Experiences Summer 2002

Bel Canto Italia Summer Opera Course 2002

My name is Jessica Pratt following is an account of the Bel Canto Italia Opera summer course, which I attended this year, it was held in Florence and run by Mr Carlos Della Mora, I paid $3000 American dollars which was to cover accommodation and an extensive Opera Summer course including a full scale production of the opera Gianni Schicchi, my partner Timothy Chung also paid A$500 to share my accommodation for three weeks in Florence.

I left the course after one week, when I arrived I was informed that the opera was cancelled, Mr Della Mora claims that he had emailed me to inform me of this, however the only email mentioning the opera is the acceptance letter, this was sent on May the 28th and stated that if the attending students were not at a certain level then the opera might be cancelled, I was leaving for Paris in less than two weeks when I received this and all of the other European summer school’s application deadlines had closed, so I accepted the place in the course and hoped that the opera would be put on.

It soon became apparent that this was a very disorganised school, we were given a timetable which contradicted itself and made no sense, this was constantly changed verbally, Mr Della Mora would change the lessons so that we all came within a few hours of each other meaning that he only taught 3 - 4 hours every couple of days. We were given history of art instead of history of music by a student in Florence who met us in a coffee shop then walked us around like an inept tour guide. I had assumed that a lot of the time would be taken up with rehearsing for the opera, however nothing was organised to replace this time when the opera was cancelled, the institution consisted of Mr Della Mora’s living room and other than the Italian language and the history of art teachers that were brought in for an hour at a time, the only other ‘teacher’ that was apparent was Mr Della Mora’s girlfriend Miss Balistreri, whom I do not consider competent enough to teach anything in relation to voice production, Italian language or characterisation.

When I found the Bel Canto Italia Summer School on the internet it seemed to be a important institution with connections with various Italian theatres and Florence opera which it now seems is an opera company Mr Della Mora has created, it appeared to be a large institution with many teachers offering many different courses in the arts, on hearing my partner was a conductor, Mr Della Mora also sent us information on a conducting course that the Florence school of arts was offering stating that “the Italian conductor Maestro Delio Cassetta, head of the Opera conducting program” would be visiting the opera summer school.

In addition to numerous testimonials from previous students posted on the web site, there is a photo of Franco Correlli who had given master classes at the first Bel Canto Opera Summer School, with a signed note to the bel canto Italia opera school. This photo was a stamp of recognition from one of the greatest opera singers of our time and so it really legitimises the school. Mr Della Mora’s main two arguments for the superiority of his training method are that it is in Florence and thus a true Italian bel canto experience (I later found out that Mr Della Mora is Argentinean) and that he spent a number of years studying with Franco Correlli and claims to know the true bel canto method.

I was told by an Australian scholarship organization that by this stage in my studies I should have attended a European summer school, they said that most European summer schools would cost around $3000 American Dollars and that it was crucial that I got some stage experience in a student opera, at the time this and the cost of a flight to Europe was well out of my reach financially, however shortly after this I was informed that I had been selected to compete in the quarter finals of a competition in Paris following are two extracts from my application letter to Mr Della Mora.

I apologise for this late application, the cost of the course and a flight from Australia seemed more than I could manage, however I was recently informed that I have been selected to compete in the Placido Domingo International Voice competition in Paris from June 14th – 22nd, the competition pays for the flight to Paris and so I asked them to extend my flight back to Australia so that I could attend the operatic summer course.

I have performed oratorio with orchestras and choirs as well as numerous concerts with orchestra or piano accompaniment, however having not attended the conservatorium I have not had the opportunity of performing in a staged opera within a student oriented environment and I feel it would be of great value for me gain this experience as it would teach me so much.

I managed to raise most of the tuition fees for the school in fundraising concerts and through sponsorship. I now have to find a way to explain this situation to the organizations which sponsored me and will possibly have to pay them back. I left my job to attend the bel canto summer school as Mr Della Mora had also accepted me for the full course and I felt that if the course was as good as it sounded that I would find a way to stay in Florence and attend the whole course. So this experience has not only cost a lot financially, it has left me in debt.

Following is an account of the week I spent in Florence attending the Bel Canto Italia Opera Summer Course and my biography, if you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

Jessica Pratt

Experiences at the Bel Canto Italia Opera Summer Course 2002

We arrived in Florence on the 24th of June, I had had trouble contacting Mr Della Mora in Paris so we arrived at the train station in Florence and proceeded to find email or a phone as we had not been informed of the address of our accommodation, Mr Della Mora said that my mother had informed him of my arrival at the train station that morning and he had sent his son to collect us, he told us if we couldn’t find his son, to catch a cab to his home in Via del Bardi which we did. On the intercom at the front door of his apartment block there was a piece of paper stuck over the name next to his number which read Bel Canto Italia School of Opera

We went up the stairs to the second floor (with our bags) and were shown into a room in which Mr Della Mora and Miss Balistreri were presiding, Mr Della Mora proceeded to tell us that he forgot this was a saints day and even though he did not believe in saints and so on the classes for the day were cancelled. As he did not want to repeat himself he asked us to wait for the other summer students so that he could introduce to us his course and teaching methods. The other two summer students and one of his regular students eventually arrived at various intervals. He got us all to demonstrate our tongue position for singing and then to describe and demonstrate our breathing methods. On the acceptance letter Mr Della Mora sent me, he stated that there were many problems with my breathing and that I would not be able to continue singing in that way without serious damage to my instrument, after I had described and demonstrated my method he stated in front of the rest of the class that my “breathing is perfect, go home”. I found his sudden change of mind somewhat disturbing.

Following this introduction we were sent to an apartment with another student who had arrived the day before, (including myself there were a total of three students for the summer school and two students from the regular school). The apartment was about a 20 min walk from the school (Mr Della Mora's living room). It was a top floor furnished apartment, it consisted of two bed rooms, the one which I shared with my partner was furnished with a double sofa bed, the mattress was no more than three centimetres thick and the bars from the frame were extremely uncomfortable, to the extent that we placed the frame in the hall and the mattress on the floor of the room, this was only slightly more comfortable than the previous situation. The flat was extremely hot, Mr Della Mora did provide us with two fans, after a lot of complaints, however he failed to do anything about the sofa bed his and Miss Balistreri’s response to this was that Italian landlords never fix anything and we would have to put up with it (he had however previously warned us not to mess up the apartment because it was owned by a German landlady) he had charged my partner $500 to share the room with me for 3 weeks.

FSO also provides an introductory orientation in order to help students with their daily needs.*

In reference to helping the students settle in and familiarise themselves with Florence, - The other student in our flat was given a tourists map of Florence with the markets etc circled by Mr Della Mora's son. We were given no information on Florence other than to put up with the nature of Italian people because that is the way they are, and that some students left the day after they arrived because they could not get used to the culture! We were also jokingly informed almost daily that it only costs 50 euro to pay the man under the bridge to knock someone off, Mr Della Mora mentioned both the Italian and Argentinean mafia a number of times.

The course consists of:
Three private voice lessons per week.
Italian Language for the Opera Singer twice a week
. Master Classes.
Repertoire (Coaching).
Repertoire Lecture / Score analysis
. Role preparation and rehearsal for the GIANNI SCHICCI performances.
Faculty
Carlos Della Mora, Tenor
Marisa Balistreri, Soprano
Annaluisa Scano, Soprano
Alessandro Calamai, Baritone
Delio Cassetta, Conductor
Piero Nannini, Stage Director Marta Rostro, Pianist - Coach Viviana Apicella – Coach*

The web site advertised an institution leading me to believe that it would consist of many staff members as well as students, as far as I could tell the only full time staff member was Mr Della Mora himself, the institution was in his living room and the rest of the staff consisted of his two sons who lurked around and did odd jobs and his girlfriend Miss Balestreri who doubled as a student and teacher. We met the history of art teacher in a café once in the first week, and we had one Italian lesson in the aforementioned living room. As to the other master classes and coaches, they did not materialise in the first week and I have serious doubts that they would have been consistent later on. When we later complained about the quality of some of the teaching Mr Della Mora stated that everyone who teaches in Italy is called a professor regardless of their educational background and that was why he referred to his teachers as professors on the web site. I believe this was misleading as his website is aimed at an American audience and the course fees are payable in American dollars, one is led to believe that the qualifications of his "staff" would be consistent with American qualifications.

I left after one week, during that week I had received two vocal technique lessons with Mr Della Mora, one group repertoire session with Mr Della Mora (my partner accompanied everyone on the piano) one group Italian language lesson and one group history of art lesson, the ‘timetable’ we were given on the first day contradicted itself and was useless anyway as the lessons were constantly changed. I felt that as one week was a quarter of the course, this was a good indication of what was to come.

History of music:

We were supposed to be given a history of music/opera however when we arrived it turned out to be a history of art. The history of art lesson was essentially a tour of Florence, we were given a remedial renaissance history lecture in a café then walked around the Duomo, despite the fact that it was a history of art lesson we did not go into these buildings that contained such great frescos and artworks, whenever we asked about a building or artwork which was not on the sheet that our ‘professor’ was reading off she was completely stumped and unable to answer. At one point she spent twenty minutes talking about one of the doors on the Baptistery stating it was a story about the old testament, however, she was speaking about the North Door which has a relief depicting Christ on the cross. There were of course no text books or books of reference of any kind, the only resource we were given was a sheet of paper giving a basic outline of the renaissance period, which our ‘professor’ had typed up and was reading off. {See historysheet.pdf }

Italian language for the singer

The Italian language lesson was given in Italian to four students, however we had varying competencies in the language, the regular student was advanced but with bad pronunciation, I am at a beginner/intermediate level with good pronunciation and of the two remaining summer students one was a complete beginner and the other was at an intermediate level this made it a very frustrating lesson for all involved. {See italiansheet.pdf }

Repertoire

The coaching/repertoire lesson consisted of us singing in front of each other, with my partner accompanying and Mr Della Mora making an occasional comment ending with Miss Balisreri demonstrating ‘the technique’, this was not an individual coaching session and only lasted for approximately one hour. Including myself, there were three summer school students and we each sang one aria (I sang two - see below). Mr Della Mora only wanted to hear caro mio ben and did not want to hear one of the many arias I suggested, which leads me to believe that his knowledge of repertoire is limited. I insisted on singing si mi chiamano mimi as I do not know caro mio ben and had not prepared any of the pieces he wanted me to sing there and then, he grudgingly allowed this but at the end of the aria said ‘continue’ I stated that it was the end of the aria to which he responded that he meant for me to sing the next aria (which he had said no to 10 minutes earlier). He immediately decided that the role of Mimi was too big for my voice and that I should be learning Verdi namely Desdemona.

Mr Della Moras teaching

In our introduction Mr Della Mora gave an outline of his method which is in my opinion just taking lowered larynx singing to an extreme, in the vocal lessons he wanted me to sing ma in descending thirds from middle c to the c below, but he wanted the sound to be as butch and raw as possible getting me to yell (even though he knew that I had a sore throat at the time). This process tended to knock the top off my voice, especially as he insisted that we do not sing in between lessons. He seems to apply this same method to every student regardless of their vocal needs or voice types. Mr Della Mora insists that a singer should only ever have one singing teacher. When Mr Della Mora demonstrated his singing I noticed that he had a habit of very audible slurring, I became rather worried when I heard this habit repeated in his students performances but assumed that they had just picked it up when listening to his demonstrations. However, when Mr Della Mora asked me to slur up to the ma from any non-specific note I challenged him on the subject and he replied that it was a legitimate technique and in the golden era of bel canto singing all singers employed this technique on all notes. This slurring was not portamento or connecting of the voice throughout the range but obvious sluggish slurs to and from every note. When Miss Balistreri demonstrated how to sing it looked as though her head was going to explode from the pressure, the veins in her neck were popping out, and the width of her neck nearly doubled. When we were asked to give comments on how she applied the technique I stated that she had expanded her neck to which she replied that that was an important part of the technique. I personally cannot see how a voice can last long under such strain.

Mr Della Mora and the Italian Language

In our introduction Mr Della Mora spoke about the Italian language but did not mention the open and closed o and e vowels. {See italiansheet.pdf } His regular students including Ms Balistreri produced terrible Italian pronunciation with extremely thick American accents despite the fact that they had been living in Italy for a year and attending Mr Della Mora’s school for all of that time, in Miss Balistreri's case for longer. In one of my singing lessons Mr Della Mora carried on about my pronunciation in the first phrase of La mamma morta, I was pronouncing the o in morta as an open o however Mr Della Mora felt that that was too Australian, he wanted me to sing the o with a very covered closed sound because in his opinion that would give it an Italian flavour he wanted the sound to be very covered and dark, his reasoning was that Italians felt passionately about their mothers and I am singing that my mother is dead, that I should be passionately angry (he did not however want me to pronounce the double m in mamma). Although this opera happens to be written in Italian, it is based on a French play about the revolution, this character is an aristocratic French lady who is at this point in the opera is appealing for mercy and pity.

SPECIAL OPERA SUMMER SCHOOL 2002
June 24 to July 28, 2002
Announcing BCISO's full production of
G. Puccini's GIANNI SCHICCHI
and/or G.VERDI's
LA TRAVIATA*

When we arrived we were told that the opera production would not proceed and that there might be a concert instead with piano. When I applied to the school and was accepted the only opera advertised on the web site was Gianni Schicchi, Traviata was not mentioned, this web site was put up after the commencement of the course and after Mr Della Mora had informed us that there would be no opera at the end of the summer course. Not only did he continue to advertise the production of Gianni Schicchi, he added another opera to the advertisement for 2002 with no intention of performing it.
In his method Mr Della Mora deems it essential that students sing nothing but Ma Ma Ma for at least one to two years, he demands that we are not to sing anything outside of our lessons, and yet he claims that he had every intention of putting on a full scale opera at the end of one month.

Beginner - Intermediate - Advance - Professional levels*

This course is only aimed at complete beginners, the history of art was like a primary school lesson, the Italian was for beginners immersion in the language, the opera was not put on as Mr Della Mora had decided that none of us could possibly perform it, he also stated that not one of us was capable of performing even an aria in public and he had serious doubts as to putting on a concert, I have performed many arias in many places, I was awarded 2nd place in the New York Metropolitan opera young artist scholarship at the Sydney Opera House in 2001 and competed in the quarter finals of the Placido Domingo international voice competition in Paris immediately prior to the commencement of the bel canto course. When Mr Della Mora was challenged with this information his response was that it was not Italy.

The Florence School of Opera offer a comprehensive vocal summer program This summer, FSO is proud to offer students the opportunity to perform in a professional production of the opera GIANNI SCHICCHI by G. Puccini with full orchestra under the direction of Maestro Delio Cassetta. The opera will be staged during the course of the program and presented on July 27 and 28, 2002, at the Teatro Comunale di Belluno, Belluno, Italy as well as in two other cities in Tuscany. The performances will be recorded and filmed. The program will open with a recital of arias and duets to also be performed by the summer students.*

Needless to say there was no recital of arias and duets to open the summer program.

Damage Deposits for Apartments: Any damages to apartments will be charged to students at check-out and deducted from Damage Deposit. The Damage Deposit for a one month rental in a shared apartment during the summer is about $200, depending on the apartment. The Damage Deposit for a one month rental in a single apartment during the summer is about $500. The damage deposit for a rental in a shared or single apartment for a semester is $500. This damage deposit is refundable (minus damages and any other incurred expenses).*

Mr Della Mora has not returned any of the unused tuition fees or the deposit on the accommodation.

Shared accommodation about $450*

Mr Della Mora charged my partner $500 to share my room (a double sofa bed) for 3 weeks which I had payed for.

Contradictions

Although Mr Della Mora constantly stated that for the development of our voices the only thing we were to sing was the exercise consisting of ma ma ma, he also wanted us to sing arias in front of each other at the coaching session and in the vocal sessions I had.

Although he loathed competition of any kind on the first day he began pitting us against each other to see who had the best tongue position and breathing method.

He stated that we would sing a concert at the end of the course at the same time as stating that we should not sing anything but the ma ma ma exercise for months.

He stated that we were the best group of students he had ever had vocally however a few days later when we informed him of our disappointment that there was to be no opera he stated that he did not really want to put on a concert because it would be an embarrassment and he did not want to ruin his name or tarnish the name of his school by other people hearing us and saying we were his students.

Famous Italian opera singers of the Golden Age of Opera had the advantage of being trained in their native country, in their native tongue, in the country that gave birth to opera.
Famous non-Italian opera singers of the Golden Age at one point or another in their studies and careers came to Italy to complete their formation*

Not many people would disagree with this, when I first went to Italy to study the language in 2001 I came away with a deeper connection to the characters in Italian opera and an understanding I had not gained before in Australia, unfortunately this cannot be said about my experiences at the bel canto Italia opera school.

FSO offers students the opportunity to take a step back into the past to become an artist that is able to face a successful future.*

* - From Florence School of Arts web site, http://www.florencearts.org August 2002

Biography

Soprano Jessica Pratt was born in Bristol UK and emigrated with her family to Australia in 1991.

She currently studies voice with Philip Pratt. As a soloist Jessica has performed in concerts and recitals in Sydney, Brisbane and England. In March 2001 she travelled to Italy to undertake an intensive language course for one month at the University for Foreigners in Perugia. On returning to Australia Jessica competed in the New York Metropolitan Young Artist Study Award and was awarded Second Place.

Jessica was selected to compete in the 2002 Operalia International Voice competition “under the artistic aegis of Placido Domingo”. She competed in the Quarterfinals in June, which were held in Paris in the presence of Placido Domingo. Jessica is currently a competitor in the 2MBS Young Performers award and performed a live recital in the 2MBS studios in August.