Read comments from experts as well as interviews with Competition personalities:

Teaching the intangible

Imparting technical and interpretive advice to the aspiring singer, who is at once the instrument and its player, sometimes seems to have more to do with the occult than any exact science. How does a teacher succeed? Click here to read a few pointers on the matter.

Song through the ages: a quick glance

Singing emerges from the amplified natural cadences of the spoken voice. How did singing evolve through the Ages? Have a quick glance on the subject by clicking here

Excerpts from Shirley Verrett's biography
 

“One of the great artists of the century”. Those were the Luciano Pavarotti’s words when introducing Shirley Verrett’s autobiography – written with Christopher Brooks –, one of the members of our distinguished jury members. Her inspirational autobiography candidly tells of overcoming racism and religious, family, and health challenges to become one of her generation's foremost singers. Click here to read a short excerpt in PDF format.

To purchase I Never Walked Alone: The Autobiography of an American Singer, written with Christopher Brooks (John Wiley & Sons; May 2003; $19.80 US), click here.

Piano accompanist: far more than a simple side-kick
by Lucie Renaud

The accompanist’s profession is a relative newcomer in the classical music world. Relive the different steps of its evolution. Read the first part of this interview here.

Read the second part of this interview here.

Portrait of an exceptional jury
In conversation with Lucie Renaud

Only hours before the official opening of the MIMC, we talked with Joseph Rouleau, whose portrayal of countless roles, particularly those of Boris Godunov, Philippe II and Mephistopheles, won him critical acclaim the world over. Here he gives us an informal glimpse at the jury for this 2005 edition. Read more

Opera: not always a tragedy!

Here is a list of fun facts about the world of opera

- Rossini once received a curious letter before a performance of one of his operas at La Scala in Milan:
“A lady who wishes to make the acquaintance of the great Maestro will be at La Scala tonight in Box No. 9 to tell you something she cannot put into writing.” Meanwhile, the company's leading tenor announced that the beautiful wife of the French ambassador had arrived in town to see the opera and would occupy Box No. 9. As the overture began Rossini, greatly excited and dressed to the nines, arrived in Box No. 9 - and was dismayed to find it empty. As the lights came on after the first act, Rossini noticed an envelope on the empty chair beside him. Eagerly he opened it and read:
“My dear Maestro. The ambassadress of France regrets that she cannot come to the theater tonight for one important reason: she is dead - and well decayed. The French ambassador has been a widower for three years. Please accept, Maestro, the compliments of your admirer, Primo Aprile.” (April 1)

- Gaetano Donizetti, the composer of more than seventy operas, was famously prolific. He was once asked whether it was true that Rossini had composed the Barber of Seville in two weeks. “Oh, I quite believe it,” he replied. “He has always been such a lazy fellow!”

- Luciano Pavarotti fell in love with vocal music as a young man. One day, he plunked himself down in a chair in the courtyard of the apartment house, played a small mandolin and sang at full throttle for a gaggle of neighbours who tossed candy and nuts in approval. How old was the future tenor? He was five years old.

- While touring America before World War I, famed opera singer Nellie Melba played Desdemona with such passion that many women in the audience burst into tears when she was strangled by Otello. If the applause was particularly persistent, Nellie would rise from her deathbed and signal for a piano to be brought onstage. She would then accompany herself for an encore by singing "Home, Sweet Home" - with the audience joining in. Once the ovation had ceased, she would collapse again upon the bed and allow the unfortunate Otello to finish the act.

- Donizetti was once approached by a desperate Milanese theatre manager who needed a new opera in two weeks. Given the urgency, he suggested that Donizetti revamp another man's work. "Are you making fun of me?" he exclaimed. "I am not accustomed to patching up my own old operas, let alone another composer's. I'll give you a new opera in fourteen days. Now send me Felice Romani..." "I give you one week to prepare the text," he told the librettist. "It must be set to music in fourteen days. Let's see which of us has guts!" The result? L'Elisir d'amore.

- Near the end of a performance at Albert Hall one evening, the famed soprano Luisa Tetrazzini missed a top note. Greatly distressed, she ran off the platform, literally wringing her hands. Then, suddenly stopping, she raced back and, without saying a word, simply sang the single bungled note. The audience erupted with delight.

- When Stella Roman was playing Tosca in Puccini's opera she was supposed to leap to her death from a prison parapet and land safely off-stage on a mattress. Roman, feeling insecure one night, demanded two extra mattresses. She leaped, and the mattresses bounced her back on stage. She had to kill herself all over again.

- Rossini once congratulated the diva Adelina Patti for her incredible voice. "Madame, I have cried only twice in my life," he declared. "Once when I dropped a wing of truffled chicken into Lake Como, and once when I first heard you sing." ("The truffle," Rossini once remarked, "is the Mozart among the mushrooms.")

- During a performance of Rigoletto in Chile one evening, the audience was mesmerized by a feather floating down, languidly circling, from the building's rafters. At the critical moment, Louis Quilico threw back his head in song, swallowed the feather, and promptly fainted.

- So total was the absorption of Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas in their roles that when, during a full dress rehearsal three days before opening night, Maria's wig brushed against a lighted candle and caught fire, she went on singing and continued to do so even as smoke poured from behind her head, and Gobbi rushed across the stage to put the fire out.

- Franco Corelli taught himself to sing, largely by listening to recordings by his idol Enrico Caruso. Indeed, his Caruso collection was so well played that he had to replace it three times in ten years.

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