04.23.2008 1:00 pm
WSJ on prompters
Post-Dispatch Classical Music
Today’s Wall Street Journal has a page-one feature on an endangered species: the prompter. Prompters help to save singers’ musical lives, by being on the spot with musical cues and words where needed. But opera houses are using fewer of them — in large part, as tenor Frank Lopardo notes in the article, because designers don’t want the shape of the box interfering with their more-important-than-the-music stage pictures.
The story opens with soprano Christine Brewer recalling an occasion when a prompter rescued her; it features Jim Johnson of Lyric Opera of Chicago, whose head and hands I often saw when I sang there. If you’re an opera fan, it’s worth picking up a copy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120891386304436865.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
