BLYTHE GAISSERT:
As One is a remarkable work and I have absolutely received an education about contemporary opera, preparing for this story. Just mentioning the word opera for most people associates it with something unreachable, but that really has changed in the last 10 to 20 years. Would you agree? For sure. I do mostly contemporary opera
now, I don’t know how that happened, but that’s mostly what I do. I think even just in my first encounters with contemporary music in the early 2000s—beside the text or whatever the story was—the music was a little bit more what some people might associate with contemporary music. Now I feel like it’s all kind of melding more into a mixture of styles and things people can identify with more. I never considered myself a traditional
opera singer from the very beginning. I always had my finger in a lot of different pies and liked doing a lot of different kinds of music for different reasons, I felt like it stimulated different parts of my creative brain. I’ve sung rock music, jazz, musical theatre and all different kinds of classical music. What’s really great, is that the way that contemporary classical music is being written, I get to use a lot of those different tools I’ve learned in all of those other genres, which is amazing. It used to be frowned on to exercise some of those chops: You know, “Straight tone and high arts…Oh, you’re sliding around…” that isn’t so frowned on anymore, at least in contemporary music. I feel like people welcome having a wider palette of colors to use and you’re not stuck in this sort of “It has to sound like this person” or “Let’s recreate this production…” don’t get me wrong, it has its place. There’s such a change happening across all genres of music and in all the arts right now. What do you feel, we can attest that to? Is it the access to information online, do you think? I can say that a lot of the things that I’ve been
affiliated with, things have become more of a conglomeration of different media, also having certain technologies available. I mean a lot of
people complain that we’re such a media driven society and there’s obviously a lot of negative things about that, but as far as opera is concerned I feel like it’s really helped bring it into a new area, making it more accessible and exciting to a different group of people. Many say a younger group of people, but I don’t think it’s just about age, it’s about breaking stereotype a bit. That’s the great thing about the information age that we live in right now. In your experience have you felt any downsides from it, as far as musicality goes? It’s always been very tricky having a career in contemporary music. People seem to think that’s all you do or you’re not capable of doing other things. I think especially now, that’s not the case, because there are so many people doing contemporary opera across the country and not just in big places. There still is a little bit of a hangover. I certainly have felt its effect at times and even though I have done plenty of standard repertoire as well, they’re like “Oh that’s what you do now.” I also think there are a lot of people from the “old guard” if you will, that are a little afraid of change…and it really has changed so much. It’s a positive thing because it brings in a different audience. Not every TV show or movie is for every person and it’s the same with opera. You’re not going to like everything you see and that’s okay, but you can appreciate it. That’s part of appreciating great music, great art
NOVEMBER 2017 |
NOVEMBER 2017 | RAGE monthlyRAGE monthly
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