform outside London, so this is a special visit for us. If it might be of interest, you’d be very welcome to join us.
https://chester19april.carrd.co