How sitting through hours of opera master classes made me a better comedian
as told through my time at the English Standup Oslo Summer Takeover
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I’ve now seen Oslo in both the rainy season and in the middle of a heatwave. My overall opinion is the same: it’s expensive! Most expensive city I’ve been to. But it was so much fun.
I first visited Oslo in March to open for Kyla Cobbler. You can read about that adventure here. I returned as part of the English Summer Takeover at SALT, a venue across from the opera house which is part sauna, part food hall, part event space. The festival is run by Oslo-based Pernilla Haaland, who grew up in London. I had the middle slot in between Norwegian comic Thea Marie Thorkildsen and headliner John Meagher.
The festival was the perfect set up: three days in the same space, gigging with the same people. The real treat for me was being able to watch John cook for three nights in a row.
One of the pillars of opera education is the master class. Singers sit in the audience and watch a coach, or a director, or a voice teacher work with one student for 20-40 minutes. The idea is that you’re getting to see a technician in action, and by sitting through what is, essentially, a voyeuristic lens into a private lesson, you can learn things useful to your own singing.
When I was in grad school, this was 50% of our education. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we had two hours of grad student master classes in the morning. With ten people in our cohort, everyone went every other week. We got to know each other’s voices intimately, and watched them develop over two years. In the afternoon, we had a program-wide master class for three hours, in which we, as grad students, sat and watched the head of the opera program work with undergraduates. Two hours in the morning, three hours in the afternoon, twice a week. That’s ten hours a week devoted to sitting and watching.
As with most aspects of education, you get out of it what you give to it. I remember my colleague Jennie Olivia would pull up a PDF of the sheet music for whatever the aria was and follow along, so she could compare the dynamic choices of the singer to those on the page. She had significantly more stamina than me, who would zone out for long stretches of time until I accidentally kicked my water bottle and disrupted the room.
Our opera program director was a man named Peter Kazaras. He’s fairly well known in the opera world and directed a production of Le Nozze di Figaro starring Lisette Oropesa in Washington DC that was extremely well received during my time at UCLA. In a world full of charlatans, he’s the real deal, and watching him work with students for ten hours a week was beneficial.
Peter had a requirement for every aria before you could start singing. First, say it in the piece’s written language, flawlessly, like a recitation. Then, say it translated into your native tongue phrase by phrase. Then, say it fully in your native tongue, using your vernacular, like a monologue. I absolutely despised this because I am not a whiz at languages. However, there is a direct line from this work to my bit doing “O mio babino caro” with valley girl translation. I’m literally just doing Peter’s aria warm up.
When I was up doing an aria during graduate student master class, it always turned into an opportunity to do bits. I’m talking little throwaway comments, comedic asides, and tangents with stories. Peter, who was a lawyer before going into singing and was usually the smartest person in the room, would play along, and we’d go back and forth cracking jokes in what I viewed as an opportunity to draw out the session so we could avoid doing actual language work, which I hated. However, Peter always knew exactly what he was doing, and so I never got out of anything.
I credit Peter with a lot of my comedy choices. He gave an interview with The Daily Bruin in 2016 in which he sums up the thesis of my set:
“Well, I will tell you frankly that there’s a lot of prejudice about opera. People think, ‘Oh, I would never like that,’ or ‘Oh, I would never feel comfortable there.’ The first thing I would say is, ‘Yeah, you would,’ because there are actually more people who are young there than you think.
“I think what happens is that people forget that opera is first and foremost an entertainment. It is not an academic exercise. It is not something that, in order to enjoy it, you have to do a critical study of it and you have to analyze. … [Y]ou just go there and have a good time. Watch the story, enjoy it.”
Peter is a world class opera director. Watching him “cook” for ten hours a week with every level of singer allowed me to grow as a performer overall. I went to graduate school to be an opera singer and ended up picking up a bunch of tools I use as a comedian, one of the major ones being “how to attend a master class,” or, how to harvest information I can use by watching someone else do the work.
This is precisely what I did when I watched John. He’s at the top of the game and I got to watch him navigate the same set three times with different audiences. And I was able to get the juice from it because of the time I spent watching Peter, and learning how to attend a master class.
The basic premis is this: you watch something happen over and over, whether it’s a student singing a section of an aria or a comedian doing a bit, and you see how it changes when they make slight adjustments. Getting the most of out of a master class is dependent upon one’s ability to lock in on detail while remaining in the “flow” of the piece. It’s like multiple parts of your brain have to be going at once: one is enjoying the show, one is clocking changes, one is investigating why those changes were made, and the last bit is noticing the result of that choice. It’s active listening and critical dicernment at the same time.
John opened his set with a nod to the local community every night, and each was different. It felt so natural and off-the-cuff that the audience immediately liked him every time. I don’t do this. I open with my Valley Girl voice every time because it works every time and I am afraid to mess with a thing that works. He did three approaches, and I strongly preferred the one one the second night. If I do make this choice in the future, John’s choices are now factoring into my calculations on how to mention location. That’s the result of master class brain.
has a Substack, by the way, and you should give it a follow!Pernille is the consummate host, navigating tourists and locals with ease. She can convince anyone that we’re all having a good time, up to and including me while shopping at Primark, a place where I am Never Actually Having a Good Time. This is a hosting superpower. She’s wonderful and if you’re headed to Edinburgh next month you have to check out her show, “Running with the Wolves.”
On the way to the gig the second night, I was stung by a wasp on my thumb. It was the most painful thing I’ve felt in a long, long time! Pernilla was quick on the draw and got me everything I needed to keep running, which was loads of ice to numb it into oblivion.
I also slipped on a rock and fell into the fjord on Thursday. Thankfully, “into the fjord” is where I was headed anyway. But I ripped my bathing suit and I have a long cut on my arm. Upon receiving pictures, my boyfriend recalled the Great Scooter Crash in Vienna from last month and remarked that perhaps I go a little too hard when I’m on tour and should remember that I “am not actually invincible.” Okay maybe ugh fine. I earned these scars!!
I’ve grown very fond of Oslo. A visit to the only English bookstore,
was a top priority and I picked up Long Island Compromise, which has been on my list for ages. I invited the owner, , to the show and she came!I stayed with my friends Ben and Haley and their two pups Wiley and Naya. They lived in Edinburgh last year, so at this point I think Ben and Haley have seen me on stage more than anyone outside of Berlin. True comedy connoisseurs.
A note about scheduling
This Saturday I’m road tripping out of Berlin and I’ll be in Edinburgh by Tuesday. Shows start next Thursday. The next issue of this newsletter will be sent from Edinburgh on Monday, August 4th.
If you would like to upgrade your subscription and ensure you are sent a gift from Edinburgh, please do so soon so that I can make sure you get your thank you present!
What’s on this week!
Tuesday, August 22nd
Moonshine Comedy | URBAyN Berlin
Thursday, August 24th
Dude, What’s Up Berlin? | The Harp Irish Pub — Hosting!!
Was this forwarded from a friend? Thanks for reading! About Me: I’m Steph DePrez an award-winning singer, writer, and performer. You can read my full bio at www.stephaniedeprez.com and also follow me on Instagram and YouTube.