A choir should be a team: Krzysztof Kusiel-Moroz on working with the Vocal Ensemble of the Warsaw Chamber Opera
Agata Ubysz: You have conducted the choir of the Warsaw Chamber Opera since 2017. What skills, acquired and innate, should a vocal ensemble manager display?
Krzysztof Kusiel-Moroz: The basic prerequisite is the knowledge of the human voice and its capabilities, alongside the awareness of vocal technique and understanding musical interactions and consonances that occur between individual singers. The more complete the musical education, the more effective the choirmaster is. His work can then fully reflect the secrets of the score. I have a degree in symphony and opera conducting as well as choral conducting. It allows me to take a comprehensive look at the tasks of the vocal ensemble, starting from singing, through musical cooperation with the orchestra, to the acting tasks of the performers.
Do you need a good ear?
This feature must definitely be developed, not only to detect impure sounds, but also to combine the colors of individual voices and unify the sound. A choir should be a team, not a group of 24 singers freely interpreting musical scores.
The 12th Baroque Opera Festival premieres Handel’s opera “Giulio Cesare” on October 10. What are the tasks of the Vocal Ensemble?
Handel did not write many passages for the chorus in this opera. The full ensemble appears only at the beginning and end of the performance. They also sing a short phrase from offstage in the middle of Act II. However, Włodzimierz Nurkowski, the director of the upcoming production, entrusted our vocalists with many acting, nearly stunt tasks. They are the ones who perform the fight scene during the overture, they appear a number of times as Egyptian guards or Caesar’s Roman guards.
A choir is associated with singers arranged in rows rather than stuntmen.
And this is what distinguishes the opera choir from philharmonic or academic ensembles. An opera choral group should not only include artists trained in singing, but also those with acting skills, preferably supported by studies at vocal and acting departments. 90% of our singers have just completed it.
What other qualities do you consider desirable in an opera company singer?
I attach great importance to the overall musical independence. We often find ourselves having to work quickly on a new musical score. Each singer should be perfectly familiar with his or her vocal part at the first rehearsal. The artist’s independent work greatly accelerates the development of a new composition by the entire choral group. I can then immediately focus on combining the voices into one whole and on the text interpretation.
Which is rarely written in Polish in opera?
Yes, that is why it is so vital for all artists to know the exact content of the foreign-language libretto. Only then will they be able to convey the content behind the musical interpretation with their voice, gesture, facial expressions and body work. I hope it will be audible and visible during the upcoming premiere performances of “Julius Caesar”.
Thank you for the interview.