Giles Masters
I am a PhD student in music at King's College London. My current research focuses on the festivals organised by the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) in the 1920s and 30s.
Location London, UK
Activity
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Giles Masters replied to Helen Thomas
Wow, I had never seen these other designs before!
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Fascinating to read these memories!
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Giles Masters replied to Steve Scotney
Yes, they were! But of course engaging in such a rivalry was also a great way for both singers to generate gossip and publicity...
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Giles Masters replied to shirley buckingham
As ever, a combination of all three! Audience expectations were shaped by the performances they heard, just as musicians would adjust what they did to please different audiences.
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Giles Masters replied to Kim Maxwell
Yes, it's an interesting question about how we define the limits of 'globalisation' -- i.e. are we thinking of the movement/connections of trade, people, ideas?
(Incidentally, the very widespread consensus among historians is that Hitler did take his own life in the bunker in Berlin in 1945.) -
Giles Masters replied to Marta VS
That's very interesting, Marta - opera certainly has a very special place in Italian culture, and this is quite different to, for example, the UK.
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@PatLawson Yes, of course! (Though I would only add that the two things are not mutually exclusive!)
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This is a very interesting discussion -- it will certainly be interesting to see whether or not opera's role in film and advertising will grow. And to convey what? -- grandiosity? epic sweep? glamorous exclusivity? a touch of the historical?
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Giles Masters replied to mick murray
That's a good question about Germany! There's a number of possible ways of answering this question, but partly, it comes down to the fact that, like France, the UK is very heavily focused on its capital in terms of investment in cultural institutions (although there are very good opera companies based elsewhere in the UK too!). Whereas in Germany, there is a...
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Check out stage 3.6 on the stage manager for one key piece of the puzzle in the coordination of all these parts!
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Yes, that's a great way of putting it -- it's an important (apparent) paradox that so much technological innovation is used for what might seem 'old-fashioned'.
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Giles Masters replied to Angela H
Hi Angela, 'corona' means 'crown' - it refers to a circular space in the centre of the ceiling. You can see it quite well at the top of the last photo. As regards the second image, the 'followspot' projects a bright beam of light: it can be used to 'spotlight' a particular person on stage and then that light will 'follow' them around as they move. (Hence the...
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@TatianaMaksimova "Mute this conversation" allows you to stop receiving notifications, if you want to, from conversations that you've contributed to. If you press this button, there is always an option to "unmute" the conversation so that you get notifications again. See:...
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@KallyKrylly Hello, so this article is just one example of many texts about breathing exercises that singers might use to develop their technique: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/may/10/breathing-exercises-singers. Breathing is a foundational component of singing technique. (This gives a twenty-first-century view on how you "should" breathe, but ideas...
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@AthanasiaDiakatou "not in keeping" here means something like "appropriate" or "suitable"
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Hi Susan, thanks for this -- I think it's an automatic design feature of the website, to help people to browse through comments easier. So just to reassure you that nobody is going through deliberately hiding anything!
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Yes, that's an excellent way of putting it!
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So "singing technique" is an umbrella term for all of the know-how gained through practice and training that a singer uses to produce sound. At different points of history, there have been different 'schools' of voice teaching that have advocated different approaches to training students. And part of what Flora is getting at here is that the norms for what...
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Giles Masters replied to John Cremona
@AthanasiaDiakatou No problem! So it's a bit complicated: women's voices in opera are usually defined into three categories - contralto (lower), mezzo-soprano (middle) and soprano (highest). Like women, different individual castrati sang in different ranges. Counter-tenors use falsetto to sing usually in the contralto or sometimes the mezzo-soprano range....
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Giles Masters replied to John Cremona
Hi both, Handel originally wrote the role for a castrato voice: in many of his (and his contemporaries') operas, the lead male role is taken by such a singer. Handel wrote this part for the singer Senesino, who was well known at the time and collaborated with Handel several times. So this is why the vocal part is in what we now think of a 'female' range.
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Yes, this performance was staged on the (austerely beautiful) beach at Aldeburgh in Suffolk. Because of the setting, the mics and amplification were necessary for the singers to be heard!
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Yes, this is increasingly the case: there have been operas that include characters who are transgender (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/arts/music/as-one-has-its-premiere-in-brooklyn.html), and also transgender opera singers making careers on stage.
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Giles Masters replied to Ishie Stewart
Opera was, in fact, one of the first genres to be distributed as commercially successful recordings! In the first few years of the twentieth century, the tenor Enrico Caruso made a very famous series of recordings that were very successful (partly because the tone of his powerful voice could be captured better by the early recording technologies than some...
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Yes: it's a really significant shift isn't it? There are, I think, big pros and cons to both kinds of operatic culture.
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Giles Masters replied to T A.
Yes -- it's certainly interesting to think about how the kind of environment in which we might encounter these different versions (i.e. perhaps public/collective vs. private/intimate in this case) comes to shape their form.
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Giles Masters replied to Carlos Z
Hi Carlos, this is something that varies from company-to-company and from country-to-country. But in short: ticket costs are an important part of the revenue of an opera house, but they are not enough to cover costs alone. So other patrons and sponsorship are also important. Public money is often involved too: in the UK, for example, organisations such as the...
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No immediate plans as far as I know, I'm sorry to say - but I will of course get back to you if that changes!
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Hi Robert, thanks for these interesting ideas: it's certainly a knotty question about how we define the boundaries of 'opera'. In some cases it can be very tricky to pin things down to hard-and-fast rules though: so, for example, in many musicals, the voice type is also very important to conveying what kind of character a singer is playing. And with language,...
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Giles Masters replied to Maggie Bointon
Hi Maggie, there are many examples of both traditionalist and more experimental productions of well-known operas. So just like with Shakespeare, both options are available. More experimental reinterpretations can cause quite a lot of controversy among some opera-goers though. Yet although different productions might have different visual styles, the vast...
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Thanks for coming back for another round, Janet!
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Yes, absolutely, such troupes were vital and their itineraries led to the establishment of opera houses that still exist to this day as well. There is a book on just this by Katherine K. Preston called "Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825-60" (1993).
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@PatriciaMartinez-Valdez Great question. As you guessed, there have been cases of both, so it's hard to generalise! In the eighteenth century, libretti tended to exist first and then get taken up by composers. E.g. the librettos written by Metastasio were especially well known and well thought of. These were published as texts in their own right and then the...
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Giles Masters replied to Richard Cope
Okay, so the survey should now be open again - please do accept our apologies for the technical issue.
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Giles Masters replied to Richard Cope
Hi all, many apologies for the delay in seeing this. I have flagged this and we should hopefully get it working again for you soon.
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That's interesting, Elizabeth. Out of curiosity, are there any other art forms that you _would_ consider to be 'life-changing'? And, if so, what do you think the differences are between that and opera?
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Giles Masters replied to Elizabeth Porter
I'm not quite the expert on this, but Rudolph is right that certainly by the end of the eighteenth century London had built up quite an extensive system of discussing music in the press - this was part of a broader move towards the 'public sphere' as we know it today. Where opera was aimed more at an aristocratic court than a 'public', then it naturally...
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Giles Masters replied to Nupur Tustin
Yes, absolutely, and let's not forget that composers, instrumental musicians and courtly patrons were also often on the move too!
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Giles Masters replied to John Wade
Yes, when Bach was 20 he undertook a c. 250 mile walk from Arnstadt to Lübeck in order to visit Buxtehude - he was obviously pretty committed! As well as hoping to learn from the trip, he may have been hoping to scout out the possibility of becoming Buxtehude's successor at Lübeck (though that never happened in the event). In any case, his employers at the...
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Giles Masters replied to Imelda S
@EfrossiniZoniou The ROH does a lot of activities for children! For example, there are schools' matinees which are great way to get thousands of children to performances every year (http://www.roh.org.uk/learning/schools-and-colleges/schools-matinees). And there is also a Youth Opera Company (http://www.roh.org.uk/learning/young-people/youth-opera-company). So...
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Hi Imelda, that's a great question and the answer is a somewhat complicated one, as John is making a slightly obscure allusion here. It's not a typical part of opera vocabulary, rather I think he's referring to ‘libretto lib’ as a riff on ‘women’s lib’ (which is another term for the broad discourse around second-wave feminism and that side of the sexual...
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You're certainly right, Alexandra, that movement directors and choreographers have a vital role to play! Indeed, as well as the ways they direct the singers, ballet has also long been a central part of the opera experience, especially in French opera. A famous example would be 'Ballet of Nuns' from Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (1831), which also inspired a...
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Giles Masters replied to Imelda S
Hi Imelda, there isn't too much information on that in this course I'm afraid - it's very difficult to cover everything in 4 weeks! - but you're absolutely right that it's a crucial part of what an institution like the Royal Opera House does. They have a big and very respected learning and participation department. As well as the activities they organise in...
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Yes, of course! But, then, on the other hand, there is international competition too: if possible, the powers that be would want to reassure that, for example, the Royal Opera House is able to attract the same calibre of stars as somewhere like La Scala in Milan or any other world-class venue. So, a bit like for professional footballers, say, once you reach a...
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Giles Masters replied to Nupur Tustin
There is a book just out by Gundula Kreuzer called 'Curtain, Gong, Steam: Wagnerian Technologies of Nineteenth-Century Opera', which looks super - but, of course, as its title suggests, this is focused on a later period than the one you mentioned. The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera (ed. Roger Parker) might have some illustrations you'd find interesting,...
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Yep, that can be true - although different employers will often compete to get hold of star singers, conductors,directors, composers... A situation in which the power lies more with the artists to some extent. But the economics are fascinating and do really shape what is possible, which, in the twenty-first century, means reflecting on the role of the state...
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Hi all, this is fascinating discussion. I can't find the exact quote now, but the Australian opera director Barrie Kosky, who has been very successful all over the world, has a thing where he says: the more theatrical or ritualised opera is, the closer it gets to the 'truth'. I don't know if that's _always_ accurate, but it's a stimulating thought and an...
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Up in the corona could be used as another space to put lighting and other staging effects. Although as audience members our focus is all on the stage, there really is activity going on all around you to make it happen!
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Giles Masters replied to Nancy Nathan
Hi Nancy, sorry to hear that there have been things we might have missed: if we see a question that needs answering then we will certainly always try to help. It might also be sometimes that we haven't had a chance to reply yet, so it could be worth checking back - or that one of the other learners has already answered it well, as there has been lots of...
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Thanks for this! I should say that I meant in my comment that there aren't really any exact equivalents of something like A Doll's House from the nineteenth century, as there are many operas from more recent years that self-consciously explore issues around gender in some fascinating ways (not -- I should add -- that this in itself necessarily makes the more...
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Giles Masters replied to Barry D
Hi Barry, 'da capo aria' and 'ABA' refer essentially to the same thing - there is an opening section (A), followed by some contrasting material (B), followed by a return to the opening section again (so A again). Hope that helps!
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Giles Masters replied to Sari T
Hi Sari, glad you're enjoying the course and feel that you are learning! This is something I've mentioned elsewhere, but please don't be disheartened about finding the quiz difficult - it is definitely _not_ a test! In fact, I would be amazed if anyone got them all right (I certainly didn't). Something that is interesting about it is just to see how...
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It is a fascinating skill, but the idea of 'word painting' (conveying ideas or images from the text in music) has a long, long history. One notable pre-Mozart example would be the genre of the 'madrigal' (a secular vocal composition for a small group of singers) that flourished in sixteenth-century Italy. Monteverdi was a prolific madrigal composer and the...
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It's true, of course, that it's important to understand these artworks in the era they were created (although the ethical questions around this issue for those staging them today still remain, surely?). But I think the situation may be slightly more complicated than you imply when you state that the plots for operas are the same as for plays. While it's true...
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Maybe impossible to pin it down to a specific moment, but the tendency to perform already-existing works from the canon gradually took shape over the course of the nineteenth century. Wagner certainly had aspirations to be appreciated beyond his death! And it's worth noting that different ways of thinking about composing an opera were not necessarily mutually...
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Yes, Claudia, I agree - once you have a handle on what some of these conventions are, it can be fascinating to see the meanings produced when a composer deliberately breaks with them.
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Hi Elizabeth, don't worry if you're finding it tricky to distinguish between the voices in the first clip - as you say, it would be far easier in a live performance or video where you would be able to see who is singing. The translation provided is quite literal, so you might find it useful to try to follow along to that, as the musical phrases correspond...
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While it's true that the story is an old one, there is a long tradition of operas looking to the past for their subject matter: Handel's Giulio Cesare (the first clip here) is about events that took place c. 1700 years before the opera was composed, after all! But, as usual with these things, it tells us much more about the eighteenth century than it does...
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Please don't worry if you didn't score highly: the quiz is not a test and it is certainly difficult to get them all right (I didn't!). In fact, part of what is interesting about it (I think) is how difficult it can be to match the voice types with the descriptions sometimes and getting a snippet of the language people used to describe voices in different...
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Yes, exactly! 'Fach' comes from a German word that has a number of related meanings: 'trade'/'area of study'/'compartment' - all of which are quite nice ways of thinking of these specialisations in opera singing!
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While I think it's certainly a legitimate critique to find the lighting effects etc excessively intrusive (and I probably at least partially agree with you in this case!), it's also worth remembering that a fascination with new staging technologies is not an exclusively modern phenomenon: audiences have been going to the opera precisely for the 'whiz bang'...
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Giles Masters replied to Andrea E
So making the distinctions is always difficult and there are always works that fall between the cracks (often in interesting ways!). But to clarify the particular comment from the text: that particular paragraph was talking about opera in the eighteenth century, where tragic plots - just as in Classical tragedy - did tend to centre on a 'great' figure. In the...
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There are some interesting ideas here and I think your list gives a good sense of some of the most canonical operas of the twentieth-century. But there are two other historical factors you might also like to think about here: first, opera in the twentieth-century has had the baggage of the pre-existing canon to compete with and place itself against, in a way...
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Hi Mauro, you are certainly right here that the idea of the Italian nation predates the unification of Italy into a 'nation-state' in the nineteenth century. (Although of course historians disagree about the extent to which Italy was or was not a unified entity before then.) But I think the distinction between a nation (as cultural entity) and the state (as...
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Giles Masters replied to Sari T
No, not at all old-fashioned to find different languages important: different vowels and consonants of different languages also have big implications for singers too. But opera in English is itself a very old tradition: Purcell wrote Dido and Aeneas (the second clip here) in the 1680s.
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Wikipedia is also not unhelpful in this instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavatina. In this context, cavatina basically just means 'a simple song'. Do please ask if there's any other terminology that's at all unclear!
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Hi Kerry, great to hear that you enjoyed the examples, which you describe very well. I'm intrigued by your comment that 'novelty' would detract from your view of an opera as 'legitimate'. There is sometimes an idea around that opera and the 'new' are necessarily opposed to one another - what do you think about that idea?
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Giles Masters replied to Debbie J
Hi Debbie, it's fascinating to see how different people's definitions reflect what they find most valuable or enchanting about opera. Whereas others have lain lots of emphasis on narrative, characters and ideas, your definition eloquently makes a case for sheer musical pleasure. Both points of view are very valid, I think, but it's interesting to see how...
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Hi Mónica, welcome to the course! There will be sections of the course later on that discuss different productions and design - so if you'd like to, I hope you will use those steps to share some of your own experience as a practitioner! It would be great to hear that perspective.
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Hi Rachel, welcome to the course! It's very interesting to hear about your experience of going from finding opera remote to wanting to pursue a career as a performer - what do you think it was that allowed you to access a new point of view? (Was a particular teacher or mentor important? A particular performance that moved you? Or something else entirely?)
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Hi Sandy, that's an interesting comment about the visual aspect and how it relates to the musical and dramatic experience. Have you ever tried watching any cinema screenings or DVD versions of opera performances? Often these include close-up shots that give quite a different perspective to the one you would have in the auditorium: some people like this, but...
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@JoannaLambert Glad to hear you were inspired by the V&A exhibit, Joanna! It was fantastic, wasn't it? Which aspects of the exhibition did you find especially interesting and enticing?
For those who didn't get a chance to go, it's now finished unfortunately. But you can see some interesting information about it here: https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/opera
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Giles Masters replied to Lisa Bell
Ah definitions, definitions, definitions... it's a vexed, but important subject! There's no easy answer, I'm afraid, and there will always probably be exceptions to any broad definition. See especially the text (and discussion below) in step 4.15 for some interesting material on this (in terms of opera vs. musical theatre). Like film, opera also has its own...
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Giles Masters replied to Hetty Startup
Really interesting ideas from you both: great to reflect on how listening and understanding can change over time.
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Giles Masters replied to Serena B
Yes, exactly, Margaret: there's also a long tradition of comic operas that cast a satirical glance on the luxuriousness of serious ones.
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Giles Masters replied to Bee Greene
'Angular' is sometimes used in the context of music to talk about the shape of a melodic line: whereas a smooth melodic line would use small, gradual steps up and down in pitch, an angular one would tend to jump up and down much more. Hope that helps!
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Giles Masters replied to Simon Withers
The map is definitely far from exhaustive, so you're all right that there are definitely many opera houses in many countries missing. Rather than overload everyone with 100s of possible examples, this map just aims to indicate a few important historical landmarks that also indicate the global spread of opera houses. But it would certainly be very interesting...
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Great questions, Liesel. What do others think?
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Giles Masters replied to David McTigue
Great question, David, and very interesting to read all of your responses! Learners who are not sure yet if they are 'converted' are also welcome to get involved in this discussion - possibly some might have had an opposite experience too, i.e. a particular operatic experience that might have been very off putting (at least for a while)?
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Yes, indeed, Bridget: many sixteenth- and seventh-century operas were written for an audience that would have a shared understanding of Greek myth etc that a modern audience may not have (or at least not to the same extent), all of which raises interesting questions for directing these works now!
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Giles Masters replied to Serena B
Sorry if this seems a cop out, but that probably depends on when and where the first production took place. Often, glamour and lavishness have not been far away (but sometimes these are also absent - or even deliberately excluded, as in some twentieth-century operas). Opera has usually historically been an 'elite' artform to at least some extent, but it has...
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Yes, indeed! And the origins of opera in seventeenth-century opera are closely related to attempts to recreate what Ancient Greek drama may have been like, as part of the wider fascination with antiquity typical of the Renaissance. This is one reason that many of the stories of early operas are based on Greek myth. Many later composers and librettists...
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Giles Masters replied to Pam Purcell
I'm sure computers are coming to play a more and more central role, but with live musicians and singers, the timings will always be slightly different every night - and, of course, the lighting etc has to adapt if anyone else makes a mistake!
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Giles Masters replied to Mauro Napodano
I think the extent of the general manager's involvement with specific artistic decisions relating to individual productions varies between different institutions, but, in general, these decisions are in the hands of that production's director.
I think perhaps Hetty is reffering to this NYT piece on Peter Gelb:...
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I promise we are doing our best to get involved in all the discussions, which have been very interesting indeed. We won't be able to respond to things instantly unfortunately though, so if you get through the whole week by Tuesday/Wednesday, it may take us a little time to catch up! Please do keep posting any questions you have in the comments section of the...
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Absolutely, Fiona - the broad change in listening habits that you describe had ramifications for many different aspects of opera, including the aria.
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You're certainly right to highlight these questions as really important ones. This also raises the issue of why and to what extent opera houses should be subsidised by the state, since box office receipts alone are very rarely enough to cover costs.
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That might be true in certain respects (and diet is obviously a massively important factor here too), but how would we measure it? In athletics, it's easy, because we can use timings and measurements. And arguably technique is really a means to an end for opera singers to be able to interpret the music and the role. In any case, our ideas of 'good' singing are...
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I think you're right, Emma, that this is part of it. Certainly our ideas of what makes an 'appropriate' voice of power or authority in public discourse have long been informed by gender stereotypes. But, as a counterexample, it's worth thinking about the place of castrati in eighteenth-century opera, who were often the big stars and often played heroes (more...
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Giles Masters replied to David McTigue
Lots! Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (1951) springs to mind. It has a libretto by WH Auden based on illustrations by the eighteenth-century artist William Hogarth. Some have been set much further back in time: George Benjamin's Written on Skin (2012) is set in the 13th century.
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This is an interesting and balanced point of view. It's worth noting that, as we will see as the course progresses, technical innovation and spectacular effects have always been a part of operatic staging, even since its origins in the seventeenth century. So, in a way, some of what contemporary designers are doing is using very modern technology to achieve a...
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Look out for much more discussion of singing and voice types in next week's material!
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It's certainly interesting to think about how opera relates to the contemporary world. What is it about celebrities like Anna Nicole Smith that makes them unsuitable in your opinion? And what kind of contemporary figure do you think it could work better to write an opera about?
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Giles Masters replied to Doug Karo
A great question to which the course will return. As you will see later on in the discussion of editing operas, there are often difficult choices to be made about which version of the score is going to be used. In addition, we will also be discussing the role of conductors and singers in interpreting the music (a process which is informed by stylistic norms...
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Giles Masters replied to Joe Kelleher
It's definitely important to think about the relationship between what is 'live' and what isn't (the course will come back to this!). I'm interested that you have all the DVDs even though you don't think it is as good as being there in the theatre. What do you see the purpose of the DVDs as? Souvenirs of productions you have seen? If inevitably not quite the...
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As others have clearly advised, the cinema screenings are certainly are great way to get to see productions. Depending on where you live and if you are interested, certain opera companies also take their productions on tour and there are many smaller, local companies - there is certainly opera going on beyond London!
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It's always wonderful to have people from such a wide range of backgrounds - do let us know how your perceptions have changed (or not) by the end of the course!
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If you haven't seen already, on the next page (1.13), there are some links to some great clips!
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Giles Masters replied to Louise Homer
Hi Louise, in this course, 'opera' is taken to mean opera from the tradition of 'the West' (i.e. a repertoire that originated in Italy and that we associate with venues like the Royal Opera House). So, yes, this section is primarily concerned with how Western opera traditions have spread across the world, although that shouldn't be taken to imply that other...
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Yes, you're right about 'baddies' in films, and it's a theme that often extends to encompass much of 'classical' music beyond opera. I often think of this as the 'Hannibal Lecter' phenomenon, after Anthony Hopkins's character in 'The Silence of the Lambs' (1991), who listens to Bach's Goldberg Variations. Why do we think classical music and opera sometimes...
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Yes, it is certainly an interesting idea to film an opera 'on location' (like the 1992 Tosca film), rather than recording a staged production or using a TV studio. Some directors have gone further than the Tosca film in terms of using the conventions of feature film (rather than the theatrical conventions of opera). Channel 4's 2001 version of Britten's...
