- Well that didn't work.
We have a few minutes for some questions.
And I love you all, but I would love to give priority
to the fabulous students that are here.
And if you guys don't have any.
Yes?
- [Woman] Hi.
- Hi.
- [Woman] What do you think that we as young musicians
need to be doing in order to bring more appreciation
and awareness to classical music?
- Oof.
(audience laughs)
She asks, what do we need to be doing as young musicians
to bring more awareness to classical music?
- [Woman] And appreciation?
- And appreciation, oh, I love that.
Share it.
Share it with all the generosity you possess.
Do the work that you need to do
to constantly remind yourself how powerful this is.
Because when you know that, I asked, I think, Nicole,
the composer, do you believe Sein wir wieder gut?
And she went, "I think sometimes, yeah, no, actually, I do."
You guys are all, music has called you for a reason.
And you need to nourish that, it's a gift.
And it requires, well, it doesn't require, but,
it would be beautiful to nurture that and take care of it,
and amplify it, in your life,
in your connection with each other.
Think about how you guys interact as colleagues.
Are you supportive and do you build each other up?
Or do you, well, how are you with other faculty members?
How are you with other conservatories?
How are you with other singers?
Can you celebrate another singer's success?
Can you celebrate another musician's success?
When people are down, can you offer music to them?
I have a hard time doing that.
If somebody says, "Would you sing something?"
I'm like, "Oh, I'm not very warmed up."
And I kind of do that.
I could work on that.
But share it.
Take people by the hand and bring them in.
Then the big picture stuff will start to come to you.
But I really think if we look at it in the big change,
how do we save classical music, we're already lost.
It's gonna be the little things.
And personal connection.
Yeah, it's a great question.
- [Man] Joyce, I have a question as an opera-goer.
- I thought you were a student in the front row.
(audience laughs)
- [Man] When a singer has to audition
for a director or a conductor,
and they don't know the conception of the director,
his concept for the role,
how much acting do they put into singing when they audition?
- So in auditions, especially if you're auditioning
maybe for something specific,
but you don't know what the concept is for the director,
chasing that, what do they want,
chasing that idea in auditions or competitions is pointless.
Pointless.
Even if you think that you know what they want,
then you're out of your artistic zone.
You're trying to provide what they want.
And then you start to go, "I don't know.
"I used to enjoy singing.
"I don't know why."
(audience laughs)
Now, that having been said, this is also a business.
And so you have to be savvy,
and you have to know what it is to present yourself
with confidence and as yourself,
and what it is to be unprofessional and unprepared.
You have to measure that.
Everything that you do in your presentation,
if it's organic and well thought out,
if you make a gesture,
that gesture will read as necessary and true.
- [Man] It could inspire the director.
- It might inspire the director.
Yeah, it could.
It could.
Sometimes the great directors are constantly inspired
by what they see in front of them.
And they want to help you find the best that you have.
But really, that idea of trying to chase, what do they want,
because when you all start having great careers,
and you go to Palermo, or Dresden, or London,
you go, "Oh, what do they want here?"
You're constantly chasing a moving target.
It has nothing to do with your artistic integrity.
They want a great Cherubino.
What does the conductor want?
The first time I sang Cenerentola professionally
was with Alberto Zedda.
Of course, he's Mr. Rossini, and I thought, "Oh, god,
"what does he want, what does he want, what does he want?"
And I come in and I was like (singing foreign language)
worried about what he wanted,
so I wasn't at all thinking about my singing.
And afterwards, I went up like a really good
well-trained conservatory person,
and I said, "Maestro, was it okay?"
"Ah, Joyce, si, si."
"But the tempi, are the tempi right?"
"Si, how can I know?
"I listen to you another two weeks
"and then I know your tempo.
"But, si, si, si.
"Canta, canta."
(audience laughs)
Okay, cool, alright, cool.
Don't chase that what do they want.
It's artistic death.
Yes, hi.
- [Woman] Hi, Miss Joyce.
You've had such a fabulous journey through your career,
and so I was wondering throughout the whole process,
besides obviously following that process
that you talk about so often,
is there anything else that you could say that you wish
you knew from your earlier stages,
or that you wish you would've heard someone else say to you?
- Yeah, what else, through my journey, my big journey,
what I would've wanted to know?
I think maybe it was here I got asked a similar question,
maybe my first time, and the thing I would tell myself
back then is it's gonna be okay.
I was a slow starter.
I didn't gain entry to Juilliard or Wolf Trap.
I wasn't that 24-year-old wunderkind like you guys are here,
which is great.
And it was a slow journey
and there were people whizzing by me.
So I would've told myself now it's gonna be okay.
I wouldn't trade that journey for anything in the universe
because I had to find the strength within me.
It will never, ever come from your teacher.
Support will come from your teacher.
But that tenacity, that inner tenacity and strength
and knowledge will never come from your teacher,
so don't look for it.
It will never come from your coach, so don't look for it.
It will never come from your stage director.
It will never come from your conductor.
It will never come from a colleague.
It just can't.
It's impossible.
So that, how do I keep maintaining the joy of music?
How do I believe in myself when everything is crashing down?
It's your job to figure that out.
And you will.
I can't tell you if it will be two months or five years.
But you guys are on such a great journey, that it will.
The second you stop wasting energy
looking at it from external sources, all of that energy
starts to going to figure it out in your space.
So it's gonna be okay. (laughs)
Yes.
- Hi. - Hi.
- [Man] I wanted to ask, did you ever have in your career
an aria or a song that you were scared of?
And then, how did you manage going over this fear?
- Every piece I've ever sung.
(audience laughs)
Let me start with, no.
Everything, everything.
In some ways, I feel like
I'm more of a skydiver than a singer.
And even if I'm doing Voi Che Sapete,
I have to go (clicks and inhales deeply)
jump out the plane!
(sings in foreign language)
Oh, my god!
(audience laughs)
It's scary, if you wanna call it scary.
It could also be called thrilling.
It could be called humbling. (laughs)
Intimidating.
Life-affirming.
I try to spin it mentally.
I play a game with myself, I think, actually.
And I have a technique that I depend on.
And I continue to work on that technique,
so that I can walk out on stage and say,
okay, maybe this will not be perfect.
I'll let it be what it is tonight.
But I'm gonna have a certain amount of a surety,
at least just on the technique.
Because I've been working for 30 years.
I trust that.
I'll share a story, just between us.
(audience laughs)
I arrived in New York on August 21st, and I got,
I don't get sick very often.
And if I do, I can kind of chase it in three or four days.
I got sick.
I mean, sick, and I did not know the body
could produce copious amounts of mucus, as this did.
And I got impacted here above
and my ears were closed and my nose was closed.
I was like, okay, it's a virus, it'll pass.
Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.
Showed up to rehearsals, I did physical staging.
I sang Adalgisa seven years ago in concert,
but I was banking on those five weeks of rehearsal
to get it into the thing.
Tick tock, huh, okay.
Didn't go.
Acupuncture, da da da, all this kind of stuff.
It sort of broke the morning of the final dress rehearsal,
which was open for public,
Metropolitan Opera, opening season.
(audience laughs)
That was a Thursday.
My little voice teacher's back there.
Monday, I stopped the lesson 10 minutes in
and I said, "I can't sing."
She goes, "No, you can't.
"Go see a doctor."
Did another round of doctors and blah-blah-blah,
and it kind of lifted.
But I had to jump out of the plane,
11 o'clock in the morning, never having had anything
above an F-sharp, because all of this was closed.
But it was clearing, and I said,
"Okay, it's not gonna be my Adalgisa of my dreams.
"But I'm gonna phonate, I'm gonna get through it."
And it was all technique.
It was scary, as was opening night,
like all the, you know, it's scary.
But mentally, I sang myself through that concert.
So it's mostly mental work and a lot of technical work
that you can go, if they don't have that high note there,
or I might forget this, but I'm prepared.
I'm as prepared as I can be.
And that's power.
That's where your strength comes.
Yeah.
That help?
- [Man] Yes.
- Hi.
- [Woman] You talked a lot tonight
about thinking out a piece well.
What questions do you ask yourself
when you're learning a new piece
that are questions that are deeper than the surface?
Who am I?
What's the scene?
- So she's asking in the preparation of a piece or a role,
what kinds of questions do I ask?
Rather than like who am I?
Where am I coming from?
Just go back to the basics to start.
As I enter the room, literally where have I been?
Where am I coming from?
When I exit the stage, where am I going?
What's my relationship with this person?
With Pollione, the discussion we had with David McVicar
was had they actually slept together or not?
Will the audience ever know the answer to that question?
No, but I know it.
In the Harry Potter series,
she said that she told Alan Rickman.
She told him the story that he was really
in love with Harry's mother, but nobody else knew.
So from series one of however many movies there were,
he was playing that he was in love with her.
But nobody else knew.
So that kind of thing, it's not that the audience
is gonna see it, necessarily, but it informs what you do.
So all of those basic acting questions
are really important to know.
Then it's the kind of work we did here.
Why does he end that major
when it sounds like it should be minor?
That is such a big decision.
Why do I repeat this?
What is happening?
And where have I come from the beginning of the thing?
Why do I say palpiti instead of sospiri?
This kind of thing.
I just ask questions and questions
and I can't give you a list of what they are.
I get it from the music.
Yeah, and the text.
Yeah.
Is that, yeah.
The more questions you ask, the better.
There's no wrong question, for sure.
And all the questions are right,
but it's just ask, ask, ask, ask.
We have one more, one more question?
I can stay.
Anyone, anyone?
Okay, yes.
Last question.
- [Man] What about difficult co-stars?
How do you cope?
- Difficult co-stars.
Well, God bless them.
Here's what I will tell you that I have found
in my experience is the vast majority of people
in this business are wonderful.
Everybody is scared and everybody wants to be great.
And we are all at different levels of that spectrum.
And sometimes the fear is the louder one,
and it's shown in not very good behavior in others.
I've rarely run against people
being malevolent in rehearsals.
I've had a few co-stars that sort of,
they're a little unaware
that they're standing right in front of you.
So you're like, "Hello."
What I tend to do as well is, first of all,
I will never give my power away on the stage
to somebody else, and let them eat away at my confidence
or eat away at my musicality.
I won't allow that to happen.
So if something needs to change, I'll have a word with them.
I'll have a word with the director.
If it's getting to a place that it's destructive.
But mostly, I like to surprise them and challenge them,
and kind of kill them with kindness.
It's so Kansas City.
(audience laughs)
But I do, and I've had one or two colleagues (giggles)
that they'll look at me and I can see on their face,
they go, "Oh, oh, you're acting.
"Oh, oh!"
And then they come into the scene.
So I kind of like to challenge them that way.
It's like, I'm gonna be in this scene
whether you are or not.
I've had one instance where it was a quick revival,
there was no rehearsal,
and they were big personalities on the stage,
and it was every man for himself.
And it was clear.
Every woman.
It was clear that if I didn't play that game,
I might as well go home.
So I said, "Okay."
And you have to know how to,
you have to know how to do that.
That's a last resort.
And I don't like that situation.
But sometimes, nine times out of ten,
direct question and contact is the best thing.
And just don't go to that level.
But also, don't be run over like a Mack truck.
It's a balance.
You guys are gonna learn everything you ever need
about the survival in life in this journey that you are in.
All of it, all of it.
It's so exciting.
Thank you so much for tonight.
You all were fantastic.
To the singers!
(audience applauds and cheers)
You guys wanna?
(ululating)
And the pianists.
Yeah, thank you, guys.
Thank you, have a good year, have a good season ahead.
Have a good year.
(audience applauds and cheers)