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Marni Nixon: More Than You KnowAmy StollerPublished online: 22 Jul 2013.

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Marni Nixon is a woman in a scurry. She has kept busy professionally since child-hood—first as an instrumentalist, then as an actor and singer. Her award-winningchildren’s television series, Boomerang (ABC) netted her four personal Emmys asBest Actress. She toured with Liberace and Victor Borge. She has performed withsymphony orchestras from NewYork to Los Angeles, and many others in between(including Guadalajara, Mexico), with conductors from Leonard Bernstein to LeopoldStokowski. Her numerous recordings include Igor Stravinsky Chamber Works1911–1954, conducted by the composer.

Eventually she added“teacher” to her résumé,designing and directing theVocal Department of theCalifornia Institute of the Artsin the early ’70s. She hasbeen Artist-in-Residence atthe Cornish Institute of theArts, University of Nevada,and Muhlenberg College, aswell as teaching workshopsin opera and acting. She hastaught master classes allover the US and still offersthem, in addition to privatesinging lessons.

On stage, Ms. Nixon hastoured internationally withher own one-woman showand The Man Who MistookHis Wife for a Hat, madenumerous regional andnational touring appear-ances, and graced theBroadway stage in (amongothers) James Joyce’sTheDead and Follies.

In a “that’s show business”twist of fate, however, thismulti-talented performer isstill most often recognizedfor work she originally didanonymously: as the off-camera singing voice ofDeborah Kerr in The Kingand I and An Affair toRemember, NatalieWood inWest Side Story, and AudreyHepburn in My Fair Lady.Recently she didn’t appearagain—though this time fullycredited—as the voice of “Grandma Fa” in The Legend of Mulan.

Now she’s putting the finishing touches on her autobiography, tentatively scheduledfor publication in summer 2003.

We caught up with this energetic artist on a warm September evening at her NewYork home—in an interval between one of her frequent professional engagementsand a teaching session.

AS: Did you have formal training in singing, speech, and acting?MN: The main thing is that I started very early as a musician. We had afamily orchestra. This was in California. I played the violin since I wasabout four years old, and then we learned to read music before welearned to read books, and so we were always practicing, and we werealways of course surrounded by music, which made us, I think, very …musical! Which meant that we listened; we listened and imitated a lot.And when I was about eight or nine, we didn’t have a lot of money. Andwe all played our instruments and needed money for that, so my motherstarted grooming us girls—there were four girls—to do shows … and I

Amy Stoller is the sole proprietor of Stoller System, adialect coaching and design business in NYC, where shefrequently works with the award-winning MintTheaterCompany. Other clients include Jean Cocteau Rep,HypotheticalTheatre Co.,TheaterTenTen, the DramaLeague, the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, andNewYork’s longest-running drama, Perfect Crime. Shealso enjoys teaching individual actors How to Speak LikeaToffee-Nosed Git for Fun and Profit.™ She has per-formed frequently in NewYork and regional theatres, win-ning a 2000 Off-Off-Broadway Review Award forExcellence as dialect coach and actor in Distilled SpiritsTheatre’s Northanger Abbey. For VASTA, she edits the webpage of Internet Resources for Voice and SpeechProfessionals.

Interview by Amy Stoller

Marni Nixon: MoreThanYou Know

Richard Rodgers memorial (1988)

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seemed to be talented with dramatic things, so she used towrite me monologues and then I’d go to various people in LosAngeles and get some coaching on those … I then starteddoing extra work in the movies. I think it was just a matter ofbeing able to take direction well, and observing, and having alot of fun—I loved performing.

And then I started doing years of dramatic stock, in variouscompanies, as a kid. They would drive me to rehearsals, Iwould do my homework in the car; I was a good and reallysmart student, and my parents really taught us all how tofocus, and to really study well and quickly. So we could getthrough with our homework and then do these extra-curricu-lar things. And in the meantime, I played in a training orches-tra, began getting up from that orchestra and singing arias,and then people—well known people—started offering coach-ing lessons, and then they began giving me diction lessons inforeign languages, and—I don’t remember getting any formal-ized speech training … I would do a lot of imitating if I had aplay to do; people would tell me how to do certain things.

I remember there were certain directors that had the time toreally direct; and they would give me sheets and sheets ofpaper: of speeches, and words, and poems and things like that,to read. And I think in those days we all had things in school,where we all had what we called elocution, so that we learnedhow to separate our tongues, and the articulators, and beingable to make different sounds—and then I began singing, andI seemed to not have to practice as much (I thought) insinging as I did with my violin, so I gradually gave up theinstrument! But then that was related more to acting and tothe plays that I was doing. And it was more personal, and Ijust had the feeling … I kind of went along. I just had …good ears, good imitation, and because I was musical I couldget the timing going, and then … just kind of grew on that.And so I had good coaches, I had good directors, and people,I think, that worked with me—because I was a kid they wouldalways teach me things. And if I didn’t know something, itdidn’t bother me that I didn’t know it, and they would alwayscome and help me, and—I think I got special attention thatway, so I liked that! And so I think I was just lucky: when Iwas studying, I really felt like I was an alley-cat. I didn’t staywith one teacher; I wasn’t formally trained.

Certainly when it got to be college and university time, theywould kick me out of lot of the sight-singing courses, andsight-reading, because I could read everything … so I neverlearned the syllables, for instance; and this has nothing to dowith speech, per se, but one of my regrets is that I was notmore formally trained and that I don’t play the piano so well.Being a violinist, you know, that was an advantage, of course,but I wish I could play the piano better for my lessons.

I was in Hollywood … I was born in , and most of mycareer in Hollywood was, I would suppose, starting in the late‘s, ‘cause I was performing as a kid all the time, and thenwhile I was a teenager in the ‘s, I just knew everybody, andI was doing all sorts of different things. And I think therecording aspect—the jingles, the commercials—that’s where

My Fair Lady, 1964

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you get aware of most of the technical things, ’cause you haveto repeat things over and over and over again, and kind ofknow what you’re doing and which style.

And then over the years, I have just scurried around—justgone to individual people, private people, getting incidentalcoaching lessons, and getting the rules down, and learningpedagogical things; but that’s always after the fact, it’s usuallyafter I’ve done them.

AS: Do you have any favorite exercises, warm-ups, or learningtools for speaking and singing?MN: I really am mostly aware of singing exercises. Now whenI teach I have a certain routine that I give my students, butthat’s not always the same for everybody. Depending on wherethey come from, what their particular problems are, I knowthat I have to really isolate—identify, isolate and work—thetongue, the jaw spaces, the pharyngeal spaces and shapingsand get everything separated. The jaw movement from thetongue … and the soft palate … the nasal passages … andthen I try to give my students a picture. I’ve got charts overthere. … I’ve always wanted to have a model, a moving model,of the anatomy of the neck and the vocal tract. I’ve seen them,but they’re all solid; you want moving parts, I think. I thinkthey do exist, but they’re very expensive. I’ve never found onethat I really liked. … But anyway, I like to show pictures sothat the students can think in scientific terms. In their visuali-zation process, the more you can use the actual names ofthings, and identify the cricothyroid and the arytenoid, forinstance, and all the functionings of the voice, the better offyou are.

And then, I guess I’ve learned myself from that process, tryingto give my students more and more knowledge, and then I’llgo scurrying around, and start working with somebody, in abrief workshop here and there, and get videos, and readbooks—all the time reading books and articles that, I mustsay, I used to go “pooh-pooh” at. Well, it’s true; you can’t learnto sing by just reading, you can’t learn just by watching avideo. You have to do it; I mean it’s an experiential thing. Butthe knowledge “vouldn’t hoit,” as they say. And it really addsto that [experiential learning]; the more clearly you can defineit, the faster you can get the student to really understand that.

And so, I think, I’ve gradually taught myself through thatprocess: suddenly encountering a student that—you don’tknow how to fix what you know needs to be fixed! And theway I used to teach and the way I teach now is perhaps quitedifferent. Sometimes I really like to take beginning students soI can see how fast I can synthesize everything and get them to“cut to the chase,” as they say in Hollywood!

AS: Are there differences in the way you approach MusicalTheatre and Classical Song?MN: The basic singing mechanism is … basic. The act ofsinging, what goes on, the experiencing of chest voice, falsetto,head voice, the describing the changes of register, passaggio,having them feel their voices … I think there’s really no differ-ence—except there’s a lot of difference in, and changes in,vocal styling, coloring and choices of tones. For instance, Ibegan a study in how to belt. That was one of the first timesthat I really went into pedagogical studies—and looked atfiber optics, and was having described to me, and experiencingexercises all the time, and constantly hearing scientific termsand what was going on—and fighting with this wonderfulteacher, Jo Estill, and screaming, and going, “I can’t do that,and that’s not—what kind of a sound is that?” and just, youknow, really, really a new kind of way of actually experiencing

My Fair Lady 1964

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Marni Nixon: More Than You Know by Amy Stoller (continued)

the voice in certain registers, in certain pitches, where theactual belt lies.

In that process, I discovered that I had been getting away withmurder. I had been singing, all of my life, certain kinds ofroles: I was always a coloratura, I was always very high, Ialways had high Fs and was always dependable … and when Istarted having children (I started having children when I wasquite young, when I was twenty, twenty-one), I found that myvoice started changing. And everybody thought that I had thisfantastic technique—well, I didn’t! I started scurrying aroundthen, trying to figure out what I was doing, because my voicewas getting richer, and I didn’t know what to do with it. And Ilost a lot of the top resonance for a while—and my larynx wastoo high. I think it was because I was always this gifted child;I was always singing as a child. I was always singing with myparticular larynx where it was. And when it wasn’t there any-more, I was still trying to sing with it high!—I think. And Igot away with it, it sounded okay just because I could just sortof imagine things, and manage to survive. But according towhat I found out later, I had limited myself to a lot of thingsthat I hadn’t needed to. [I found this out] because of actuallytrying to learn how to belt and actually having to belt, not justto teach it—I could teach it fine after a while, especially after Imoved to New York. But to have to maintain a complete legitand musical theatre voice.…

In my studio, everybody has to sing everything: I mean, theymay have to stop singing “everything” after a while if they getconstantly hired as a belter, then maybe they don’t go any fur-ther in their training, but they do have to know how to centertheir voice in a legit way. And they have to know the differ-ence between that and belting. Anyway, I guess my point isthat I really discovered my voice in a different way, and I wastrying to impart this knowledge then to my students, whichseemed to help them a lot; and I’ve been able torehabilitate a lot of voices, also. Damaged voices. Older voices.I don’t have a doctoral degree—but I had such good ears andsuch experiential empathy, and source material readily avail-able to study, so over time I could tell you what was going onand I could make up exercises that actually rehabilitatedpeople. I had one student whose vocal cord—one vocalcord—was actually severed from breaking her neck, and I wasable to rehabilitate that vocal cord just by the vocal behavior.

It’s only in the last ten or twenty years that I’ve been in NewYork City, where I’ve had access to some vocal scientists, andI’ve served as president of , and had access to all thesewonderful people … I’ve come to appreciate what kind ofknowledge they each have; and they teach all these specialties,too. And also doctors of voice, and speech therapists. You cansend students to them. They can go see their voices, they can

go hear them, they can go feel them, and you can go alongwith them to a session and learn something yourself.

So in the meantime, I’ve been performing all along, and I’vebeen getting more and more into—or back into—the straightacting, just because. … I get very upset because. … I still amdoing a lot of singing, and I sing very well. You have to becareful in your choices of the things you sing. But everybodythinks that I still sound the same, but just richer. And I’m ableto sustain my voice pretty well—but the roles that are offered!Well, let’s see, about three years ago I did a premiere of a partthat was written for me in a contemporary opera [Ballymore]by Richard Wargo, [at the] Skylight Opera, small chamberopera. But I haven’t done any of the major roles that I used todo, for years and years and years, always thinking, “Oh well, Ican always … ”—Well of course, you can’t, I think it’s toolate; I could probably work some of them up, but I don’tknow who needs you at this point, all these younger peoplecome up …

But in music theatre, my dubbing career has become sofamous that people think of me as a music theatre singer a lot,they don’t realize some of the—you know, when you hear me,obviously I’m classically trained—but they don’t realize some-times, especially the younger kids, the extent of my operaticroles, nor the Grammy awards, and the years of premiererecordings of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, and New YorkPhilharmonic and, you know, all those things. In musictheatre the roles for people my age are almost always writtenfor a non-voiced person, or a low-voiced person, just becausethat’s what you’re supposed to do when you mature, it seems:you’re supposed to lose your high resonances and get gravelly.And it makes you sound older to sing lower. Things like that.So it’s kind of dissatisfying musically.

So I love to act, and you can do a lot more vocally character-wise. Theatre casting tends to be more age-specific than opera,though: I could do excerpts of opera on stage with orchestra,which I do a lot, but then that’s not age-specific too much,you know, I can still sing ingénue roles that I used to do, evenat my age—in concert things. But in acting you have to throwaway singer’s diction. You can’t [just] read things and pro-nounce them. You’ve got to be the character. You’ve got toeventually know how to do the dialects and the speech so wellthat you don’t think about it, it’s a part of your aesthetic sense,so one isn’t distracted by the technicality of [in stentoriantones] “Oh, this person speaks very well … we don’t knowwhat character it is, but it’s … ” That kind of stiltedness youdon’t want.

AS: Speaking of dialects, have you ever had any formal dialecttraining, or worked with a dialect coach for any of yourprojects?

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MN: For the dubbing, ofcourse, I was taught by theactresses. They were taughtby speech experts. Speechexperts were all around atthe same time. But I had todo what the actress did. Ihad to imitate them precise-ly. It helped me to knowwhat they wanted. Therewere a lot of directors thatwere not necessarily dialectcoaches, like we had [libret-tist-lyricist] Alan Jay Lerneron My Fair Lady, who wouldtell you about everything hecould think of [about] howto pronounce things, but itwas more like “how to beEliza Doolittle”—and hewould tell you about thewords, and the syntax, butnot the technical things.Then they had speechexperts who would tell youthat, except that half thetime the actress—likeAudrey [Hepburn, in thefilm of My Fair Lady] woulddo it the way she spoke—Imean there’s a speech pat-tern, there’s a conformationof their bone structure thathas a certain sound, the waytheir lips occlude, you know,the way their lips cometogether, the way the resonances are … it’s very specific. AfterI got into the dubbing, when I did My Fair Lady [on stage], Iwas coached by Anna Lee, who was one of the nuns in Soundof Music, and I had been coached by Julie Andrews who knewthat I was going to audition for [the stage production of ] MyFair Lady the day after Sound of Music stopped (I played oneof the nuns in that movie). You know, I got coaching fromthese wonderful people, and then from the actresses doing themovies, and hearing it over and over and over, and over again.… Puerto Rican was really … well, I didn’t study that at all, Ionly did what Natalie [Wood, in the film of West Side Story]did. Whether it was right or wrong, that’s what she did.

I have done plays now where I’ve actually studied thedialect—like Wuthering Heights. I went to the library and

listened to some tapes, tryingto do the right dialect. I cameinto rehearsal and I was theonly one that was doing itproperly. They had a dialectcoach and she came to meafterwards and said “Look,we just can’t have this,because nobody else is speak-ing like you and nobody elseis going to and nobody else ispaying attention to it, you’rethe only one that’s doing itright, so just kind of take theedges off of it a little.” Thatwas rather discouraging!

And then, of course, I’vedone a lot of Shakespeare,and sometimes theShakespeare is written in sucha way that you really have tostart developing an accent,not even knowing what theaccent is, because it’s kind ofwritten in, or the flow of thedialogue kind of forces you todo it.

When I did An Affair toRemember for Deborah Kerr,she had an Irish song called“How Do You Get toTomorrow-land?” and I camein and sang it for Cary Grantand Deborah Kerr, and mid-

way they started snickering. Well, Deborah Kerr had told meat that point—I was doing the Tennessee Ernie Ford Show everyday during that dubbing period, and we had to be on the setevery single day—so she said, “Well, Marni, you know myvoice”—we had done The King and I so many times, for solong—she said, “You know my voice, we don’t have to worklike we did before” (which was really a very strong workingrelationship, and we took from each other, but mainly I tookfrom her: the dialect that she wanted, and she described to methe difference between British and—Mid-Atlantic, is what shecalled it … and then she would do it, and I would do it, anexample, and finally I learned how to do it … gradually youacquire your technique and you can figure it out). I came inand she said “Here’s this Irish song, and you sing it the way

The Sound of Music (20th Century Fox, 1965)

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Marni Nixon: More Than You Know by Amy Stoller (continued)

you think I would sing it.” Ithought I knew an Irish dialect. Icame in there and it turned outthat it was a wonderful Scottishdialect! I had no idea of thedifference and I don’t know whyI thought I could do a Scottishaccent, I’d never done onebefore. I was just a little snot,you know, and it sort of cameout because of my ancestry; myfather was of Scottish descent.And I’ve spent so much time inthe British Isles—you know, youkind of think you know. (I hadn’tdone a commercial, which reallymakes you hone and refine that,’cause there’s a lot of authentic-speaking people who do thosecommercials and you’ve got tocompete with them or not.) Sothat was an interesting experi-ence! And so you learn really fast.

The most interesting dialect storythat I have was maybe ten yearsago … I haven’t told this story toanybody before. Carlisle Floydcalled me from Houston, Texas and said, “We’re making arecording of my opera Susannah.” And as you probably know,that opera is one of the few operas, maybe the only, where thedialect is actually written into the score. One is required tosing it in dialect. Of course immediately there’s a red flag:“Oh, but I need to make this kind of a Round Sound”—No,it’s possible to have the accent and still satisfy the singingrequirements, which of course are primary. So he said he wasdoing this recording in France, I think ten days hence; wouldI go over and be dialect director and teach them Appalachiandialect? And we’re talking about Cheryl Studer, and SamRamey, and Jerry Hadley, and—you know, wonderful people.And I was quite thrilled. Evidently I had been recommendedby Boosey and Hawkes. And then the conductor, artisticdirector of the opera company, Kent Nagano—turns out thathe’s a big fan of mine (that’s what he said, anyway) [called];we made the deal on the phone, and it was to be ten dayshence, can you imagine? Luckily I had my visa, and my hus-band said “Oh, good,” and we canceled everything and wemade a nice trip around it. … I hung up the phone, and I’msaying to myself “What in the hell do I know about anAppalachian dialect?! I have never done an Appalachian dialectin my life!” It hadn’t occurred to me—I mean everybody“knew” I could, so obviously I could (!), and I’d always said

yes to everything, so whyshould this be different?

So I suddenly got scared todeath and I called this won-derful speech expert, SamChwat—he’d been recom-mended to me, somebody hadgiven me his card—“Sam, canyou help me, I need to do thisin two days!” He’s used topeople doing commercials, sohe said “Well, what timetonight, I’m available all night,you can come down at nineo’clock tonight and we’ll worktill midnight, if you need to.”

And so I came down the nextday with my score, with mytape recorder, with my cas-sette, and we planned severalhours—it was quite expensive,I think; I’ve forgotten what itwas, but it was certainly worthit to me—and he knowsAppalachian, of course, like heknows everything; and he’s

reading the score upside down—he’s reading it off, I’m sayingthe words, he’s correcting me, we go phrase by phrase, we’vegot this all recorded, and then he says “repeat after me” … weworked through the whole score this way, he then sat downand made diacritical marks, and marked up my score, andmade a list, a personalized list of the rules. And he said,“There’s no doubt in my mind that you can do this.” I guesshe was very impressed that I was used to hearing … and Icould imitate—but that I could impart it! Afterwards Ithought, “Oh, my God! I don’t want to tell him what I’mdoing, because why don’t they just hire him? Why should it beme? I don’t want to reveal that I don’t really know what I’mdoing!” Except that he got the message immediately, and [saidI’d been chosen] “because you speak Singerese, you speakActorese, you speak Composerese, Musicianese, and you’ve gota good ear, and you’ve got the time; and I wouldn’t have goneanyway, and I wouldn’t have taken the way they usually treatspeech experts, and I’m used to doing dialect coaching formovies, and they hardly pay attention to you, and … ” And Isaid, “What if it doesn’t work out? Should I put my name onit?” And he said, “Are you kidding? Nobody’s gonna know thedifference!”

So we spent another couple of sessions, and then I decidedthat I would make a cassette for every character. Speak their

LaTraviata, 1977

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role in the rhythm of their parts. Because there were a lot ofincidental characters that had to have the same accent. Everysingle one of these, I made a cassette for—because I thenfound out that I was supposed to arrive on Sunday, the day ofthe one and only orchestra rehearsal, and they were going tostart recording on Monday! There was no dramaturge, therewas no production, these people were culled from all over theworld, and they were coming together to make this recording,a frozen thing. Plus the chorus, who only spoke French. Andso I made these cassettes—I came in, luckily, a day earlier, Igot ahold of this stage manager who was from Malta (now youtalk about that accent, that was very funny to me); anyway, hewas very cooperative, he copied all these cassettes for me, hetold me where all these people were staying, I scurried around,a lot of them were also staying in my hotel, and I was going todeliver these cassettes to them. And then I’m thinking, “Whyshould—I mean, who in the hell am I? They don’t know ‘whoam I’! How do they know they’re supposed to listen to me?How do I know they won’t just throw me out the door andsay, ‘Leave me alone, I just want to sing my part’?”

Well, it so happened that every single one of them were won-derful artists, and they just fell on me with open arms, “Ohmy gosh, thank you so much for helping us, when are wegoing to get a chance to work on this?” So the next day, everyten minutes, every half-an-hour that they had off, every lunchhour, every time before and after, they were just eating out ofmy hand—listening, listening (I knew they would all haveWalkman cassettes), and then they would try it out.

Then we get to the recording session, and Carlisle Floyd, thisfantastic composer, is sitting in the audience, and he says tome, “You know I’m not sure that they’re going to call on meto see whether the tempos are right or not, I’m just the com-poser, I’m just here to give what advice I can,” and KentNagano makes this big speech to the orchestra—they’re all onstage, we’re recording it on the stage of the Lyons OperaCompany—there’s a little raised podium on which the singersare standing with some microphones; there’s a makeshiftbooth in a trailer in the back of the building, where all thesound is piped; and the orchestra’s on stage—so Kent Naganostands up and he says—

Oh, let’s go back a minute: first of all, I have to tell you thatSam Chwat said, just before I left, “Now, Marni, you have topromise me that you will absolutely be comfortable with thefact that you are not in charge of this project. You are notgoing to direct this.” He could see what I was headed for,whether I knew it or not! He said, “You will be the last personto be consulted. You will not be allowed to stop takes. Justtake the money, do the best you can …”

Now cut again to: All the artists are eager to have me. I did aninterview with Carlisle Floyd’s niece who was from NorthCarolina, and I said [to myself ], “Okay, I’m going to talk likeI’m from Appalachia for the whole interview, just to make sureI know my craft”; which I did, and she thought that I wasnative. I tell you, it was so much fun! Whoo! And then I getto this recording session and now, Kent Nagano stands up infront of the orchestra and he says, “And we have with us” (he’sspeaking in French and then translating), “an authority inAppalachian dialect; and this is a queen of diction, and perfec-tion, and a wonderful singer, and she’s going to be sitting onthe podium and if anything goes wrong she’s going to raise herhand and she will stop the recording, so I just want to warnyou.”

And then I go into the booth, and here is [producer] MartinSauer, this fantastic engineer, who has the most fantastic ears,who speaks German and English (with a German accent), andhe’s hanging onto me with every take, and he says, “You haveto tell me—I can’t understand a word! You have to tell me ifthis is acceptable or not.” And Carlisle Floyd was in the audi-ence smiling and beaming, and I was so embarrassed, becausewhy didn’t he—you know, he could hear it too! But no, hekept saying, “Go! Go do it!” So I was able to do that. I wentdownstairs on my lunch hour to the chorus, and they were allhaving to learn English in an Appalachian dialect. We foundthat they knew symbols. So everything I said, they had thismagic symbol-writer who wrote it down and everybody elsedid and compared notes, and by golly, they were saying“ridimpshin” instead of “redemption”—and they were doing itconsistently, per direction, and they were singing with beauti-ful tones! And Kent Nagano came screaming down because hedidn’t have the time but he was going to try to coach them,and suddenly he hears that they’re all [doing this] and he startslaughing, and he said, “I’ve spent five years with these Frenchpeople trying to get them to sing the King’s English and nowin one hour you’re getting them to sing in a perfectAppalachian dialect”—

Anyway, it was so much fun, I just absolutely had a ball. AndI was able to deal with some of the note problems, and pitchproblems, and really be helpful. Cheryl Studer didn’t come tothe recording session; she was going to overdub her solosmonths later. So I was able to get her cassette to her and talkto her on the cassette, and said, “Cheryl, you are JerryHadley’s brother in this opera, and Jerry’s already recorded thisand he’s got this wonderful dialect; and unfortunately youreally have to make an effort, if you would, to be as close tohis dialect …” She was absolutely wonderful. And Sam Rameywas wonderful. And it was just the most wonderful

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Singing

Marni Nixon: More Than You Know by Amy Stoller (continued)

experience. So that’s my Story of a Dialect Coach. We actuallywon the Grammy Award. I was a part of that whole thing. Itwas just so satisfying, it was so wonderful; and the singing waswonderful, and that wonderful score, it was just exciting.

AS: How do you feel about on-stage miking?MN: Well, the problem is that one gets used to not using yourown resonance. You can get used to getting away with that.And sometimes it’s almost necessary to do that, to use yoursound, maybe, in a different way than you would ordinarily.Music theatre is much more vernacular than opera, whereeverything is much more noble and much more extended; andof course in some foreign languages, that can be another prob-lem—in opera the voice has to be completely open andresponsive for other reasons than projecting on stage in speak-ing. When you speak you don’t have that formant, the singer’sformant, which lifts the voice to help the sound carry easily.

So in music theatre, using the mike can be very helpful, espe-cially when you’re speaking; and it is almost necessary now,because of the orchestrations containing electronic instru-ments, which have no acoustical decay. I think this acousticalproblem may be beginning to be perceived by the producersand writers. The human voice cannot compete with badorchestrations and voices are being wrecked. Sometimessingers are still forced to shout. But it may be changing. And Ithink the equipment—and the people who are running it,which is the key—are getting much more sophisticated andhelpful, so that actually nowadays … when I did James Joyce’sThe Dead and Follies, at the same theatre (the Belasco), I thinkJohn the sound man said that they had something like sixty-four mikes in the auditorium in various places—the rafters,the walls, the ceiling, the floors, the balconies, on stage—all tobounce, enhance, reduce, augment, in order to create a certainsound and a certain ambience. And we all had body mikes(which are now placed on the face through the wigs or behindthe ears), and he was able to balance all that so actually youdidn’t think that it was miked at all. Of course you knew thatit was, but it’s really fantastic what they can do. When you doa show night after night after night you can get so you needthat, and so of course you need them. You don’t want thesound man to be the star, you want to have your own voice,but you want him to be able to perceive what the best thingabout your voice is, and also to have the dimension and thewherewithal to receive your voice in all its nuance, in multi-dimensional terms, and not overload things … and so that art,the art of doing the sound, I think has really grown up in thetheatre today.

As far as opera is concerned, if I were singing at the Met …well, I don’t think I would sing at the Met! I was the secondplace winner in the Metropolitan Auditions of the Air in ,

but never came back to re-audition, which they asked me todo. I think I thought my voice was too small for that audito-rium … it may have been. My voice did carry in some largeauditoriums, and I’ve sung with San Francisco Opera (I thinkthat was the most difficult acoustically), and Seattle Opera,and humongous auditoriums like the Shrine Auditorium in, when I was singing in the lighter fach. I’ve sung Puccini,Verdi’s La Traviata, Norina in Don Pasquale, Zerbinetta inAriadne auf Naxos … but heavier than that I don’t think Iwould be able to carry. So you kind of wish that maybe themikes would be there, but you don’t want it to sound like it’smiked. It’s kind of a double-edged sword. I hope that themikes per se stay out of opera. I hope that they just graduallycreate smaller auditoriums, so the singers don’t have to … Youdon’t just want to hear singers who just have big, huge voices;you want to hear real singing, you want to hear music. Andyou want to see the acting. And you want to understand thewords, if possible; you don’t want to have to read them. If youbuy a “good” seat, you have to look up every time [to read thesuper-titles]; the better thing is to buy a “bad” seat so you cansee the titles as you’re looking at the stage.

AS: How important is bodywork to you? Do you subscribe toany particular physical disciplines or have any particularroutines?MN: Your voice is a part of your body, and the way youbreathe and the way you activate and energize the necessarymuscles is all a part of the bowing (like an instrument) of theair that comes through you. You have to have full cooperationof everything you could possibly have, including tennis shoes!I mean the body is very important, and the fluidity and theenergy that it takes, and the sustaining power—I think it’svital, bodywork. And that doesn’t mean just lifting weights;no, anything that uses the air: tai chi, qui gong, AlexanderTechnique, Pilates, Feldenkrais, swimming—anything whereyou are guiding the energy through you, keeping you buoyantand fluid. Ballet of course is interesting; it’s very good but thediscipline itself sometimes forces the ballet dancers to breathetoo high to be really aware of the same muscles that are need-ed from a lower support level. But it certainly strengthensmuscles and gives grace to the body. And it helps withrhythm, which is primary. Any alignment exercise is verygood.

AS: Do you have any tips aside from the ones you’ve alreadymentioned for maintaining vocal health?MN: I like to make sure that singers know the differencebetween deadening and relaxing. That they know the reasonfor relaxing—so that there is response, muscle response—andusage of muscles and stretches. I think the singer has to beaware of their own physical makeup and chemical makeup:eating and smoking and drinking and hydrating and allergiesand asthma and all of that; one has to be so aware of that.

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Reflux can absolutely destroyyou. And a lot of problems canbe corrected if addressed (andthen maintained) properly. Ithink exercise, physical exercise,is very important—centeringyourself, doing your abs, maybeeven running, swimming—veryimportant. And, I think, yourmental health: somehow, in thestream of all the craziness youhave to be mentally ready to beable to open yourself up at theright time to let everything pos-sible read, like an actress does;but [also] to have the core ofyourself there so you don’t usethe “principal.” Use the “inter-est” rather than the “principal,”so that you can sustain it. And somentally you have to be calm,you have to be centered, youhave to be available to be respon-sive to what you’re singing, andyou have to know technicallywhat you’re doing. I think youreally have to acquire good tech-nique. And you have to be will-ing to be directed, but also toalso know when something goesagainst your grain, and not just take anything.

AS:Where do you teach? How does someone get to take a classwith Marni Nixon?MN: I teach in my home. Usually I don’t have to worry aboutgetting students; a lot of people call me from different walksof life. I would like to have more classical students. I get boredwith the repertoire of music theatre only. And yet that varies.But the problem that I have at this point is that I’m still doingso much performing that I’m in and out of town a lot. So Ihave to make sure that I take students who can work in a con-densed way, sometimes in consistent spurts of time, and thenfeed off of that while I’m out of town. I don’t want to be not-there when they need me in the middle of an avalanche ofnew sensations or an audition season or something. So I haveto deal with that.

AS:What do you enjoy most about teaching?MN: Usually the challenge of trying to think out what thatstudent is all about. And getting into their head and then see-ing how I can get them to turn on.

AS: Any pet peeves?MN: I hate it when somebodycomes to me and says “Oh,you’ve been recommended to meby so-and-so and I would love tocome and study with you,” andusually I will lay out the para-meters, and I will tell them whatmy schedule is, and that weshould have at least a diagnostictime—we should come togetherand have a session and see if weget along; and then after you’vehad this time, which has con-sisted mostly of them singingexcerpts from various repertoire,then doing a little vocalizing,with you all the time assessing,telling them what you think youcan do for them, asking perti-nent questions—and then theysay, “Oh, well you know I have alist of other teachers that I’vecome into town to see, and soI’ll call you.” And I feel like, waita minute—I was auditioning?Should I have spent my timetelling her what I’ve done, toimpress her? Should I have toldher she was absolutely wonder-

ful, and that of course I could solve all her problems and gether jobs, to keep this student? It doesn’t make me feel good. Iknow they think they are being practical, but that’s not a les-son that I gave. How can they know how you teach from that?They can see if they “like” you”, I suppose. You can’t possiblyspend all that time auditioning for the students nor do theyperceive—if I did give them all my credits, half the time theydon’t even know what that means in terms of how I can guidethem in their vocal and career pursuits. The thing that I thinkthat is bad is that they will only respond to, “I have thisdegree from this place; I have a doctorate; I have taught so-and-so, and I alone know what to do, stick with me,” and Ijust can’t abide that—can’t abide thinking that I’m going to bejoining souls with this person and that they will not under-stand the vulnerability of both of our positions—their being astudent and me sharing with them what I know for the pur-pose of their whole “voice”.

And I don’t like students who then take up your time andmake lessons and then start canceling. I mean you have certainpolicies about sickness, that’s fine, or auditions; but when it’s

I Do, I Do!, 1977

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Singing

Marni Nixon: More Than You Know by Amy Stoller (continued)

too frequent then finally—usually I don’t have to say it in [aharsh way], sometimes it’s a mutual thing: “What’s going onhere; can you plan your time; is this a primary time for you;do you realize that other people want this time and I put thisaside and I have a pianist coming—and even if I don’t have apianist coming, there’s other people …” When there is resis-tance, we can usually identify it and proceed, but when theyare not in the right place to work together, as a team … Iunderstand the attrition of sickness and work, for heaven’ssakes, but there are certain people that don’t really understandand respect what they’re hearing enough to make me wantto—sometimes I can’t; I get catatonic, I don’t know what tosay, I can’t teach. I try, but it kind of stifles me.

AS:What is a question no interviewer has ever asked you thatyou wish they had? And what’s the answer?MN: Oh, my goodness! I find it so moving that people thinkthey know who you are. They just perceive you and they won’task you why did you do this? Why are you doing it? Whatprompted you to go into this field? Why—well, some people haveasked me why I didn’t stay with opera—anyway, they don’t askyou; they sort of accept you as this thing that’s in front ofthem.

I really don’t know why! I don’t have inductive reasoning, Ican’t tell you the broad picture of what something is; I canstart a project and it’s very focused, but it’s all sorts of differentthings; all the details and I can be very creative about it, andin the end I don’t know what the category is; what is it thatI’ve done. And somebody who has inductive reasoning willcome along and say, “Oh, you’ve been doing so-and-so and so-and-so. Oh, this is what you were doing,” and I’m going,“Oh, that’s it!” And it’s very helpful to know that; but I’m notsure that knowing that, I could have filled in all the detailslike I did. So I just have to trust that I’ve been doing it sort ofbackwards all my life.

I’ll do a role like that, too: I’ll prepare an acting project. I can’ttell you why; I will just intuitively go for something, latchonto a dialect—once [I was] on the subway reading the sidesof this thing I was auditioning for and it says, “A forty-oneyear old Latino woman of a certain size,” and I’m thinking,“Why did my agent send me out on this?” I mean, [twinkling]I’m at least ninety years old, and there’s no way I could be aLatino woman with my red hair and blue eyes and freckles, soI just said, “I don’t really care,” and I just went in and I madeup a person. I gave her an accent. I’ve forgotten what it was; Ithink I thought she was from the middle west—and I got thepart! They just changed it to what I did. And what promptedme to do that I have no idea.

I think they’ve stopped asking, if they ever did, why did you dothis or why did you do that. I think in the end, what I’d like tohave done is to have used all of my talents, been able to makethe best of what’s been offered me, have a whale of a timedoing it. But it’s a challenge—it’s always a challenge, I think—to try to do things better, and to satisfy yourself; to make itsound good and to make it musical, whether it be speech ormusic. There’s a rhythm, there’s a flow, and as such there’s aconnection. And I think that the process of teaching helps melearn, keeps me connected to what’s current, keeps me scurry-ing around trying to learn what I think I know and to be ableto impart it in better and better ways—it keeps evolving. Andthen, I suppose educating is like the highest form of art. Andwhen you’re performing, you’re really like a missionary. Youdon’t have to feel like you’re “better than thou,” but it’s likeyou have a responsibility to be as close to yourself—that’s allyou have to satisfy, in the end—and then you want to try tofind the means to share that in ever more efficient ways. Andthat’s why I want never to leave New York. I love New York.There are experts around all the time. If you can’t find themyou know that they will be there soon, you just have to putout your hand and you can find them. It’s a great school, it’s agreat place for students; you can send them to ballet classesand acting classes and coaches and performances andwhatever—if they can afford it!

Anyway, nobody asks that; maybe they ask me what do I wantto do when I grow up! First of all, do I ever want to “growup”? What does that mean? There are a lot of things that I stillwant to do. I want someone to write me a show and I want todo more recordings and more film and straight acting roles.Another thing I want to do is to write a book, which I’mworking on right now; maybe this conversation will help meclarify my ideas. This interview came along I think just at theright time to help me write my book. That’s what I think; itsort of comes backwards like that.

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