Opera is a merciless mistress. At its best moments, we experience it as the absolute perfection of stagecraft - at its worst, as a devouring monster that spits out anyone who doesn't meet its highest standards.
Nevertheless, every year anew young people willingly plunge into the risk of opera. To help these daredevils make the difficult leap from study to the stage, Beverly Blankenship has written this handbook. The author counters the initially overwhelming challenges of musical theater with clarity and structure: from acting impulse to in-depth analysis, from basic aesthetic questions to the supposedly mundane day-to-day of theater. The book is aimed equally at voice and directing students, providing them with a comprehensive guide to their own work, as well as insight into each other's tasks and needs.
Beverly Blankenship encourages and challenges the students' creativity, but above all she asks them questions:

How do you unleash the stage animal within?
How do you sing and move at the same time?
How do you plan a scene with 150 performers?
How can philosophy, stage magic and directing craft be merged into a special opera event?
Are theater people shallow as a puddle or deep as the sea? And - does it matter?

Beverly Blankenship comes from a family of opera singers. She works as a director, actress and writer and has taught at universities around the world for many years. Her goal: creative, fiery, soulful, and self-reliant singers and directors in the opera business.
Anne Champert, composer, pianist, vocal coach, 2005-2014 director of studies at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, is professor of part study and opera correpetition at the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien in Hannover.

With videos available online, here's the trailer: [...]