{"id":65639,"date":"2012-03-13T03:17:09","date_gmt":"2012-03-13T01:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=65639"},"modified":"2016-12-14T01:14:20","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T00:14:20","slug":"spotlight-on-linda-roark-strummer-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/spotlight-on-linda-roark-strummer-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight on Linda Roark-Strummer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Linda Roark-Strummer<\/strong> is an important name in opera history whose career highlights have included Nabucco, I Due Foscari,Tosca, Attila,Il Trovatore, La Fanciulla del West, and Herodias in Salome with New York City Opera; Lady Macbeth in Macbeth with the Teatro Massimo Bellini (Catania), the Teatro Municipal (Santiago), and L’Op\u00e9ra de Montr\u00e9al; Giovanna D’Arco in Verona; the title role iCarn Turandot with Portland Opera; Jenufa with the Opernhaus Z\u00fcrich; Maddalena de Coigny in Andrea Ch\u00e9nier with New Orleans Opera; the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music<\/em> with Tulsa Opera. Concer highlights have included Sieglinde in Die Walkure<\/em> with L’Orchestre M\u00e9tropolitain; Br\u00fcnnhilde in Siegfried<\/em> with the Nashville Symphony; the Verdi Requiem<\/em> with the London Philharmonic and the National Symphony Orchestra; and Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony<\/em> with the Teatro alla Fenice. Ms. Roark-Strummer currently accepts private students for voice lessons and role coaching. For further information on this legendary singer you can visit her official website<\/a>.
\nYou sang with the best music directors like Gavazzeni, Bohm, Muti and many others. Whom did you enjoy working with the most?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\nGavazzeni was a dear, dear man and I enjoyed working with him very much. \u00a0I spent three days in Gergamo to work Foscari with him. \u00a0I’d go in twice a day to work with him. \u00a0When I got there in the morning, I’d wait outside his studio and listen to him play the piano. Charming! \u00a0A beautiful memory. I only worked with Bohm once. \u00a0In San Francisco. I didn’t really interact with him too much. But I recall running into him in the hallway once and was amused that he had on an old, gray sweater with a hole in it!I learned a lot from the General Music Director in Linz: Dr. Roman Zeilinger. I worked with him, not only in the theater, but also for several Catatas in Austria. He taught me a lot about the German language and how to sing it. Also much much much about the different musical styles. We are still in contact. I sang my first Mozart Requiem with him and it remains a very meaningful music- making memory for me.
\nI always felt a special musical connection with Muti and enjoyed working with him very much. I learned A LOT from him. \u00a0One of the best moments was on stage at La Scala in an orchestra rehearsal. \u00a0Dimitrova didn’t feel good and left the rehearsal just before the last scene. I was covering her in the production and singing a couple of the last performances. \u00a0I hadn’t staged that scene but had to go on for the rehearsal. \u00a0I always loved that scene and enjoyed singing it but this was the first time I had gotten to do it with orchestra. \u00a0Muti told me to just forget about staging and had me come forward and sing it at the edge of the stage. \u00a0It was like I was by myself all of a sudden – no chorus, no soloists, no tech people and stage hands – just me, the orchestra and Muti. I read off of his finger tips where he was going musically, which was where I wanted to go! \u00a0It was like we had made that music together from the beginning of time. \u00a0Too bad the rest of the world missed that moment! \u00a0It was magic! \u00a0I walked off stage thinking “Well, I can die now. \u00a0I’ve just made the best music of my life”.
\nAny funny telling worth remembering?<\/strong>
\nI got tickets to a performance of Nabucco in Trieste an aquaintance (a friend of a friend that I had met a couple of times). \u00a0She came to see me back stage and asked me to give her a lira (no euros at that point). \u00a0I gave it to her, somewhat surprised, and she gave me a beautiful antique pin, with diamonds (big ones!) in it. \u00a0It remains a favorite piece of mine.
\nWhat do you remember of your debut?<\/strong>
\nMy Italian debut was in Venice – what could have been more ideal? \u00a0I LOVE Venice! \u00a0And with Sam Ramey! \u00a0The whole experience was unbelievable and I had the good fortune to sing there several times. At the time, I was learning Nabucco and there are places in in the music that remind me always, of where I was while I was memorizing it. I walk when I am memorizing and I would learn different sections in different Campi. \u00a0I’d sit on a well or a bench and learn another section. \u00a0In my mind, I go back to where I was when I learned that section.
\nRenata Tebaldi had a recurring dream of going on stage unprepared: did you ever fear anything like that?<\/strong>
\nI have had that dream a couple of times. \u00a0I have even had one where i was supposed to play a piano concerto! \u00a0I am a lousy pianist! \u00a0I was more afraid I was going to get out on the stage and realize that I hadn’t put on my costume and was standing bare assed in front of the audience.
\nWhat is the lightest soprano role you ever sang?<\/strong>
\nAdina or Ann Truelove.
\nWhich singer did you look up to while studying?<\/strong>
\nI don’t know how to answer this, really. It was always the music that inspired me but I didn’t know enough about other singers at that point. \u00a0Later,\u00a0it would have to be Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.
\nAnd what did you take from her?<\/strong>
\nProprio nessuno. I always did it my way.
\nWho do you prefer: Verdi or Puccini?<\/strong>
\nPuccini.
\nMarschallin or Arabella?
\n<\/strong>Arabella.
\nWhat do you remember of Italy?<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Tanti – Ma “TANTI”…cose. Gnocchi alla Gorgonzola; Caprese; Giolliti’s; Erice; Venice; Verona; e “tanti amici!”
\nWhich operatic character is close to your personality?
\n<\/strong>Minni – Fanciulla del West<\/em>.<\/em>
\nHow does it feel to be in front of the Arena di Verona audience?
\n<\/strong>Molto piccola.
\nWould have you liked to sing Cherubini\u2019s Medea?
\n<\/strong>“No, non credo”.
\nAre you a believer?
\n<\/strong>In a strange way, yes, very.
\nDo you miss singing?
\n<\/strong>“Si, ogni tanto”. \u00a0I enjoy, now, teaching young singers interpretation, diction and presentation. \u00a0I would like to try my hand at directing or straight acting.
\nHow did you meet with your husband, who\u2019s going to be in Rome at the Opera soon?
\n<\/strong>LONG story. \u00a0He was standing in, for rehearsals, for the Pappageno in Magic Flute. \u00a0This was in San Francisco, California. \u00a0I was singing Erste Dame. We got to know each other during the rehearsals.
\nHave you ever sung together?
\n<\/strong>We have sung together a number of times but after I started singing the Verdi\/Puccini repertoire, we didn’t get to so much. \u00a0He has specialized in the Buffo repertoire and most of my rep didn’t have Buffi. In Heidelberg and Linz, we sang together often. \u00a0Adina to his Dulcamara, for example.
\nAny advice for young singers at the beginning of their career?
\n<\/strong>Know your art! \u00a0Listen more to the singers from the past – the so called “Golden Age” of Opera. \u00a0The closer you get to the composer, d the closer you get to what they really wanted from the music. \u00a0Learn to recite poetry with MEANING. \u00a0That will teach you how to color the words you are singing. Learn to look through your character not just at what they appear to be on the surface. \u00a0I see few singers today who I think really know what the character is thinking about and going through. \u00a0There must always be a bit of humanity in all characters. Even if your character appears all evil, you must find their soft spot, otherwise the audience will have no feeling for you, the character. \u00a0They won’t believe you. \u00a0Each character is going on a trip from the beginning of the opera to the end of it. \u00a0They start somewhere and end up somewhere; they learn something. \u00a0As portrayers of that character, we have to take the audience on that trip with us. \u00a0There are no neutral characters. \u00a0They are there for a reason. The best directors know how to help you find that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Linda Roark-Strummer is an important name in opera history whose career highlights have included Nabucco, I Due Foscari,Tosca, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":32055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[147,9354,14667,9051],"class_list":["post-65639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-cantanti","tag-foreign-readers","tag-interviste","tag-linda-roark-strummer-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65639\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}