Singing Advice

You and the Role and the Music

Auditioning is possibly the world's quickest job interview. In as little as 16 bars, you need to convey that you're a great singer, a great actor, and a responsible professional.

Diva Development

If you saw Donizetti's La Sonnambula at the Metropolitan Opera this season, you witnessed Carrie-Ann Matheson being hauled from the prompter's box during the fracas that ends the first act.

Projection Protection

A play can be as hard on the voice as a musical, with actors required to communicate intense emotions on a nightly basis—emotions that can stress the vocal folds, causing swelling and worse.

Below the Belt

Seth Rudetsky calls himself a deconstructor. Rudetsky appropriated the word to describe his compulsion to analyze show tunes as performed by the singers he "ido-Lizas."

Wesla's More

"Kids don't want to hear about me," Wesla Whitfield says of the many students she's been teaching for the past four years at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, Calif.

Ear Training With Bruce Arnold

The ability to accurately hear and analyze music is one of the hallmarks of a great musician. Most music students develop it through ear training. But traditional methods can leave them frustrated when they try to apply the concepts they've learned to actual music.