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David F. Ostwald
David
F. Ostwald is the director for Der
fliegende Holländer.
Mr. Ostwald has over 150 opera
and theater productions to his credit both here and abroad. For West Bay Opera,
he has directed Pikovaya Dama, Manon
Lescaut, Lucia di Lammermoor, Il
barbiere di Siviglia, Un
ballo in maschera, Le
nozze di Figaro, Les
contes d’Hoffmann, Così fan
tutte, and Tosca.
Mr. Ostwald’s opera credits include The Threepenny Opera, La bohème, The Marriage of Figaro, and Gianni Schicchi for Western Opera Theater, Lucia di Lammermoor at Artpark, Albert Herring at Wolftrap, Postcard from Morocco and The Mother of Us All at the Juilliard School, Madama Butterfly at Kansas City Lyric, The Flying Dutchman at Atlanta Lyric, The Wedding on the Eiffel Tower at the Aspen Music Festival, Carmen and Così fan tutte at Eugene Opera, and Dido and Aeneas at both the Carmel Bach Festival and Opera Antica in Florida.
Although Mr. Ostwald has been residing in New York for the last 30 years, he is originally from the Bay Area and returns regularly to work here. He also teaches and directs at the Bay Area Summer Opera Institute, where he has directed numerous productions, including L’incoronazione di Poppea, Idomeno. Gluck’s Orfeo, and Weill’s Street Scene. Other recent Bay Area productions include the American premiere of Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s Simplicius Simplicissimus for San Francisco City College, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail for San Francisco Lyric Opera.
His book, Acting for Singers: Creating Believable Singing Characters has recently been published by Oxford University Press.
Acting for Singers by David Ostwald
Acting for Singers:
Creating Believable Singing Characters is a practical guide
for all performers confronting the special demands of bringing singing
characters to life. Using a clear, positive approach it explains how
to evaluate a script or libretto, explains how to develop a character
by building on material in the score, and gives the singing performer
the tools to act believably. The book works from the premise that an
actor's own feelings and natural physical instincts are the key to believably
transforming a performer into a character. It shows how to harness one's
imagination in coming to grips with each word, action and musical detail,
even in instrumental passages with no text.
Acting for Singers addresses not only the interpretive challenges of music theater roles but the technical problems inherent in acting while singing. It covers such issues as how to research historical performance practice, project even the subtlest nuances of a role in a large theater, and heighten accessible everyday feelings to the supreme intensity at which singing characters often exist. At the same time it offers down-to-earth advice on how to prepare for auditions and work with directors, conductors and fellow singers at rehearsals. Additionally, Acting for Singers sympathetically explores and suggests how to deal with the intangible but frustrating obstacles to successful performances that singers may inadvertently create for themselves.
The book gives equal attention to the preparation that a performer needs to do on his own and to the development that occurs in rehearsals. It introduces the building blocks of convincing and vibrant characterization in logical and systematic steps. Each step includes practical exercises.
