Maren interviews Claire Galloway, soprano, educator, and linguist. They discuss opera, language, community, and finding your “aha” moment in art.
Books referenced in this episode:
- Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho
- The Art of Asking by Amanda Palmer
- L’Élégance du hérisson (The Elegance of the Hedgehog) by Muriel Barbery
Follow Maren on Instagram: @supermaren
Follow Claire on Instagram: clairegallowaysoprano
Check out her Core Singer Essentials Course here: https://www.clairegalloway.com/core-singer-essentials/
Sign up for the Bodice Ripper Project newsletter and get exclusive behind-the-scenes content: http://www.bodiceripperproject.com/
Purchase Maren’s debut book, Pandemic Passion: A COVID-19 novella on Kindle
Transcript
(orchestra tuning)
Hello and welcome to The Bodice Ripper Project, an exploration of sexuality, feminism, and the journey to self-empowerment through the lens of romance novels.
I’m Maren Montalbano, opera singer, coach, and writer.
In this episode, you’ll hear me interview Claire Galloway, soprano, educator, and linguist. We discuss opera, language, community, and finding our “aha” moment in art.
So make yourself comfortable, loosen your bodice, and let’s begin!
(intro music plays)
Hello again. I’m so glad to be back with you for another interview episode.
British American soprano Claire Galloway‘s theatricality covers the “gamut of palpable pain” and “splendid funny moments.” Claire joined the Ravinia Steans Music Institute as a fellow this summer online and will return in person next year. In 20-21, she will be featured in Baltimore Musicales’ concert series, and will be the Soprano II and Alto soloist for Bach’s B Minor Mass with Bach in Baltimore.
A vocal technician with a holistic approach and a linguistic diction coach, she currently runs Core Singer Essentials, helping singers create their own concrete opportunities to showcase their authentic voices and stories.
I’m really excited for you to hear this interview, and I’ll see you on the other side.
Maren: Welcome Claire. I’m so happy to have you on the Bodice Ripper Podcast. I’m really excited to dig in and talk about your creative projects and the journey that you’ve taken to get to where you are. I want to know, uh, how you got into singing. What led you there?
Claire: Oh boy, that’s a great question. I started off in school as so many of us do. I went to a very small little private school when I was really young and we always had seasonal shows. And I remember being really proud of myself because one year I got to be one of the lead reindeer. Even though I’m Jewish, I was so excited. So I always loved being on the stage and I danced a lot and I sang in choruses and I remember seeing like the high school students coming to do their production of Bye, Bye, Birdie. And I was just like, Oh my God, I have to do that. They dance and sing and they’re on stage and that’s awesome. So I became a total choir nerd.
And all of my friends were in musical theater. So I was like, that. I’ll do that. I should be on Broadway. I should try that. My parents were like, “Oh, why don’t you try some voice lessons before we like start spending money, so you can apply to schools for this?” So my first voice teacher had me start with a classical technique foundation, and she said, “Don’t worry; from there, you can go anywhere. Go listen to this singer. She’s called Audra McDonald.”
And I went and checked her out and was just like, “Oh, okay. Like, if, she can sing anything. So that would be cool.” And the more I started singing in the classical style, the more I was like, “Actually I’m pretty bad at belting. And I kind of love this music.”
I’ve always been like a hopeless romantic and a linguist. So I really, really found my niche in classical singing. And it was just kind of, I was, I was hooked from there.
Maren: That’s awesome. As you know, my podcast is a little bit of, um, singing, a little bit of romance. So I figured I’d ask you, when was the first time you ever read a romance novel?
Claire: Like I said, I’m a hopeless romantic. So even as like a young kid, I was thinking about scenarios and just sort of fantasizing about romance even as a younger kid. So I guess the first real romance novel that I read, I was probably in my early teens, and it was called Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho.
Maren: Oh!
Claire: It’s quite spicy, quite spicy. Um, and I, I still occasionally think about that book. It was a great book. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend.
Maren: Isn’t Paulo Coelho the guy who wrote The Alchemist? Oh, I have to pick this up now.
Claire: I mean, I don’t even know if it technically would classify as a romance novel, but it feels like one,
Maren: Mm. Well, there’s, there’s very specific, you have to hit certain notes in the genre. Like it has to be happy ending, like
Claire: It is, it is.
Maren: Okay. Okay.
Claire: If I remember right. Maybe I’ve just like smoothed it over in my brain.
Maren: Oh, that’s really cool. So now I have something to, uh, to pick up.
Claire: Yeah, it’s a great read.
Maren: So you’re in, you’re in Baltimore right now. Um, and you are, you just moved there recently though, right?
Claire: Here a little while. Actually I moved here in 2013 to start my Master’s at Peabody, and I have not left. I’ve really fallen in love with Baltimore and I found some great opportunities here and a great community. So yeah, I’ve been here a little over seven years, which is the longest I’ve been anywhere since being at home with my parents.
Maren: What was the very first opera that you ever went to?
Claire: Oh my God. That’s a really good question. I think I was in undergraduate already. And I was finally really starting to study classical music. I had definitely listened to many that my mom used to listen to on records that her dad had given to her. I’m pretty sure the first one I went to was because of an assignment for my first year opera class. Um, and I went to go see I Vespri Siciliani at the Met.
Maren: Oh, wow.
Claire: And it was one of those, like, rush tickets that was like 25 bucks. And I got to sit in the side orchestra.
Maren: Oh, really?
Claire: I knew like nothing about this opera and I just was like, Oh my God, everything is so huge. And they’re so loud and it’s so beautiful.
And man, this is a long opera. I should really have read the synopsis before I came, but I was just, I was mystified. It was just amazing.
Maren: What were the operas that your mom had?
Claire: That’s a good question, too. I, as a teenager, I would get really annoyed at her for listening to opera because I was definitely one of those teenagers that went to bed super late and woke up super late and enjoyed waking up super late. So on, like, the weekends, she’d be listening to Angela Gheorghiu singing arias or something from an opera, and I’d be like, “Mom! Turn it off! It’s so loud!” Um, Yeah. So typically she was listening to the BBC broadcast sometimes, and then the Met broadcast on the Saturday afternoons. But my grandfather collected like every opera imaginable. He was such a huge opera fan.
Maren: Oh wow.
Claire: So we have a lot of his collection still. So it, it ranged from Purcell to Wagner to Britten, to anything you could really imagine, he had a record of.
Maren: No wonder your parents decided to give you classical music voice lessons.
Claire: My dad was upstairs and as soon – he worked from home – and as soon as my voice teacher would leave, he would come like flouncing down the stairs, making cat noises and all kinds of funny things.
Maren: A lot of the people that listen to this podcast are not that familiar with opera. So I try to give them a sneak peek into the underpinnings of opera, and the things that I love about them. And a lot of times, for me, it’s not so much the singing, the singing is beautiful and gorgeous and everything like that, but it’s the stories and the high drama and the ridiculousness of it all.
Thinking of a story like La bohème she’s dying of consumption, tuberculosis, you know? And, uh, like this sort of like, Hey, come on in. Oh, I’m I need, I need some help here. (cough, cough, cough) You know?
Claire: Can you light my candle? It’s so silly. And I. I’ve been teaching about that opera in my French repertoire class, because we try to talk about things in like historical context and learn a little bit more about the people who are actually writing them. And I didn’t know this, but the playwright who wrote the original play based Rodolfo on himself.
Like he was not a great dude and I guess he recognized it. And he, he had a girlfriend who Mimi is based off of, who died from tuberculosis and he didn’t want to go visit her in the hospital. And his friends basically had to drag him there with a bouquet of flowers to be like, Hey, like, love you, bye.
Maren: You know, that’s funny because when I was doing my research on Traviata, it was almost exactly the same thing. Yeah. The guy who wrote the story, The Lady of the Camellias, he was a poet and he, um, fell in love with a prostitute and she died.
Claire: Yeah. I mean, there’s just so many fun, interesting little stories behind everything. And I also love going through the French history and just being like, and then there was another riot and then, you know, Ravel didn’t set a schwa to a note and there were actual riots in the street about it. Yeah. It’s the best.
Maren: Actually, speaking of schwas, I’m so glad you mentioned this because again, like, I, I feel like one of the reasons why I want to interview a whole swath of different kinds of creatives is to introduce my audience to there’s a great wide world of singing and a great wide world of creativity and art, artistry and everything like that.
And, for those of you who don’t know what a schwa is, or like, maybe think about it as like, didn’t, I learn about that in elementary school, you know? Um, it’s actually kind of a very important vowel in singing, especially French, you know? So why don’t you talk a little bit about, like, you do a lot of diction trainings online. I know you also teach at Peabody. So tell me about that.
Claire: Like I mentioned before, I’ve always been a linguist. I’ve always loved languages. I’ve always loved imitating accents. And I think part of that came from, my mom is originally from Inverness, Scotland. And so I grew up around her accent and then the accents of her family around her. And we would go visit them as much as possible.
So I grew up really enjoying kind of imitating accents and things like that. And so that just set me on a total path. As soon as we were offered foreign languages in school, I was like, yes, let me, let me learn all these different languages. And that has serendipitously turned into a career for me. As I was leaving Peabody, the French diction teacher was retiring and the head of the department was like, “You know, Claire, you have a degree in French education, you should apply. I mean, we’re doing a national search. I’m not promising anything. It’s just a great opportunity.”
So I applied, I went through the whole interview process. I did a couple of sample diction coachings in front of my, my professors at the time. And I ended up getting the position and that really set me on a journey to help singers not be afraid of French, especially because French certainly does not sound the way it looks, with all the millions of letters in a row
Maren: I remember one time I had to perform something in French Latin, and, uh, it was, it was a whole thing. It was like–
Claire: It’s a thing. It is a thing. Yeah. I was just telling, we just started in my program a German language segment. And so I was just mentioning to them, I don’t know if you guys know this, but the Latin that you probably learned originally is Italian Latin. And there is German Latin and French Latin, and they are all slightly different from one another.
And it really throws you for a loop. So,
Maren: Now that you’re starting to do a lot of this online, how many people outside of your regular circle, have you been able to bring in and reach?
Claire: It’s been kind of amazing. I’ve been really shocked at the way that social media can spread things around. Um, especially with French diction. Like I mentioned, a lot of people are really afraid of it because they feel like they don’t know the rules, they don’t know what’s right and wrong. They feel like they could really do it poorly.
So this summer, that was the first thing I offered when quarantine started, because I’m super comfortable with it. French is my best language and I’ve been teaching French diction for five plus years now. So I just mentioned it in a couple of different forums and all of these people were like, “Oh my God, help. I figure I should do something productive during this time. And my French is terrible. Can you please help? I’d love to sign up for your course.”
And from there, more and more people who kind of reached out, but yeah, I had people who were over in Europe that were involved in the program, and I had people on the West Coast of the U.S. involved, and it was also just fun to meet all these different people who were interested in languages and improving them because there’s so many ways to just talk about it and relate about fears and concerns and loves and favorite words and stuff like that.
Maren: One of the things I do when I talk about bodice rippers, is that having this metaphor of the bodice, being a tool of repression, and that we can either rip our own bodices or sometimes they are ripped for us. But I feel like that offers an opportunity for our true selves to come out. And, I was curious what your bodice is, the metaphor, and how have you let your true self out?
Claire: Oh, that’s such an intense question. I think that my bodice is usually, it’s a combination of things that I think many of us go through, which is overthinking, being a perfectionist, not wanting to do anything “wrong,” quote/ unquote, and therefore not trusting my own artistic gut. Because I think, Oh, well, if I do that, it’s going to be out of the style of what Mozart wanted or whatever. And some coach, or conductor’s going to come over and be like, “How dare you do that? You’re fired!” Or whatever.
I think during 2019, I started really realizing that I wanted to pursue the projects that I was passionate about. And I happened to be working with an agent at the time who was kind of fighting me on a lot of those projects. And then out of the blue would be supportive of something and I never knew what he was going to feel or say about anything.
And at the same time I was performing a new role that I was really invested in. I worked myself to the bone with my teacher. And I was really finding new depths of my soul to express. And after the performance, the heads of the program were happy with my performance, but it seemed like they didn’t see the transformation that I had gone through, and thought that I just needed to keep pushing for my aha moment.
And in my soul, I just said, no, I’ve had my aha moment. And it’s that I need to start trusting my gut more. And I need to start building teams around me that really are with me on that. That we’re kind of seeing eye to eye and that they’re there to stoke the fire that I have within me, instead of trying to quench it.
Maren: That’s so beautiful. And I think really important to hear, as all of us go through our lives, and putting together our own projects or, you know, even if they’re not like professional. Everybody’s got something. And when we are putting that together and putting it out into the world, it’s so important to surround ourselves with people who are going to support us.
I know for myself, I certainly have enough voices in my head that, you know, so–
Claire: That’s exactly it. As musicians, we’re trained to already be critical because we want to always be improving. We want to make sure we’re getting things right. We want to make sure that we’re going to be a good part of the ensemble, all this other stuff. And it goes way beyond that because we have trouble switching it off.
So we start being really self critical and saying like, well, you screwed this up. And like, all these people know, and you know, you don’t look the way that you should, or you’re not putting yourself out on social media the way that you should. And. There was all that should-ing that happens.
Maren: Yes. You don’t want to should all over yourself.
Claire: Yeah, exactly.
Maren: Well, that’s so beautiful. And I’m glad that you had that aha moment, which is like, it’s extremely profound, you know?
Claire: Yeah.
Maren: And I, I feel like we’re all, as we grow, you’ll probably have more aha moments, and I know I will. So I feel like I look forward to that.
I wanted to ask your three favorite creators. I originally wanted to put authors and then I’m like, well, authors, composers, whatever. So, I figured I just let you choose.
Claire: So one of the first ones that came to mind for me is Julia Child. Cause she’s one of my favorite people ever. And then she’s inspired so many people that I love too, like Alton Brown and, um, Adam Ragusea and all these other people that I just love. And I’m a foodie, if you can’t tell already.
And then I was thinking about Amanda Palmer and it’s interesting because I actually know her more from the context of writing her book, The Art of Asking.
Maren: I love that book. Yeah.
Claire: Oh my God. It just, so many, not only light bulbs, but also moments of deeply connecting with what she’s saying about living the artistic life and how hard it can be. And how you need to create not only a network, just to be like, “Hey, I have all these points of contact and I have such a big audience,” but actually to create a community out of it where you’re connecting with everyone and you’re connecting them to everyone else to be such a support system. It’s just amazing.
I sort of tangentially know her music and her work with Dresden Dolls, but it was really through that book that I got to know her and totally fell in love with her and follow all of her social media and stuff. So. She’s definitely high up on the list these days.
Actually, yeah, my third person, there’s a French author named Muriel Barbery, and she wrote this incredible book called, um, I think it’s just called L’hérisson, which is The Hedgehog, but it’s this incredible journey with this, um, sort of older house taker, where in France, they kind of take care of the entire building and know everybody. And it’s this philosophical journey that she goes on that ends up being really profoundly linked to her own life journey and her love journey and stuff like that. So that was the other person, I was trying to remember her name.
Maren: Are there translations out there? I assume there are.
Claire: There are. And there’s actually a movie of it now. And I imagine that it’s at least got subtitles, if not also dubbed in English. Yeah. Highly recommend. It’s incredible.
Maren: I now have two things that I need to read for sure.
When you said Julia Child, it’s so interesting because, I hadn’t even thought about her. Of course, she’s an author; she’s written cookbooks, and she’s a creator of food and her whole television show, all of that kind of stuff.
There’s so much to really sink your teeth into, as far as, her life and everything like that. I know there’s an opera written about her.
Claire: Yes, it’s amazing. And Jamie Barton, um, they just did a broadcast of Jamie Barton doing it, I think in Des Moines or something like that.
Maren: I heard about this.
It’s funny because I also feel like with Amanda Palmer, I am not as familiar with her music as I am with her writing. I was definitely, well, first of all, huge Neil Gaiman fan, like love his stuff. Um, and somebody recommended the book and I’m like, “Oh, you know, that’s a good idea. Let me pick it up.” There’s so much in there about being an artist and what that’s like and, and how, um, it can be lonely. And, and it is, uh, an extremely vulnerable state to be in, you know, at all times. So it’s really, really important for us to be able to have those communities and to reach out and all that kind of stuff.
Claire: Yeah. And especially in this world of social media where it can feel really disconnected if you’re not reaching out and finding out who the people are that are part of your following or whatever you want to call them, but really getting to know them and seeing like how you guys cross over and how they found you. And. What you guys have to talk about, it’s so it’s so much more fun than just being like, hey, look at all these numbers. That’s cool.
Maren: It’s funny because I met you through, we have a mutual friend who she’s a musician’s coach. So I met you through program that she did. And after that, I started following you on Instagram. And so it is kind of like fun to see how all these things connect and they are not necessarily connected in the same way that we were brought up to think that if you know the right people and you’re friends with the right people, then you’re going to get ahead or whatever. And now I feel like there’s this you know, mycelial network that’s happening, you know?
Claire: Yeah, totally. And you just find new connections because people are being suggested to you by Facebook and things like that.
Maren: Yeah.
Claire: Yeah. And it can lead to really meaningful, deep connections with people, which is just so cool.
Maren: So what are you working on right now?
Claire: My biggest creative project has been designing larger versions of that training program. So right now I’m running a six month program that incorporates diction and vocal technique and body connection with career building and creating your own opportunities and trying to decide what you’re really passionate about and why you sing, and then finding ways to create projects that showcase that and showcase what you’re really passionate about.
And it’s just been so much fun because I’m able to bring in some of my friends and mentors and people who inspire me to talk to the participants and I get inspired by the participants and what they’re working towards creating, whether it’s recording an album or creating their own live stream recital or an actual recital, or, one of them was actually talking about using her own ancestry to create a recital that’s themed around where her family is from.
Maren: Oh, that’s awesome.
Claire: And so I get to do some of my own performing. I get to deepen my knowledge of some repertoire and things that the participants are working on, but I also am helping them foster their own creation of opportunities so that they don’t have to wait around to be chosen because I don’t think any of us need to do that at any point.
Maren: Why don’t you talk about that a little bit? because I think you and I are both on the same page with this. There’s definitely this feeling, especially right now, during the pandemic, where we don’t have a lot of opportunities to perform. Even if we auditioned, the actual performance isn’t going to happen for quite some time.
I have heard, and I’m sure that you have as well, that there’s this just sort of sense of not being in control of one’s career. You know, you’re just like always at the mercy of the auditioners. I personally believe that we all can take control of our own career. Is that the same kind of thing that you’ve been hearing?
Claire: Yeah. And I certainly have felt that for a long time. It’s like, okay, race up to New York, sing a five minute audition, race back to be in time for rehearsal or a teaching gig or whatever it is. And you just kind of feel like you’re living in motion and have no control over anything. So yeah, I’ve been involved in a lot of projects where I’ve been able to work with some of my good friends to create something, whether it’s music that already existed or whether it was music that’s created for that project.
And they’re just so meaningful. And those are the things that stick out as the most incredible experiences in my performing career, alongside getting to sing roles and things like that. And so why wait around and why not take advantage of the resources you have at hand, the community that you’ve created, the community you have at hand?
Just do something that fulfills you. And that doesn’t have to bring in money, but it can. And it certainly can be sustaining if you want it to be. Just take some different styles of marketing and work on fundraising and things like that, which we all know is blood, sweat, and tears.
Maren: okay.
Claire: But yeah, I have just been so amazed during quarantine looking around and seeing what everyone else is doing.
I mean, there’s just such cool projects coming out of this. And do I want everything to be digital for the rest of time? Absolutely not. I miss performing with people live. I’ve had a couple of opportunities to do that, and it’s just been like golden points in this nine months, of course. But even then you can create your own projects and come together and put on operas that exist or create new operas that haven’t existed yet, or create recording programs. I mean, there’s just so many cool possibilities out there.
Maren: That’s so amazing. And I feel like that is the perfect button to this whole conversation.
Claire: There’s been a lot of beauty in this year, even though it’s been a lot of darkness. I just saw someone recently say that often your light lives enshrouded in the darkness, protected by the darkness. And I had this sort of moment thinking, like, that’s really beautiful, thinking of a sort of glowing orb that’s been wrapped up by a blanket of warm, fuzzy, darkness that is 2020.
Maren: I really like that. Yes, exactly.
Yeah. Well, I cannot wait to see your light shine and I know that obviously your program has seen some success and I really I’m sure that it will continue to make, you’ll be able to reach a whole lot more people, and really have them shine their lights in the process. So,
Claire: That’s what it’s all about. We should all be boosting each other’s lights.
Maren: Exactly. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it.
Claire: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Maren: Yeah. And have a wonderful day.
And I will leave it there.
Join me next episode, in which I begin reading Desire’s Peak, a story I wrote while on tour in Montana.
Stetson Lawrence lifted his head up groggily. His neck was stiff, his back ached, and something on his forehead felt cold and wet. Blood? He touched his fingers tentatively to his brow and examined the residue. It was clear and thin, slightly sticky, and smelled a little bit like kerosene.
I’m going to take the next week off as I take care of a few other projects I have going on. I will be back on March 8th though, so don’t get too used to me being gone!
And in the meantime, don’t forget to subscribe to my newsletter. Just head over to bodiceripperproject.com and sign up.
And of course, as always, I love hearing from you guys. So if there was anything that struck you about this interview or any other episode, please reach out to me. It’s easiest to get to me on Instagram. I’m @supermaren.
The Bodice Ripper Project is a production of Compassionate Creative, and was conceived, written, and edited by me, Maren Montalbano. The theme music was also written by yours truly. If you liked what you heard, I invite you to give this podcast a 5-star rating – you think it doesn’t make a difference, but it does! – and I’ll see you next time.