I was performing at a magnificent church this year, a supposed dream to sing in. Sound echoed for seconds, line was a doddle, phrasing a breeze. However, diction was another matter. To get a single word across took all my technique, honed by performing in almost every acoustic nightmare possible. My fellow performers did the same, with the result that even rapid Rossini got laughs, a sure sign the audience heard - and understood.
The problem came with my introductions, when the organisers insisted I use a microphone. As long as I speak clearly and steadily, audiences who can hear me sing can hear me speak. So why on earth should I suddenly have to swap from non-amplified singing to amplified spoken word?
It sounded – and felt – awful. The audience had to adjust their ears from the booming sound of my voice emerging from several speakers all over the church one minute, to directional singing and piano from the stage area the next. The reason given was that ‘those at the back’ couldn’t hear. (Actually, they could, because I asked them.) Then, the tired excuse of the T loop users (a system for the hard of hearing), but I always position a mic near my speaking point on stage for them, and the technology does the rest.
The organiser’s insistence was much more to do with the way people listen, or rather, don’t. Ours is a very noisy world, with traffic, alarms, and phones all competing for our aural attention. Plus, of course, background music; try shopping somewhere where there is no music playing, or having your hair done without the dulcet tones of the local radio DJ. It’s everywhere, and so we defend ourselves from aural overload by filtering it out. Of course, the more we try to filter it out, the louder we tend to talk. The louder we talk, the less the noise perpetrators can hear their precious background sound, so they turn it up, and up, and up. It’s a vicious circle that means that audiences end up with an in-built resistance to noise levels.
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My singers and I are acutely aware of how long it takes an audience to remind themselves how to listen to music. It takes at least fifteen minutes before their ears fully adjust to our performance set-up, and start to appreciate the nuances of volume, tone and emotion. Don’t believe me? Next time a car alarm or police siren interrupts your performance half way through, watch the audience reaction. They are distracted immediately, restless, and annoyed. Before they came into the venue they would not have given it a second thought. Now, it intrudes into their aural experience, and they reject it.
So, the quickest way to ruin all that hard work is for the venue to insist on foyer music. I HATE foyer music, especially when the venue pipes through opera. It’s a terrible idea; CD recordings of ‘never been on stage in their lives’ singers and studio orchestras are tweaked within an inch of their lives and balanced flatter than a pancake. So the audience tunes into this, promptly tune out again, start talking very loudly to their neighbour to drown it out, and the vicious circle starts again.
Adding microphones to the live opera experience is another step towards the noise fog that threatens to engulf us in information and aural overload. Critic Rupert Christiansen raised the alarm back in June 2005: “Let me play Cassandra for a moment and warn everyone to be wary about the more sinister Trojan horse creeping towards the gates of opera - amplification.”
I shall continue to resist the proffered microphone and do what my singing teacher at college taught me: sing to the back of the room so that the granny under the balcony can hear every word. If that means liaising with the conductor over volumes or the director over your stage positioning, do it. If all that seems too much, give up singing and take up golf instead.
Kirsty Young
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