Preparing a role, Step 1. Buy a pencil.

One of the most common questions I get asked is "How do you prepare for roles?" I'll be posting the steps that I take over the next few weeks. I always feel best about an upcoming gig when I do the prep work well in advance and get a chance to let the character burn in over time. It's not that I'm adverse to doing short-order roles, it happens quite a bit. I'd rather tell you about the ideal way for me to approach the work.

The first step is always the hardest. I break out a pencil and a copy of Nico Castel's Opera Libretti Books and I write the translation of every word of the opera into my score. For me, the most important thing is that I do the entire opera. When I'm in a rush, I may not always have the time to do the scenes that my character is not in. That's always a shame and I go back and correct that as quickly as possible.

If I do find that I can't go through and translate everything, I will take time to read the entire libretto's word-for-word translation and note any time that my character is mentioned in the show. (more on that in a future post)

For a brief spell, at the beginning of my career, I didn't know about the Nico Castel Libretti Books and some of them had not been printed yet. I spent hours and hours with a dictionary, trying to translated semi-archiac words that use complicated grammar. It was a painful activity for me. My only consolation is that I know the technique and now, when I do shows that have not been translated, I know how much time I must budget to do the translation correctly. In some cases, like Russian or Czech, I've got to hire somebody to help me out. They aren't part of the typical college courses but they pop up every now and again.

As it happens, I'm starting to learn the role of Count Almaviva in the Rossini's The Barber of Seville, so I will post the steps as I complete them. I've done many of the arias from the show before and a couple of scenes, so now I need to fill in and learn the bigger ensembles. This isn't a rush job, so hopefully you will get the scale of how long it takes to get these tasks accomplished. If I'm interrupted by some other gig prior, I'll have to put this particular series of posts on hold until I come back to it.

Follow-up FAQs:

You might ask, why do the entire show? Fear. Never underestimate the power of fear. I have a recurring nightmare of showing up at rehearsal- about half way through the run of a show- and having the director say, "Eapen, today we are doing Act IV" and I think to myself, Act IV? It was only supposed to have THREE ACTS! If I translate the whole show, I'll never miss out on a sentence or scene or act or anything.

Why not just do the words that your character sings? If I end up not translating what people say back, I can't time the reactions to what they say. For example, if someone insults me as they are singing, I have to time my response of anger- too soon and I step their line and ruin the scene for my colleague, too late and I look weird.


Next up: Talking the talk...