Hello and welcome back to the Texapolitan Opera Roadshow. I am Michael Mayes, your host, here to give you your weekly dose of Texapollination. This week, the show comes to you from Shreveport Louisiana, where I was singing Danilo in The Merry Widow. Mo. Jerry Shannon was at the helm of this, our second production together, and true to form, Jerry was a constant source of witticism and commentary. Jerry is a laugh riot, but he has a very serious side too, which emerges when he speaks about the effectiveness of true artistry. Jerry is an earnest, true-believer in the entertainment and artistic value of our beloved art form, and I count it a blessing to have been able to have him on the show, and to have been lucky enough to work with him twice, with a third opportunity coming this winter when we’ll both be heading to Tulsa for Dead Man Walking.
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Now, down to business with Mo. Jerome Shannon on The Texapolitan Opera Roadshow
Let’s do this thang
Conducting blindfolded
You memorize the page turns
The emotion of the word gives you the color of what you should be playing.
The voice is the original instrument
My own voice sounds horrible in my head
Why kind of weird sado-masochistic freak chooses this career
The voice is THE most expressive instrument
In ballet, there are NO BALANCE PROGRAMS
All music in a theatre is music theatre
An Opera conductor can conduct anything, a symphonic conductor can conduct a symphony
West Virginia, Operatic Power House
Theory, and Orchestration classes… IN HIGH SCHOOL
Sounding at what??
The inverse version of the Career “Talk”, Maybe you should teach?
Chatauqua lit a fire
Moonshine, Mountaineers, OPERA?
I’m old
about those Italian films
Surreal moments on the road
I’m not digging ditches
The big pearl that smells like a dead foot
Othalie Graham and the big pearl
Opera is the ultimate multi-cultural experience
She’s Japanese, she married an American, and we’re singing in Italian
It’s unusual, it’s surreal, it’s opera
Ah the Trovatore Synopsis Trap
Verdi goes best with a felt board
The Hilarious sword play in Trovatore
The Verdi fight song
The sad Venn diagram of stage combat and vervain singers
The ever essential flag waver
Who’s got money on the downstage right tree trunk as the place for the fat chorister to light
Standing room… that’s a long night
Sleeping against the pole~ not the Polish guy, but the actual pole
Wagner gets Jerry to sleep standing up
Caballe, DSC, plant and sing
The Score Desk at the Met
Learning all you need to know about opera from the The Score Desk at the Met
‘I am the product of extraordinary parents’ -Jessye Norman
Having your first Butterfly be at the Met
going through 3 tenors and 2 conductors in one night
She held him onstage so that he could not leave
real fire onstage, always a bad idea
It’s safe to say that Jerome has seen every incredible opera performance, ever.
A disaster of Carmenic proportions
au distance
Opera benefits from a little distance
The best seat in the house is backstage
There’s a subtle prompting
The voice
The inner game of Tennis ~ strike that~ OPERA
Calming those negative voices in your head
turning off real time judgement
don’t tell me who’s here
playing it by ear
those charges were dropped
What do I wear? exactly what you have on now.
Opera has changed
The more you know the more you may wanna go
we went to music school for God’s sake.. we work hard, but we play harder
Opera is handwork, that sweat ain’t just from the lights
Cuts really show up in extravagant productions
The new skill set of austere production
Going above and beyond with Shirley Verret
The Legendary Shirley Verret singing the Te Deum to beef up the chorus.. because she’s an incredible generous artist
Pulling a Verret
The greatest artistry has no artifice.
Knocking the ol cobwebs outta the brain
Dead Man Walking~ literally a sob fest
Andy Wilkowske and I aren’t really that tough
