Chorus of approval: Meet the maestro of the Met

At the end of almost every Met Opera curtain call a slight, unassuming, dapper, bespectacled, grey-suited, white-haired gentleman appears. He takes his bow modestly. Amidst all the flamboyance and audience-kissing, waving frenzy in which he is upstaged could he be a misplaced caretaker building his part? Wandered in from Columbus Avenue by mistake, perhaps? The Met’s banker, making sure the in hock Chagals are still secure? Who he?

“He” is Maestro Donald Palumbo, the man who since his appointment in 2007, has developed the Met chorus of 80 or so permanent members – 150 when reserve cavalry is called to the colours – into, arguably, the best opera chorus on the planet.

Last week I was privileged to slip behind the scenes, to visit this choral wizard’s very own “Oz”, following the winding red-carpet-road of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York’s sprawling Lincoln Center, deep-down into the bowels – even past the gents’ restroom below the stalls for goodness sake, which had previously marked the end of planet Met for me – and into terra incognita, a small, packed auditorium where Maestro Palumbo weaves his intricate choral magic.

Hazard ahead: Readers who know about chorus rehearsals, stop here and read something else, even about Brexit. You will find what follows but the naïve impressions of an open-mouthed ingénue, who has for years loved the end result of what choruses do, but never wondered much about how it all happens. I had a stonking good time – kid in sweet shop good – and am in naïf, enthusiastic hyperdrive.

For three hours – with only two ten minute breaks – I and fourteen other privileged visitors sat in the back row of the auditorium, mesmerised as Maestro Palumbo took his chorus of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses (four voice classifications only for choruses – but, you know that) through the first act of Verdi’s “Otello” – bar by bar, syllable by syllable, vowel by vowel, note by note, accent by accent, quaver by demisemiquaver, by hemidemisemiquaver ……….. You get the drift.

When Toto, Dorothy’s inquisitive Cairn terrier in “The Wizard of Oz”, sniffed behind the curtain of Oz, the fabled wizard turned out not to be a giant after all, revealed instead as a small, old illusionist, pulling levers to display a deformed, intimidating image on screen.

Pull aside the Met chorus’ curtain and it’s the reverse – the diminutive, on stage Maestro Palumbo is revealed as a behind-the-scenes, towering, musical genius, a never still dervish, piecing together the intricate cogs of sound that go to make up his finished instrument of combined human voices bewitching audiences, the quality a given.

His relationship with the members of the chorus is at the core of the process. While he is obviously “in charge” he is aware that many of his chorus are veterans, some with a longer track record at the Lincoln Center than his. He is often asking hardened professionals to change the way they have performed works through several productions. There is some quick fire debate. In the end he will win. Sometimes he listens and concedes a point – which enhances respect and his ultimate authority.

A soprano I chatted with during the intervals had been with the chorus for 24 years and held pretty fixed views on everything, from Verdi to Nancy Pelosi. Verdi hasn’t written an opera about Nancy Pelosi yet, but he tells me he’s working on it. Apparently, there’s a big problem working out the denouement in the final Act.

Maestro Palumbo always explains his reasoning and the need for detail others might simply ignore. Here’s how it goes: Scene 1, “Otello” – harbour in Cyprus; chorus of villagers looking out to sea: “Una vela! (A sail) Una vela! Un vessilio! (A vessell) Un vessilio!”

Maestro: “No, stop …… Not ‘tum-ti-tum-ti!’ These people on Cyprus have just spotted Otello’s ship in danger. They’re shocked, He’s gonna die! The words almost run together. They’re looking at each other in panic. Slight pause only at the exclamations! They’re talking amongst themselves, not shouting news at the audience. And make sure the vowels aren’t over-accented – interrupts the flow.”

Well, that’s the first two lines out of the way – what about the rest of the three-hour libretto?

There is a constant ebb and flow of short observations, drawing on combined decades of collective experience. Maestro Palumbo frequently asks how he’s asked them to do it before and then explains why he’s decided this time they should hold a phrase for a sixteenth of a beat instead of an eighth. It’s that granular.

“Now, is everyone who’s new to Otello sitting beside someone who’s sung it before? (Back to school Soprano minor). And check the markings on your score”. I looked at the score I had been given – astonishingly, I was actually managing to follow on. It had endured a long life, passing through many hands, chock-full of annotations in different colours of ink, pencil and handwriting styles; small reminders of accents here, tempi changes there, dynamics, shaping of vowel sounds. These scores – as well as the full, marked up orchestral scores – are vital historical records, a narrative of how interpretation evolves over time; opera cave painting.

Maestro Palumbo is hardly ever still. Up the aisle, back on his stool, ear sharpened for a false note, a too abruptly curtailed phrase. There’s almost more action here than on the stage. During performances, he lurks in the wings unless he is conducting an offstage chorus amidst the flats.

I suspect as the conductor on the night – “Maestro in the pit” chops and changes some of Maestro Palumbo’s tempi he hops up and down a bit in the wings. In my short deep dive conversation during a, break he conceded that the conductor always wins on the night, but is willing and able to stand up for his view during rehearsals.

It’s the same with directors. Once, a director asked how many of the chorus he could position looking away from the audience without impacting on the quality of the sound. “None”. End of ridiculous idea.

Each member of the chorus has to hold this constantly reforming tsunami of information in his or her head. My new soprano pal said offhandedly, “Well, yeah, I know about 25 or 26 scores, but you still have to know how to remember the changes. On stage, you’re singing next to someone you’ve not sat next to in rehearsal – and if they’re a tenor they’re often singing something else, which might put you off; and you’re moving about and often can’t see the conductor. Eventually, you kind of do it automatically.” All in a day’s work.

This cannot happen “on the fly”. Quality of performance is founded on a ruthlessly consistent process. First, the “talk through”, identifying awkward words, transitions and identifying breathing points; hammer out differences in pronunciation – American singers from the Bronx pronounce “a” and “u” differently from natives of Idaho – British singers are all over the place on their “ou” sounds. Second; the work through with a piano répétiteur (a heroic unsung backroom part of the wizardry), which is what I watched. Third; first contact with the soloists. Fourth; stage rehearsal; Finally; dress rehearsal; then, on to the performance.

Incidentally, opera is one of the most heavily unionised businesses remaining in New York. The other is the profession of immovable apartment block doormen. It was noticeable that as the moment of “break” arrived scores were put down in expectation and as the big hand hit 20 past everyone just downed tools and left.

The quid pro quo was that bang on the half hour – again without anything being said, bells rung, or gongs chimed – the rehearsal simply restarted with everyone in place.

Competition to secure a place in the Met chorus is fierce. Each year there are 5,000 applicants for roughly 15 places. The American Guild of Music Artists (AGMA), the musicians’ union, reported in 2014 that the average Met Chorus salary was $200,000, with $100,000 in benefits. The village church choir this ain’t! So, even stripping out the coffee and buns at interval time (actually, there are none) you’re looking at $24 million a year – just for the core chorus.

When he arrived at the Met in 2007 from Lyric Opera in Chicago Donald Palumbo’s brief was – in a nutshell – to bring the chorus up to the musical standard of the orchestra. That he succeeded triumphantly is thanks largely to the hard graft I experienced that Friday afternoon.

But, amidst the forest of analytical detail one, most often repeated, instruction stood out. “It has to be musical”. For the wizard chorus master of the Met that’s all that really matters.