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| Date: | Saturday, April 10, 2010 |
| Time: | 7:30pm - 10:00pm |
| Location: | Holy Cross Church |
| Street: | 126 High Street |
| City/Town: | Santa Cruz, CA |
Melody Moore, a 2007 Adler Fellow and former Merola Opera Program participant, is one of America’s exciting new talents. She has been engaged by both Los Angeles Opera and San Francisco Opera as the Countess Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. She returned to Los Angeles this season for their productions of Der Zwerg, and Der Zerbrochene Krug and to San Francisco for La Rondine, and debuted with Opera Cleveland as Mimi in La Boheme This season will see her in San Francisco for La Boheme as Mimi, New Orleans Opera as Manon Lescaut, Orlando Opera in the title role in Suor Angelica, the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra as Donna Anna, and a notable debut in London as Mimi in Jonathan Miller’s new production for the English National Opera.
Elsewhere, Ms. Moore has performed Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni at Lincoln Theatre in Napa Valley, the title role in Suor Angelica for the Opera Theatre and Musical Festival of Lucca, Italy, and the Governess in Britten's The Turn of the Screw in Napa Valley most notably.
A graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, she performed for them the role of Candace Whitcomb in Stephen Paulus’s The Village Singer and received the Norman Treigle and Andrew White Awards.
Notable conductors with whom she has worked include Kent Nagano, Donald Runnicles, and Roy Goodman. Stage Directors for productions in which she has participated include Ian Judge, John Copley and Ron Daniels.
Tomorrow I sing at Grace Cathedral as a sub for fellow Yalie and Bohemian John Kelley. He’s one of the few people I know, who can sing all four parts. I sub for him as an alto. After singing at Grace in the choir of Men and Boys for more than two decades, I finally left in 1995, primarily because of conflicts with multiple commitments on Thursday nights. But today as a sub for three people, I’m able to choose when I sing at Grace, so the conflicts are more manageable. For a few years as a child, I was a boy soprano myself.
John Fenstermaker, former organist and choir director at Grace Cathedral, used to say that boy sopranos are judged by absolute standards and not given allowance for their age as boys; that –unlike sports, or even playing musical instruments— singing as a soprano in a cathedral choir is one of the few circumstances boys are judged by adult standards. Jeffrey Smith, the current organist and choir director at Grace, certainly maintains and promotes that performance point of view. I was not able to sing in the choir at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania –my home town— because my Dad was minister at Grace Methodist Church a few blocks away.
In the summer of 1960 before going to New Hampshire and Canada, I spent five weeks at the Columbus Boy Choir Summer Camp at Fred Waring's estate at Shawnee on the Delaware near the Delaware Water Gap. It was my first time away from home or the family. (I was there at the time of the Republican and Democratic political conventions for Nixon & Kennedy.)
I loved the singing and the music. We lived in tents and rehearsed in an old barn, where we had movies on weekends. I especially enjoyed Erroll Flynn in The Prince and the Pauper.
I brought my 'cello, and practiced once in a while. I also brought along three volumes of Will Durant's History of Civilization, which Mother and Dad had bought me from the Book of the Month Club, as I had requested for my tenth birthday. One of the adult counselors recommended Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which I read, but didn't fully appreciate until I read it again at Mercersburg.
In my free time I built dams on one of the creeks, and used Mother's brownie land camera. We went swimming in the river and took canoe trips.
Some of the boys liked to enact wedding ceremonies. One boy pretended the piano was an organ and would play the Wagner and Mendelssohn wedding marches— and I would be the minister.
At the end of camp, we gave a final concert around the pool of Fred Waring's Hotel. We sang a Bach Easter cantata, Mozart's Ave Verum and several comedy numbers. The Director, Mr. Bryant, wanted to talk with Mother and Dad after the concert. He was about to offer me a scholarship to their school in Princeton. Sherry had just finished his freshman year at the University, and I was thrilled at the prospect of going to the Choir School (today called the American Boys’ Choir.)
I saw Dad. I had never seen him look like that before. He was sporting a Van Dyke beard. He had grown it for the Harrisburg Centennial. I was such a little twirp. I didn't like Daddy's beard, particularly, a Van Dyke. (Today, they're back in fashion, and look rather becoming on some people. I had my first Van Dyke a month and a half ago to disguise a black and blue chin after fainting from some of my heart meds and hitting my chin against the marble sink at home. I shaved it off – keeping only the moustache – as soon as the black and blue cleared up, but that was because it was too gray.)
Anyway, Mother and Dad said they would consider the offer; but I don't think they ever really did. Mother had gone away to boarding school at the age of twelve, and I think she regretted it. I was the youngest child – I don't think Dad wanted me to leave home yet. It was a big disappointment.
So I went back to sixth grade at Steele School. I was in the Special Interest Class (meaning accelerated –but we were conscious about not saying so). The spring before, I had been interviewed by a school psychologist to be eligible for the program. He had given me a battery of tests –including several free associations. I figured I was supposed to impress the guy; so in the midst of other things, I listed the first six Roman emperors and several of Napoleon’s marshals. I have no idea what he actually thought of me. I would be startled if a ten-year old did that to me today, and would think he probably needed some help with self-esteem.
I sang in the chorus. I remember auditioning with "Hello Young Lovers" from The King and I. (I had played one of the princes in the Harrisburg Community Theatre's production back in fourth grade, when I had to dye my hair black, and received special permission to arrive late to school after long rehearsals.) I tried to sound like Deborah Kerr as Anna in the movie. Little did I know that the singer was actually Marni Nixon, who also dubbed for Mitzi Gaynor in South Pacific and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady. (Did you know the origin of the title of that play, derived from Shaw? Professor Higgins never calls Eliza his fair lady. Instead, Eliza was a cockney girl from Mayfair. So with a cockney accent, she was a 'M’eye-fare' lady – anyway, that's according to my actor, solicitor, friend, Jeffrey Hardy).
In the autumn of 1960, Robert Clippinger, my Dad's church organist, asked me to sing the boy's role in Felix Mendelssohn' oratorio Eljiah with Grace Church choir and another Methodist church in Williamsport, near Woolrich. Dad said I had a very lovely voice; but I should learn to project better. That could still be said about me.
[It's funny about opera singers: they can have serious problems with intonation, have too wide a vibrato, have little sense of line or language, certainly be deficient in theatrical skills and physical good looks, not even have a pretty voice; but if they can be heard over the orchestra, they can make it to the top. If not, why even bother. On the other hand, groups like Chanticleer, Episcopal men and boys choirs, and the Schola Cantorum—with whom I currently sing— do very well with moderate dynamics and a pure, clear sound. They depend, however, on appropriate settings and supportive acoustics.]
A few weeks after I sang the boy in Elijah, I went to the Camp Curtin Junior High School football game against our city arch-rival, Edison, and screamed my little heart out. I strained my vocal chords so much, that the doctor told me I shouldn't sing for a year, or I'd never sing as an adult. So that was the end of my career as a boy soprano.
Dear Rose and Prince Rupert are going to church this morning. Today is St. Francis Day at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. My friend Deb Cornue will attend to my guys during the service while I sub in the choir. After the service there will be the blessing of the animals on the plaza. R & R are really excited. Of course, they love to go everywhere; and they can tell from the tone of my voice that something’s up.
I used to sing regularly at Grace—in fact for twenty-two years— from June 1973 through June of 1995. I stayed through the Fiftieth Anniversary Commemoration of the Founding of the United Nations. Then for a year I sat in the congregation. That turned out to be rather difficult to do. So when John Renke— who at been assistant organist and choir director for my first fifteen years at Grace, and then became organist and music director at several other churches— asked me to sub at St. Dominic’s one Sunday in August, 1996, I accepted and ended up singing with him for more than a decade. We moved from St. Dominic’s to St. Francis of Assisi in North Beach with the founding of the Schola Cantorum. That’s a story in itself and will be a separate posting someday.
A major reason for leaving the Grace Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys back in 1995, was a regular conflict on Thursday nights with overlapping commitments up and down Nob Hill on Taylor Street. For six years I sang Evensong at Grace and had to leave before the end of the service to rush five blocks down the hill to a required rehearsal with the Aviary Chorus at the Bohemian Club, then leave that rehearsal early to slog back up the hill for another two and a half hour rehearsal at Grace. I’m amazed I continued for six years.
So when we started the Schola Cantorum at St. Francis of Assisi, I was able to convince a quorum to have our rehearsals on Wednesday nights. Now with my subbing at Grace for three different singers, I have more flexibility to do it at my convenience— though after my heart attack four years ago, it’s still a challenge. (That will be a separate posting as well.)
Rose and Rupert have had their breakfast and are asleep on their sofa in the Red Room as I write this. But it won’t take much to get them going. They’re gonna have a ball. (Though I probably shouldn’t take Rupert’s tennis ball with him this morning. Otherwise, he’ll want to play all during the service.)
