Friday, April 22, 2011

Deborah Voigt Reveals Differences Between Theater & Opera

Voigt as Brünnhilde (Photo: Brigitte Lacombe)
"One of Debbie’s close friends is Jack Doulin, a casting agent who Debbie met through his work with New York Theater Workshop. She told me that she had been having some interesting conversations with him about the differences between how the theater world mounts a production compared to how it’s done in the opera world. 'In the theater, the company has weeks of previews before a paying audience before they are critiqued. But in opera, we get less than half the rehearsal time, and no chance to sing it for an audience and take their temperature, and we are critiqued the night that it is done before a paying audience for the first time. It’s really not fair! Wouldn’t it be nice to have this wonderful cast rehearse on the Lepage set for three weeks for an audience and then invite criticism?' [Source]