This is a charming
book which wears its learning lightly.
The rather jokey cover (a barrage of
puns, both verbal and visual, on a series
of opera titles) leads you to think
that you have come across one of those
books of lists of comic and amazing
facts. Myer Fredman’s book is rather
deeper than that, but the format and
style retain a certain lightness of
touch.
The book is organised
into a series of sections, The Creators,
The Re-Creators, Study and Beyond, The
Complete Rehearsal Period, The Administration,
The Audience, Operatic Mishaps and Other
Cautionary Tales, Opera Companies, Past,
Present and Future? which comprehensively
cover the whole operatic genre. Each
section is subdivided into a series
of salient chapters (Musical Director/Conductor,
Producer/Director, The Conductor-Producer
Relationship etc.) and each of these
is further subdivided into substantial,
self-contained paragraphs. The effect
is carefully controlled by Fredman,
so that there is a sense of narrative
flow but the principal feeling when
reading the book is that of receiving
a series of separate facts rather than
a continuous narrative. The results
are obviously intended to make it easy
for the target audience, but I found
the approach a little tiresome at times.
Fredman is careful
to be direct without courting too much
controversy. On the subject of conductor–producer
relationships, detailing the perils
of incompatibility without naming names
or giving concrete examples, but also
mentioning the benefits when the balancing
act works. Tactfully Fredman rarely
gives examples, confining himself to
the more abstract.
Style apart, a more
serious problem with the book is the
series of spelling errors. Sean Edwards
for Siân Edwards, Cho-Cho San
for Cio-Cio San, Massanet for Massenet
etc. Some more careful proof-reading
is needed.
One can always pick
holes of a factual nature in books which
are full of information, but it is surely
misleading to say that Ethel Smyth conducted
a choir of suffragettes with a toothbrush
without explaining that she was in prison
at the time and was leaning out of her
cell window. Similarly, saying that
Nadia Boulanger more recently
made an impression on the revival of
Monteverdi, is to rather stretch the
definition of ‘more recently’.
He has quite strong
opinions, some of which I find rather
unhelpful. For instance he refers to
"the difference between the
intrinsic Italian and German character;
the former being emotionally instinctive
and the latter more intellectually orientated".
This is surely a caricature and is not
really helpful to a newcomer to opera.
Or again he seems to disapprove of the
tendency for opera houses to employ
specialist baroque bands to perform
the early repertoire; a matter on which
people should surely be encouraged to
think for themselves. Unfortunately
the scheme of the book means that any
lengthy discussion of such thorny topics
is difficult.
But there is a lot
of good sense here. With a lifetime’s
experience, Fredman is familiar with
the foibles of singers. He is robust
in his attitude to "the exaggerated
myth of a singer’s ‘temperament’".
And his discussion of the whole business
of what it means to be a singer in opera
will be no end of help to non-singers
struggling to come to understand the
vagaries of the operatic world.
Myer Fredman was for
many years on the music staff at Glyndebourne
and then went to develop a career for
himself in Australia. The book seems
to retain an element of the Glyndebourne
connection as all the pictures are from
Glyndebourne productions. These twenty
or so colour illustrations help to give
a good visual element to the book.
This would be an excellent
book to give to someone who is just
developing an interest in opera. It
is not so much a book for old opera
hands, though even they will perhaps
find the odd nugget of interest in Fredman’s
wisdom.
Robert Hugill
