Art

In 2022, she debuted in the Dallas Opera’s Rigoletto as Giovanna and sang the part of Ortrud in Lohengrin at a master class for the Wagner Society of New York and Metropolitan Opera Guild, among other appearances that year. Her resume includes singing Foreign Princess in Rusalka at an outdoor theater in the Czech Republic, along with performances at many, many theaters and opera houses all over the United States and Europe. Of course, she has sung multiple times at Carnegie Hall, too.

During our conversation, I realized Ms. Bolshoi brings palpable enthusiasm to her teaching, as well as her singing. She explains that she was taught a technique that transformed her practice many years ago by two teachers—Patricia Sage and Barbara Conrad. What is referred to as the Bayreuth Technique was developed in the 1930s by Friedelind Wagner, who was the granddaughter of Richard Wagner and the great-granddaughter of Franz Liszt.

The technique is mostly about how one breathes. “You use your whole body,” she says. “It’s about opening your back.” She stands and demonstrates how you can “open your sound” by “making your body the amplifier.”

“We breathe in a circular pattern, down the back, across the pelvic floor, and up the front of the body. By doing this, we breathe through Tan Tien, three fingers below the navel which connects us to our gut emotions.” (Buddhists consider this the energetic core of one’s body. It’s the area where our spiritual and physical bodies meet. They feel it energizes us at the core.)

“Singing is very athletic. You need to feel your body to access your sound. We lengthen the abdominal muscles to support the throat so that we don’t just shove air out.”

Then, she explains that you are able to lose any ego and just feel and connect. “Many opera singers today are not known for their acting, and making a ‘singer face’ is not true emotion. This technique connects you to you. You need to practice it. You can practice this breathing anywhere—while gardening, loading the dishwasher, whatever.”

Her teaching takes her to three different studios every week where she works with a variety of age groups and at various professional levels. She doesn’t just teach opera, though—her technique can apply to cabaret, Broadway, pop, and other musical genres.

Ms. Bolshoi is very proud of her students, many of whom have gone on to receive full scholarships to major music schools, such as Eastman School of Music and Berklee Conservatory. They have won numerous competitions, including the Metropolitan Opera’s Laffont Competition, and continue to distinguish themselves. Some have been on Broadway. Some are cantors. Some sing jazz or even country. Some are voice teachers themselves. The technique she teaches works for all.

One success story will suffice. Nicholas Simpson, an aspiring singer who was working with the Metropolitan Opera Guild program, came to the Bolshoi Studio to learn the Bayreuth

Technique. None other than Jane Marsh, a Metropolitan Opera Guild lecturer and former international opera star, was so amazed at Simpson’s improved sound after he worked with Ms. Bolshoi that she exclaimed to him, “What the hell happened?!”

Ms. Bolshoi cracks a little smile and tells me she has to go teach now. I look out the window. There are five or six cars in the driveway that weren’t there an hour ago.

Giving Voice

Who is your favorite opera singer of all time? Caruso. He communicated emotion. It was not just the beauty of his sound…he would completely alter the audience’s mood.

How did Covid affect you and your work?

I panicked. My debut with the Dallas Opera was canceled. And singers have to sing! But then I figured out how to work with people on online platforms with no time lag, such as JamKazam and Jamulus. We had pianists, students, and we worked with people all over the world. It kept us sane. Once we had vaccines, some singers met at Good Shepherd Church in Blairstown, NJ, and Christ Episcopal Church in Glen Ridge. We stood 30 feet apart and kept our voices in shape that way.

What is coming up on your singing schedule?

On June 3 at 7 p.m., my studio is presenting The Great American Songbook at Rutherfurd Hall in Allamuchy, NJ, as part of a double concert series with three opera concerts and three cabaret shows per year. We’re bringing these genres of music to Warren County and hoping to expose children to more culture. At student performances, we will have a Q&A afterward. We will feature six professional Bolshoi Studio performers singing Broadway show tunes, pop music, and blues. Tickets are $25. (rutherfordhall.org)

• The size of a singer’s head can be important for good sound. She gave me two examples of singers with large heads—Christine Goerke and Bryn Terfel.

• Some singers are able to sing foreign languages with no accent. One reason is that “their consonants don’t elide.” Eliding means you omit a sound or syllable of a word when you speak or sing. Apparently, English-speakers tend to do this a lot.

• One trick she shared for a dry throat while performing is to stash a small eye-dropper bottle of water in her bra. Sometimes—especially with Wagner—one can be onstage for more than an hour. “In many dry opera houses, you feel like you are inhaling feathers, so you turn aside a bit when you get a chance and put a few drops of water in your mouth.”

• Sitting in the living room, I noticed a large antique gramophone with a wooden horn. “I bought that as a present for my husband,” she said. “When you hear a record amplified through mahogany, it focuses the sound. It’s a cleaner sound than a CD. It sounds purer.”

• One reason it is good to have a residence in New York is that it is the central place to audition. “All the opera houses of the world audition in New York in December. I think they set this up so that all the opera companies could come to New York to shop before Christmas while they were here for work!”

Go to alisonbolshoi.com for information on classes, upcoming concerts, and other information.

Julia Schmitt Healy is an artist, professor, and writer living and working in Port Jervis, NY. Her work is represented by Western Exhibitions in Chicago, westernexhibitions.com. Her website is juliahealy.com.

By Amy Bridge

Never Play with Matches! Smokey Bear and Friends

Wildfires are a big topic in the news nowadays, with some hitting close to home. This April, the residents of Deer Park, NY, and its surrounding towns had a close call with rampant smoke and fire encroaching on their homes and properties. In the same week, in West Milford, NJ, a wildfire burned 972 acres, making it the largest wildfire in Northern NJ in thirteen years. According to the National Interagency Fire Center (nifc.gov), 87 percent of wildfires are caused by humans.

In March of this year, I attended one of the Grey Towers Heritage Association’s Lunch and Learn educational series, “Beyond the Towers, An Insider Look at the Grey Towers National Historic Site,” presented by Jared Simster of the National Forest Service. It was here that I learned a bit of history about our favorite bear, Smokey Bear.

Beginning in 1944, Smokey Bear made his first public appearance for the United States Forest Service on a Forest Fire Prevention poster emphasizing that “Care Will Prevent 9 out of 10 Forest Fires.” His warning to Americans was revised a few years later to “Remember—Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires!"

Smokey’s illustration with his cuffed blue jeans and forest ranger’s hat became one of the most recognizable public service campaigns in the world. His iconic portrait and message soon made its way onto posters and postage stamps, and then in the 1950s he was featured on popular radio show advertising campaigns, including the Roy Rodgers Show, the Bing Crosby Show, and Art Linkletter’s House Party. In the 60s, television ads were added to the campaign.

During the 1980s, Smokey partnered in campaigns with celebrities Cheech and Chong, the Grateful Dead, Al Roker, and Betty White. Over the years, various actors have provided the voice behind Smokey’s visage, including Sam Elliot and Stephen Colbert.

Today, we can see Smokey on billboards, digital public service announcements, and print ads, although his slogan has changed to “Help Prevent Wildfires.” Smokey Bear’s role has been to bring awareness to, and help reduce the number of, human-caused wildfires.

If you are like me, you may have thought that Smokey’s real name is Smokey the Bear, but in fact, the “the” was only added into a song about the bear, sung by Eddy Arnold, to help make the lyrics flow better, so his name really is Smokey Bear.

In the 1950s, a little black bear cub was found in New Mexico after climbing up a tree to survive the Capitan Gap Forest Fire. The cub’s paws and legs were badly burned. He was rescued, and a kind-hearted ranger nurtured him back to health.

Smokey was presented to the US Forest Service as a living symbol of the illustrious Smokey Bear and of wildfire prevention and wildlife conservation. He was then transported to the National Zoo in Washington, DC. There, he received millions of visitors and over 300 letters a day and was given his own zip code (an honor bestowed on the president of the US and Santa Claus).

At the zoo, Smokey had a wife, Goldie Bear, and an adopted cub, Little Smokey. When Smokey passed away in 1976, he was given a state procession and state funeral in Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, New Mexico, where he was born.

Back in 1905, way before the original Smokey Bear was a glint in the eye of his first illustrator, Gifford Pinchot and Teddy Roosevelt had officially founded the US Forest Service. Fifteen years later, Pinchot became the Commissioner of Forestry for Pennsylvania. His mission was to secure an effective way to detect and fight forest fires.

According to Tracie Rohner, Public Affairs Specialist at Grey Towers, in Milford, PA, “In 1921, Pinchot gave a million dollars, the largest allotment at that time, for forest protections. Part of that million was used to buy fifty fire towers. Most were erected in 1923, when Pinchot became governor of PA. The towers got the nickname, the Pinchot Towers.

“Having the fire towers in place,” continues Rohner, “led to a faster response to the fires, which became an important part of correcting the issues that came from PA being deforested in the 1800s.”

Gifford Pinchot continued to build a legacy of working with fire prevention and circa 1933 began a system of cooperative fire detection on a national level.

Grey Towers in Milford is no longer Gifford Pinchot’s home, but it was dedicated as a National Historic Site by President John F. Kennedy on September 24, 1963. Eileen Smith, president of the Grey Towers Heritage Association, says, “To learn more about the legacy of the Pinchots, I invite the readers to our free event located on the grounds of Grey Towers on June 3rd (see calendar, page 8). I’m also looking forward to Smokey’s expected return to Grey Towers on September 23rd and 24th during the Festival of Wood weekend.”

For more information, visit greytowers.org and www. fs.usda.gov.

Big Pocono Tower

A fire tower, erected in Big Pocono State Park in 1921, sat atop Big Pocono Mountain and was actually manned until 2011. It was disassembled in 2017 and painstakingly refurbished over three years. The restoration project was spearheaded by retired forester for the Forest Service and resident of Milford, PA, Robert Remalarde.

The antique fire tower, which has a 7 x 7 foot cab and is 21 feet tall, is now on the grounds of Grey Towers, located on its half-mile Forest Discovery Trail. A dedication service is planned in the near future.

As you walk the trail to the fire tower, you will see several wayside exhibits, including a mockup of the Yale School of Forestry tent site, where you can see what the camp was like and see displays, including the old forester tools. There is an EcoBox for children that shares the songs and stories of the men of the Yale School and a tree cookie exhibit, which shows and explains dendrochronology, the method of determining the age of a tree by counting its growth rings.