MET’S TOZZI OFFERS INSIGHTS ON ARIAS

Metropolitan Opera bass-baritone Giorgio Tozzi wanted to put a dozen nervous young singers immediately at ease.

“I am probably one of the best audiences you’ll ever have,” he announced at the beginning of a workshop he conducted one recent evening at the Orange campus of Loyola Marymount University.

“I really enjoy hearing people sing, and I don’t believe in being negative. Remember, you have a friend out here.”

Looking tanned and dapper in a three-piece gray suit, Tozzi, 63, was conducting a workshop entitled “Make the Most of Your Aria” as part of the Festival of Learning and Performing, founded by Susan Brenner and held annually at various locations in the county since 1980. The festival will conclude Sunday with conductor Henry Holt leading workshops on “Audition Arias” at 1:30 and 7 p.m. at the Orange campus. (Cost for each workshop is $7.)

The participants from throughout the Southland that attended the workshop ranged in age and experience, but Tozzi said he felt “an ability to empathize with them all.”

“I can almost feel what they experience, and that cues me in,” he explained during a break in the four-hour session.

Born in Chicago in 1923, Tozzi sang with the Metropolitan Opera in New York for more than 20 years. His repertory included title roles in “Don Giovanni,” “Boris Godunov” and “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and he created the role of the doctor in the premiere of Barber’s “Vanessa” at the Metropolitan in 1958. Tozzi, who also was active in films, television and musical comedy, won critical praise for his musical intelligence, warmth and versatility.

As a teacher, Tozzi compares his approach to a tailor who “makes a study to suit the needs, personality and physical state of the person he’s making a suit for.”

“Not everybody is coming from the same place, so you need to be aware of many, many unknowns and variables,” he said.

His method, he explained, was to pick on “essentials” rather than “fussing about on details.”

For instance, for a singer who had chosen an aria from Rachmaninoff’s “Aleko,” the problem was getting in expressive sync with the piano accompaniment.

“I don’t feel you’re part and parcel of what I hear in the (agitated) accompaniment,” Tozzi said. “So when you have rests, sing the accompaniment inside yourself, in your mind.”

For emphasis, Tozzi turned to the piano and lifted the lid.

“You’re doing a musical duet with this instrument,” he said. “You’re not doing a solo with accompaniment. This is a duet.”

But for the tenor who chose “Una furtiva lagrima” from Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore,” Tozzi pointed out that “the accompaniment is a trap.

“It sounds doleful. But the whole character of the piece is different from what the accompaniment leads you to. There is hope, joy. You realize that (the heroine Adina) loves you. So you can depart a little from that pained expression.”

Tozzi tried to emphasize the drama of a situation for the baritone who had selected “Di Provenza il mar” from Verdi’s “La Traviata.”

“Walk toward me slowly on each phrase,” he said. “You are not pleading or begging. You’re a father making an appeal to reason. You ask your son: ‘How could you forget your home, the countryside you grew up in? And for what?’

“So tell me. Make a real point.”

But above all, Tozzi emphasized that opera is written for large theaters. Of the participants’ efforts he later said: “Individual problems varied, but the common element was that most are used to singing in small rooms. Their teachers tend to forget that they will be singing in a theater that holds 2,000 to 3,000 people.

“So they need to start relating to a larger environment, to project in order to communicate to the audience.”

Soprano Sharon Lynn Keys found Tozzi’s suggestions “easy to understand and incorporate.”

“Actually, it was a relief because they made an immediate difference and made it easier to sing,” she said.

“This is a unique situation, and it’s hard on you mentally. But it’s been very useful.”

But above all, Tozzi’s goal is “to help a person acquire a discipline and cultivate it from within.

“The singers must find their own independence,” he said, “because when the curtain goes up, they are out there alone. I can’t be on stage to hold their hand.”