In the world of Musical Theatre and Opera, it is not acceptable to simply have a pretty voice; you must be able to portray the character you are singing and ground it in reality. Drama in music theatre was highlighted in the Early Romantic Movement by bel canto composers Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti who re-designed the opera scene format to better tell the story. Late Romantic composers, Puccini and Verdi, took it a step further by writing music to compliment the drama of the story. Twentieth- Century Opera singer Maria Callas is admired for her famous portrayals of title roles in Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini operas. Callas combined bel canto vocal technique with her dramatic, realistic acting in her opera roles and revolutionized the art form. Callas stressed the importance of understanding and interpreting text and music with precision, detail, specifics and artistry. Her techniques set the standard for future aspiring singer/actors. In the 1970’s, Callas lost her ability to sing, so she conducted Master Classes at the Julliard School of Music. Her Master Classes were the inspiration for Tony Award-Winning Playwright Terrence McNally’s biographical play, Master Class. The play, Master Class, shows Callas as an overbearing, intimidating diva instructing opera students. The play also contains several vulnerable flashback monologues that break down the layers of Callas’ harshness. McNally’s script shows Callas as a guarded, domineering, and callous woman; however, when she is singing or talking to her lover, she becomes a vulnerable, exposed, and available woman. iv With research and examination of Callas’ life, operatic career, operatic composers, bel canto technique, and music analysis, I wrote an original script to portray the multi-dimensional Callas in a one-woman show featuring famous arias Callas is known for singing

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In 2008, the American Academy of Teachers of Singing released a paper in support of further research and training in the teaching of non-classical music or Contemporary Commercial Music (CCM). CCM can be defined as encompassing (but not limited to) the following genres: musical theatre, pop, rock, gospel, R&B, soul, hip-hop, rap, country, folk, and experimental music. Despite the increase in number of musical theatre and CCM degree programs at American universities, and the that national voice pedagogy organizations have begun to include musical theatre competitions and masterclasses, such academic training for future voice teachers has not met the demand. A 2003 survey by LoVetri and Weekly to evaluate the levels of training and experience of voice teachers in CCM styles of singing showed that while 71 schools offered Bachelor’s degrees in Musical Theatre, there were no schools offering CCM voice pedagogy training. In a 2009 follow-up, Weekly and LoVetri found that only 19% of those surveyed had any training to teach Musical Theatre. Additionally, many teachers indicated they were only classically trained and had no idea how to sing in any other style. For this study a three-part survey containing 27 questions was used to survey voice teachers who had been enrolled in or completed graduate-level (MM or DMA) voice programs since the publication of Weekly and LoVetri’s most recent survey. The purpose of the survey was to discover the pedagogical training of recent graduate voice students in CCM. The data is collected from a population in which n=66. While this study did show an increase in pedagogical training in CCM at the graduate university level (26%) as well as an increase in the number of CCM teachers with both graduate-level training and performance experience, this increase was small, and the majority of those who reported having received training did so through private instruction or independent study. / Music Performance

M. Tech. Drama / Sources on musical theatre training by experts Rocco Dal Vera, Joe Deer, Tracy Moore and Allison Bergman, give the impression that there is a lacuna in training when teaching acting skills for singing in musical theatre. This dissertation, in an attempt to fill this lacuna, constructs a strategy of engagement by using cognitive science, together with Stanislavsky's acting techniques and music theory to explain the process from text/sheet music (the 'digital' domain) to performance (the 'analogue' domain). In this dissertation the 'digital' is seen as a metaphor for bounded, specific and singular phenomena (such as a written word or music note), and the 'analogue' is seen as a metaphor for a continuous, undulating and unbroken line of an event. The aim of this dissertation was achieved by conducting a critical literature study on the subjects of second generation cognitive science, Stanislavsky's acting techniques, and music theory and analysis.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2007. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 80-84). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Estudo do texto teatral O Mambembe, a partir dos contextos em que foi criado, em 1904, e depois reabilitado, para o público e para a crítica, 55 anos depois. A ótica da recepção destaca esta peça do conjunto da obra de Artur Azevedo, deixando entrever, principalmente a partir de uma possível ideologia de um teatro educador dos sentidos, as contradições do texto com o mundo da diversão teatral na entrada do século XX carioca, sua tentativa de certa forma de escapar a sua massificação, apelando ao passado e à promessa de um futuro mais artístico para o teatro. Na primeira parte se discutem as ideias inaugurais para o teatro de formação na modernidade, e como estas são catalisadas no Brasil em torno de um teatro que civiliza pela formação de almas, até a época de Artur Azevedo. Depois de explorar alguns aspectos históricos da época de O Mambembe, expõe-se um pequeno painel e algumas considerações teóricas sobre a indústria e a estrutura do teatro ligeiro da entrada para o século XX.Na segunda parte do trabalho, ligadas às questões teóricas sobre recepção teatral, são discutidas as noções de teatro e cultura de cada época, através de comentários e críticas de jornais. Depois de uma pequena exposição das mudanças ideológicas e culturais que se passaram no intervalo dos 55 anos entre uma montagem e outra, o trabalho termina com uma proposta de metaforologia do texto a partir das informações colhidas e resultados experimentados / The study of theatrical text O Mambembe, viewed from the contexts in which it was first created, at 1904, and then rehabilitated, for public and critique, 55 years later. The reception sight detaches this play from Artur Azevedos other work, allowing a glimpse - mostly considering theatre for him as educator of the senses - of the text contradictions to the world of theatrical entertainment at the beginning of XX century in Rio de Janeiro, its attempt to in some way escape from the massification of this world, by appealing to the past, and to a promess of a more artistic future for the theatre. The first part discusses the inaugural ideas for the theatre as education in modernity, and how these ideas were catalyzed in Brazil around a theatre that civilizes by souls education, until Artur Azevedos time. After exploring some historic aspects of O Mambembe epoch, there is a small panel and some theoretical considerations about the comedy-musical theatre structure and industry in the beginning of XX century. In the second part of this work, linked to theoretical enquiring into theatre reception, notions of each of the two epochs are discussed through dailies and magazines news and chronicles. After a small exposition about ideological and cultural changes in society during the 55 years between one perform and the other, the work ends with a proposition of a metaphorology of the play, taken from collected informations and experimental results

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Estudo do texto teatral O Mambembe, a partir dos contextos em que foi criado, em 1904, e depois reabilitado, para o público e para a crítica, 55 anos depois. A ótica da recepção destaca esta peça do conjunto da obra de Artur Azevedo, deixando entrever, principalmente a partir de uma possível ideologia de um teatro educador dos sentidos, as contradições do texto com o mundo da diversão teatral na entrada do século XX carioca, sua tentativa de certa forma de escapar a sua massificação, apelando ao passado e à promessa de um futuro mais artístico para o teatro. Na primeira parte se discutem as ideias inaugurais para o teatro de formação na modernidade, e como estas são catalisadas no Brasil em torno de um teatro que civiliza pela formação de almas, até a época de Artur Azevedo. Depois de explorar alguns aspectos históricos da época de O Mambembe, expõe-se um pequeno painel e algumas considerações teóricas sobre a indústria e a estrutura do teatro ligeiro da entrada para o século XX.Na segunda parte do trabalho, ligadas às questões teóricas sobre recepção teatral, são discutidas as noções de teatro e cultura de cada época, através de comentários e críticas de jornais. Depois de uma pequena exposição das mudanças ideológicas e culturais que se passaram no intervalo dos 55 anos entre uma montagem e outra, o trabalho termina com uma proposta de metaforologia do texto a partir das informações colhidas e resultados experimentados / The study of theatrical text O Mambembe, viewed from the contexts in which it was first created, at 1904, and then rehabilitated, for public and critique, 55 years later. The reception sight detaches this play from Artur Azevedos other work, allowing a glimpse - mostly considering theatre for him as educator of the senses - of the text contradictions to the world of theatrical entertainment at the beginning of XX century in Rio de Janeiro, its attempt to in some way escape from the massification of this world, by appealing to the past, and to a promess of a more artistic future for the theatre. The first part discusses the inaugural ideas for the theatre as education in modernity, and how these ideas were catalyzed in Brazil around a theatre that civilizes by souls education, until Artur Azevedos time. After exploring some historic aspects of O Mambembe epoch, there is a small panel and some theoretical considerations about the comedy-musical theatre structure and industry in the beginning of XX century. In the second part of this work, linked to theoretical enquiring into theatre reception, notions of each of the two epochs are discussed through dailies and magazines news and chronicles. After a small exposition about ideological and cultural changes in society during the 55 years between one perform and the other, the work ends with a proposition of a metaphorology of the play, taken from collected informations and experimental results