Secrets of Communication from an Opera Recital

Anna Corrs and John Murray, together

Last month, my wife and I went along to operatic recital from husband-and-wife singers John Murray and Anna Corrs. These two world-class performers live locally, but it was my first chance to actually see and hear them live. The recital, part of the season program from Tauranga Musica, was composed of favourites of the performers, a variety of operatic pieces by composers from different periods and languages.

A Deeply Engaging Performance

Watching these two experienced artists perform works which were familiar yet foreign was deeply engaging. I was astonished that complex emotions — tenderness, frustration, lust, and anger — could be so convincingly conveyed without a word of English. Murray and Corrs made use of gesture, vocal variety and voice projection to build drama, display emotion and free themselves of giving a boring, static performance.

Murray and Corrs both used gesture to maximise the impact of their emotive delivery and convey more context around the story each song told. Because they are professional singers and dramatists, I expected the big movements of stage performance. But those movements play a valuable role that I find easy to forget as a communicator; not everyone in the audience will sit close enough to see what I am doing with my hands. Big gestures mean that all the audience get the message. An interesting technique, I noticed the performers use was to actually move a little slower than normal, and to use the entire arm in the gesture, with open hands clearly visible all around the room. This slow, bold gesturing style gave the singers are very graceful appearance, almost like ballet dancers, without the leaping (or the tights).

Often in a recital, the performers remain predominantly in one location on the stage, captured by the podium and microphone or transfixed by the audience gaze. Murray and Corrs showed how effective it was to move around the

Anna Corrs and John Murray, apart

stage, singing without notes or amplification, and appearing totally comfortable dramatising the little stories in front of the audience. As they moved about the stage, interacting with each other, the singers really demonstrated the intention of each piece. As with their hand gestures, they kept the movement slow, bold and graceful. In one piece, they started with an angry stance back to back, and finished with a tender (audience appropriate) embrace. The stance and the positioning on the stage really drove the momentum and pacing of the story.

What Can We Learn?

As communicators presenting less ambitious themes and stories than those on the operatic stage, what can we learn from watching professional singers on stage? We can take away three lessons.

Use Generous Open Gestures

First, use generous open gestures and be willing to move around the stage. Use a powerful voice so that you are not tied down by the microphone. Your gestures and movements are then free to use up your entire stage giving the presentation enjoyable presence.

Move And Speak Slowly

Second, move and speak slowly. During a presentation it is harder to get your message across. You need to move at the pace the audience can understand you. That pace will be slower than you think, so move slowly.

Be Emotional

Thirdly, don’t be afraid to be emotional. You audience will never be more emotional than you. Every presentation that you give should pack a powerful emotional message. This helps you to get your point across and makes your story much more memorable.

I’ve learned three valuable lessons from singers John Murray and Anna Corrs – Use big gestures, move slowly, and be emotional. Now, I just need to learn to sing in Italian.

Glancing and Gazing – Ways to See the World

Glancing vs Gazing - Watercolour pencil

In my last post, How to Tame a Rubber Duck, I mentioned that the ritual of taming requires you to glance at the object that you are taming. This is perhaps a foreign idea, if you are a full on extrovert. But for introvert like me, glancing is my primary way of interacting with the world.

Glancing is a way of seeing the world in slices. When you glance, your eyes flicker quickly over someone or something interesting, picking up just the barest, essential details. This style of looking creates a simple précis of character — highlights of colour or shape stick out while the rest of the object blends into simple caricature.

Gazing is quite a different approach. The gaze from an extrovert will be warm and inviting, sweeping over the whole person or thing without simplifying or objectifying. The primary purpose of the gaze is neither to gather information nor make a judgement. Rather, the purpose is simply to make a connection. A gazing extrovert has  a smile ready to be given or received.

The difference between glancing and gazing is clear – glancing is gathering information, gazing is creating a connection. But people can misinterpret both ways of looking. Glancing seems suspicious, sneaky, something that creates a sense of mistrust. Gazing however, can be mistaken for a stare – either an aggressive territorial glower, or a seductive, sexual advance.

To be able to use a glance or a gaze safely in public, you need to be comfortable in your own body first. Glancing and gazing suits different types of people. Introverts often feel more comfortable with a glance, because it reduces the amount of stimulation and information into manageable bites, yet still affords rich character studies to be gleaned. Gazing is often favoured by extroverts, hungry for the flood of sensation the world has to offer, and keen to draw energy of the strangers they gaze at.

But whichever style of seeing you are comfortable with, practice the other regularly as well. If you try gazing when you are normally glancing, you will have a chance to share a heartwarming smile with a stranger. If you try glancing when you are normally gaze, you will sharpen your ability to pick out what is important. Using either method helps you see the world with clarity.

How to Tame a Rubber Duck

Rubber Duck

Some people, such as Havi Brooks, are fortunate enough to have been tamed by a rubber duck. Some people might never consider the value of taming a rubber duck. Some of us try to tame our own rubber duck.

Why would we want to? The benefits are not immediately obvious, but like many things in life the real pleasure is in the doing, not the done. Taming, according to Antoine St. Exupery, is not much practiced these days. In his book The Little Prince, he says ”One only understands the thing one tames. Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things ready-made at the shops, but there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship.”

To tame something is to make a friend of heart. Taming operates both ways, resulting in a mutual amplification of joy. The tamed and the tamer eventually become indistinguishable. Try watching dog owners on the beach and see if you can tell if the dog or the owner is having more fun, if the dog or the owner is in charge.

Taming something gives you the chance to truly know that thing with your heart, to expand two souls with joy, to engage in magical ritual. But why tame a rubber duck?

Rubber ducks have an astonishing character, a view of the world that is both innocent and yet imbued with the wisdom of a stoic philosopher. Whatever happens to a rubber duck it endures, with a warm smile and a friendly sparklingly eye, yet a duck spends most of its time just waiting for the next bath. Such a worldview is invaluable, definitely worth sharing in our own lives.

How does one tame a rubber duck? Like any life enhancing process, it takes time, repetition, ritual. Naturally, we must be present with our duck, not interacting, just sitting quietly, glancing toward it, rather than gazing. Over time, we will know the duck, and the duck will know us. Baths will become more than just washing, they become a chance to commune with a friend. And when you feel loss as you leave the duck, when the duck smiles at you with the warm sadness of the Mona Lisa, you know that you have tamed the duck, and the duck has tamed you.

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