Speaker 1: You know, frankly, there's hardly anything to say. They're so great. Everybody was really fantastic this afternoon, extraordinary talent, voices, and also training. I mean, the amount of hours that go into the preparation of any of these scenes, and not just learning it, but the language, the style, all of that has just got to be second nature by the time you're on stage, and you don't kind of wake up knowing those things. It takes a huge amount of time, and I was lucky to come to Juilliard post-graduate. I already had my master's degree and benefited from more than two years of post-graduate training here in what used to be the American Opera Center, and it had different names, but it was so important because that bridge between education and professional life can be very painful. We lose a lot of people in that bridge because they either can't afford to continue on, they have loans, or because they give up, they get on the wrong track, or because they don't have the time. They don't have enough education to get them through, and this is what our Young Artist Programs are for as well. So these guys are in great shape. Any questions? Anybody want to know about the lifestyle, the landscape? All right, well, thank you so much. Oh, wait, we do. Yes, sorry. What are some of the roles you enjoyed seeing the most and identifying what you did? Roles. So I think in the end, I had a top 10 list that had Strauss in the center, so obviously the Marshall in, but also Arabella and Die Greifen in Capriccio. I had Othello, I had Rusalka, very important role for me, Streetcar Named Desire. I loved very, very much singing that role, and other premiere things that I did in English, and Onegin was really a crucial piece. So these were all roles that lived in the kind of full lyric repertoire, and I started with Mozart, so a decade of Mozart taught me how to sing, and I didn't like it. It was so hard. The reason I got to premiere the Countess in all the major houses is because nobody else wanted to sing it, and Hungry Me had to do it everywhere, it's paying your dues, and I am so grateful, because had I started with heavier repertoire, I would not have lasted very long, and it forced me to fine-tune my technique. Yes? Were you still thinking about Mozart when you were in Carousel? Thinking about Mozart in Carousel. I think Mozart, because of the refinement and the exposed, all of the exposed singing right in the middle voice, which, believe it or not, is harder than the more extreme singing that you think would be hard, I've always maintained that connection to a classical style of singing, because I realized early on that when I used too much breath pressure or too much, really, effort, I never had the stamina that I wanted to have, and I was taught well here, don't sing on your principle, sing on the interest, so it was a lot of years of fine-tuning that concept of not over-singing, plus it's boring. When I hear people who are over-singing and just singing loud, I don't last very long with that. I think, wow, that's a great voice. It's for dinner. You know? Yes? How do you go about preparing a role? Preparing a role, well, in the years that I was preparing lots of roles all the time, I would do everything at the same time, because I didn't have time to separate it out, but if I had the luxury of time, I would work really hard on the text first, because once you start singing it and start working on the music, it's hard to go back and refine the text, the language, the pronunciation, the meaning, your homework about the period and the composer and the elements that went into creating the piece in the first place, and character, and when I say period, I mean what was going on in the time the piece was set and written, so all of that takes time, and that's the ideal way to do it, but I had to kind of do it all at once, quickly. Not ideal. I thought there was one. Yes? When you sing the same role in a very different setting, director, in a different place in the world, do you have to readjust? Can you talk about that? Yes. Ideally, you're flexible enough to sing something in multiple tempi, multiple styles. I mean, I think there have been productions that were really far out, far against the obvious meaning of the text and the story, and what happens when the director leaves is that singers kind of gradually morph back into the thing that makes more sense, but sometimes, you know, you're really compelled to kind of keep something that's quite interesting, and I mean, Matthew Rose I just saw do an amazing laparello in, you're so sweet to come to this, in Chicago, and having that kind of imagination, ideally we can improvise in any given performance with each other. It's an ensemble performance, so he had an injury, a leg injury, in the middle of the performance and came out in a wheelchair and finished the show, and they all improvised together as an ensemble, and I understand it was the best performance, because it was so alive in that moment from the improv. So, but we don't often get to do that, we're supposed to hit our marks, our directorial marks. Yeah? What are your top one or two tips for us composers? Composers. Oh, I'm so happy you asked that. I wished, through my whole career, that I had more experience with composers, but a lot of composers seemed anxious about working with an actual opera singer, and I just, I really wanted to say to them, my message would be, get out of your comfort zone and work with a lot of different singers, and just meet with them, talk to them, figure out what you want from a singer, and see if someone can do it. Now, I've had composers recently come and complain about casting someone who couldn't do what they wanted, and I said, well, did you ask in advance? Did you hear them in advance? You know, this is what I would recommend, is a little bit more experimentation and communication with singers, whether it's straight tone, or extreme pitches, or extreme dynamics, try it out, work with a couple of different people, and you'll develop a sense of what's possible. I also keep a dialogue with the composer. If I get a piece, I don't take it as finished. I say, well, actually, for my voice, could we do X, Y, and Z? Could we kind of adapt this? In the case of Streetcar, I asked Andrew Previn if I could have a lot more high notes, and some glamour in the part. Of course, he completely went overboard with that, but then I had to do it, because I asked for it. But the communication is what's magical between the creator and the interpreter. And there is creation in interpretation. That is what we get to contribute, is how do we sing that? How do we shape it? How do we phrase? Where do we add a portamento, and how do we act it? That's our contribution. And I've had the joy of having composers say, you did it better than I had imagined it, or than I had thought was possible, and you made me think of, oh, may I should have done this or that? So that's a wonderful relationship. Yes? What is the biggest thing you've learned from doing the crossover performance? Crossover, so whether it's on Broadway or in music theater, or in any cases, how to use a microphone, because I had jazz experience as a young singer, so I did have mic technique, thank goodness. But that's something any of you who are thinking about trying other styles, if there isn't some sort of system in Juilliard that you can play with and you can learn from, also understanding what to ask for in sound. I often have to say, I'd like it a little darker. Could you take the high gain off of that sound? Could you make it less bright? Because people don't know my voice if I get in a new hall. I was just asked last week, actually, on the road, on tour, if I wanted music played before the recital started. I went, oh, like a rock concert. I don't think so. Thank you. I know, that was kind of interesting. Okay, we're all done. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.