Listening to Falstaff yesterday I thought about an interview Tebaldi gave in old age–it’s on the VAI re issue of the 1958 Forza del Destino telecast from Naples–where she says that during her long offstage respite in that opera she’d peruse “Pace, Pace,” in the score prior to reappearing in the last act to sing it.
I couldn’t help compare that to the statements of so many ballet dancers abjuring allegedly excessive rehearsing.
Are they kidding?
For one thing, I don’t think there’s a single ballet dancer in the history of the art form in this country who ever had the luxury of “over rehearsing.”
For another, the putative dangers of “calculating performances” belong to fantasies by this particular breed of performing artists that art somehow does not traffic in artifice.
Tebaldi says words to the effect that, “I didn’t want to sing ‘Pace,’ badly,”–and of course it was an aria she had sung many times. The more rehearsal, the more shot at perfection AS WELL AS more freedom onstage.
I hate to say it, but if ballet dancers–and administrations–took their art form a little more seriously, the public might, too.