Opera singers, opera queens, critics, high note whores: we all love it when a singer achieves the impossible and sings a flawless performance. However, we all have some schadenfreude in us, and we also love it when the performance goes terribly wrong. La Cieca, the blogger at Parterre calls it "Filth", there is a famous CD floating around called "Vergogna" (shame, in Italian) that chronicles rough nights onstage, from Caballe's infamous "Anna Bolena" at La Scala to Alagna's Radames in the same house. Finally, there is a (now) famous youtube channel called Perle Nere, a series of videos where things go wrong.
I am as guilty as the next person of enjoying some of these videos and recordings. In part, maybe, because it proves that even the greatest of the great singers can have off nights. We are all just human, flawed, and fallible. I have my favorite selections that I have listened to a million times: Hildegard Behrens' Met Elektra, the orchestra disaster at the end of Moffo's Tosca, Gedda's "La Donna e mobile"...
But we all have to remember one thing: recording these performances, which most of the time is illegal, imposes a huge strain on singers. It means that if things go wrong, there is a huge chance that our own disasters will live on in infamy on the internet. The propagation of recording devices is a threat. If singers take fewer and fewer chances, that may be one of the reasons.
A friend of mine recently went to see a Beyoncé concert. The next day, I excitedly asked how it was. His response was that she was perfect, but all in all that made the evening boring. He said she was clearly rehearsed within an inch of her life, that every move, every joke, every ad-lib, every word sounded like it was planned. And it probably was. Considering the number of cell phones pointed at her throughout the entire concert, video recording the entirety of the concert, there was no room for a mistake. Otherwise it would have been posted all over the gossip pages of the internet within minutes, and everyone would speculate whether Beyoncé had lost her abilities. If you doubt this, or think I'm being overly-dramatic, please refer to poor Mariah Carey's mishap at the White House last December. It seems the news, and people, thrive on the downfall of icons.
So how can we solve this issue? Well, we cannot. It is now this way, and fighting it is impossible. Short of patting down all concert goers and confiscating electronic devices, there is no way to stop this, whether it be at Madison Square Garden or at the Met. And so performers have to go onstage knowing that this is now part of our job.
However, there is no excuse whatsoever for a rehearsal to be published online. Rehearsals are meant to be a private working session. They are a safe space, one in which to make mistakes and try new things. We should all at least have the satisfaction of knowing that if things go wrong in rehearsal, we can stop and try again.
There is a video making the rounds on the internet right now. No, I will not link it. If you really want to find it, you will. It shows a woman (un-named) attempting and failing her way through the Queen of the Night's second aria, with orchestra. The huge problem I have with it is that it was clearly not a public performance. The singer is not in concert dress. The conductor and the orchestra are in street clothes. This is either a rehearsal or a recording session. My objection to the publication of this video is that I do not feel what we are watching was ever meant to be seen by a broader audience. Disasters happen on stage. But the decision to step out on that stage, ultimately, belongs to the performer and/or the administration, who feel they can deliver the goods on some acceptable level. To publish, and deride, the non-performance of a woman, who may or may not know that she is being filmed, is nothing short of cruel.
We all have rough days in rehearsals. And that is where they belong. And that is where they should be left.
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