By Dawoud Kringle
(copyright Crystal Philippi)
There are some times when a shout out would serve a dual purpose. It would give kudos to someone who deserves it, and introduce others to someone whose work they would like. Here’s a shout out for singer Crystal Philippi.
Native to New Orleans, Crystal Philippi studied under Denise Ozden, Dr. Jessica Molin, and the famed Cesar Ulloa. She holds a Masters of Music degree from San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of New Orleans (where she also studied piano and clarinet.) She’d spend summers at Opera North, Brevard Music Center, The Baroque Performance Institute, and La Scuola di Michalangelo in Florence Italy. Other coaches she’d worked with include Louis G. Burkot, Ron Luchsinger, Corey Jameson, Rick Harrell, Sir Willard White, Elizabeth Bachman (Met director), and composer David Garner. As of this writing, Crystal continues to study with Cesar Ulloa.
Crystal’s operatic performance credentials are impressive. She has appeared in the roles of Charlotte in Werther, Malika in Lakme, Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, Zita, in Gianni Schicchi, and Mere Jeanne in Dialogues des Carmelites. She’d also performed scenes from La Cenerentola, Mignon, I Capuletti e I Montecchi, Calisto, Le Nozze de Figaro, Rigoletto, and Vanessa.
I have also had the pleasure and honor of sharing the stage with Ms. Philippi. I played guitar behind her for a brief performance at the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors in New York City. It was a wonderful experience for me; a departure into a musical world I do not usually perform in. Listening to Crystal from the stage, while supporting her, give one an in depth perspective of her artistry.
Recently, The New York Lyric Opera Theater at the Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater presented a recital of Bizet’s Carmen. Crystal sang the lead. This being a recital, the audience had none of the trappings of theatrical pageantry to create the mood of the famed opera. We had only the music and the presence of the singers, accompanied by a piano, to tell us the story.
Crystal’s vocal performance was magnificent. The thing that impressed me about Crystal’s performance (and her colleagues on the performance were all brilliant) was not only the precision, but the life she brought to the words and melodies she sang. Clearly, for her, a sympathetic understanding of what was really happening in the play was, it appeared, more important than mere technical brilliance. She approached her role with an almost Callas-esque perspective of actually feeling what her character was feeling. She was not merely ornamenting her stage presence with mannerisms and carefully practiced gestures: she became Carmen. At times, I didn’t recognize her!
She later told me, and I quote, “I did research for this role like a method actor would do. I took flamenco lessons and learned how to play castanets for the seduction scene in Act II with Don Jose and I also spoke to a friend of mine who has actually met real gypsies and I learned a lot from her. As it turns out gypsies are all from India, ultimately. And their dress is rather conservative so when you see a Carmen with her shoulders exposed that is not what a real Spanish gypsy would have worn. The gypsy women may have be sexually promiscuous – or misunderstood to be that way, – but they wouldn’t have flaunted it.”
Crystal also played the castanets while singing. This is nothing new for the many who performed Carmen. Yet she also made use of the tambourine in the second act; which is something unprecedented. She’d taken lessons on the tambourine, and studied the tambourine parts from the score to use in the performance. Her studies of dance helped her in this role as well.
Crystal also told me “My Carmen is not so much of a manipulative, egotistical, whore like most Carmens. I believe Carmen to be a very spiritually and sexually free person, which makes her very misunderstood in the saint-whore dichotomy of Catholicism; which would have been, and still is, very popular in Spain.”
She demonstrates her interpretation of Carmen’s spiritual convictions in the finale of Act IV where Carmen, for all intents and purposes, allows Don Jose to kill her. And nowhere is this more evident than in the card scene of Act III where she openly resigns herself to her fate and inevitable death when she said; “Mais, si tu dois mourir, si le mot redoutable. Est écrit par le sort. Recommence vingt fois, la carte impitoyable répétera: la mort!” (But if you must die, if the terrible word is written in fate. Begin again 20 times, the pitiless cards will repeat: death.) And elsewhere in Act III: “le destin est le maitre” (destiny is the master.)
At the risk of incurring the wrath of some readers, many of the performances I have heard and seen in the classical repertoire are merely displayed of mechanical precision. Perhaps it’s me, and my personal propensity toward musical improvisation, blending genres at will, and treading on the toes of the orthodoxy. But there is all too much slavish imitation of what has been done and what is believed to be acceptable; with little life, little passion, and little meaning. Crystal is a marvelous exception. She brings a new vitality and depth of artistic interpretation into what stands in peril of degenerating into a dead art form fit only for the museum – or tomb. She is someone to be reckoned with: one who truly understand the nature of her art, and not only lives up to it, but brings something new to it.
What more could one ask of any artist?
