Klarinet Archive - Posting 000204.txt from 2001/06

From: "Wolman, Kenneth" <KWolman@-----.com>
Subj: RE: [kl] pop a pill
Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 15:05:07 -0400

> On Mon, 4 Jun 2001, William Wright wrote:
>
> > I'm preaching to the choir, but when you consider that music is
> > 99.99% 'in the mind' and 'in the senses', why would a person want to
> > block part of his or her mind or senses?
>
> Because the stage fright out everything else.
>
> Bill, you've never met someone with incapacitating stage
> fright, have you? It's not just freezing up or being nervous
> - it's something much deeper.
>
> Mark C.

This is the "delicate balance" problem...walking a line between paralyzing stage fright and a potentially destructive set of side-effects from a medication intended to relieve its symptoms.

The great operatic tenor Franco Corelli had his career shortened because of stage fright that didn't get better with the years, it got worse. Corelli began singing in Italy in the 1950s, achieved international stardom rather quickly, came to the Metropolitan in New York in 1961. Throughout the Sixties his career soared, then plummeted; by the middle 1970s he sounded absolutely dreadful and I think by 1975 he was effectively done. He was only in his middle or late 40s, an age when most tenors are still flourishing. He's in his mid-70s now, gives master classes, and apparently is quite happy.

People who saw his career up close over the years attribute his relatively short career to the corrosion caused by stage fright. It takes a physical toll on the nerves, the vocal cords, the breathing apparatus, the heart...well, the whole body because I suppose singing or any instrumental playing is a whole-body exercise. Corelli's nerves could cause his voice to go out of whack under stress. I recall being backstage one night because I was on someone's guest list to meet the baritone after Act II of Tosca (the baritone's dead at that point) and Corelli walked by and leaned on the door. Even under the stage makeup he was pale as a ghost: he was facing an extremely difficult piece of singing in Act III, an aria with a pianissimo high A, and it was clear he was scared to death. He went into his dressing room, warmed himself up at the piano, it sounded gorgeous. When he got down to the stage and sang the aria--"E lucevan le stelle"--for real, he cracked on the same note.

To his credit, and as far as I know, Corelli didn't get into alcohol or drug abuse to calm his nerves. I don't know if beta blockers existed back in the early 1960s. If he were psychologically sound to start with, he'd have been the perfect candidate for them. It's just a pity that something that apparently works so well to quell one set of awful symptoms can produce others that can be every bit as awful if not worse.

Ken

Kenneth Wolman
Merrill Lynch/DCSS
570 Washington Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
(212) 647-2496

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