Which didn't stop her from speaking out. When a young mezzo, less advanced than the baritone, sounded tentative, Ms. Ludwig asked her to speak the words that she was singing. When her speech proved just as unsure as her singing, it was dismissed with a single comment, "Ach, you don't speak German." Nor was the baritone allowed to complain that the music he'd chosen was difficult. "You are paid for this," Ms. Ludwig told him. "It's your job, no?"
Sometimes she'd work on tiny technicalities. When the baritone said his throat got dry when he sang, he was advised to swallow during interludes played by the piano accompaniment. (The superbly sensitive pianist, Charles Spencer, played for Ms. Ludwig during the last 12 years of her career.) A tall, intrepid mezzo bulled her way through "Feldeinsamkeit," a rapt Brahms song. One problem, Ms. Ludwig said, was that she sang it all in chest voice. Singers have two vocal registers, a heavy sound in the chest for low notes, and, for lighter, higher notes, a more floating resonance that feels like it's in the head. "Feldeinsamkeit" is written almost entirely in the bottom octave of a mezzo's range, and the singer -- oddly obedient to nonexistent rules -- thought she wouldn't be allowed to use her head voice that low. She was told that she not only could, but should.

Jessica Tivens, a poised soprano just 19 years old, got a more extensive workout, with striking results. When I first heard her, on the second day of classes, she was lively and alert, her eyes sparkling, her easy delight with herself suggesting, perhaps, that she'd often been praised for things that came easily to her. But she had an odd blend of problems. She sang too heavily, and she was too perky.
Ms. Ludwig first tackled the heaviness. "In general," she said, "you use too much voice." That, to people who don't know singing, might sound strange. Doesn't a singer need to be heard? Ms. Tivens is a lyric soprano, whose sound isn't large to begin with. Shouldn't she sing out?
But that's not the issue. Singers need to manage both words and music. If they pour out their tone, the words can get lost; conversely, if they pronounce their words vividly, their tone can seem stronger than it really is.
And here's where Ms. Tivens showed a determination that goes beyond mere talent. First, she scaled back her tone. (Imagine your TV, with the color saturation way too high; everything is vividly colorful, and nothing is clear. Now turn the color down; suddenly you see details.) And then, having learned her lesson, she never needed to be told again.
Which left time for other refinements, and for a reminder not just to sing beautifully, but to "feel zauber also" -- zauber (German for "magic" or "mystery") being Ms. Ludwig's code word for deep, unspoken meaning. At a later session, Ms. Ludwig attacked the perkiness, though the word itself was never mentioned. Instead, she launched what seemed to be an indirect campaign. "You chop a little bit," Ms. Ludwig announced, insisting that Ms. Tivens's syllables were too short and bouncy. "You have to change this, because otherwise the whole thing is" -- and here she imitated short notes, bouncing like a string of beads -- "bing, bing, bing."
Ms. Tivens couldn't quite find an alternative, so Ms. Ludwig taught her to sing legato, making both notes and words seamless. She caught on immediately, and when the six young singers gave a joint concert, she was by far the most convincing, poised as ever, but with a new inwardness I hadn't seen before. She needed only, I thought, to brighten her "ee" vowel (it wasn't clear, and the lack of clarity put excess weight back in her voice), and then consistently to sing through long notes when they showed up in her lower range. (Ms. Ludwig, over and over, imitated a cellist's uninterrupted bow, to illustrate the surge through long notes that she was looking for.)

The other singers were less impressive. One of them, described in program notes as Ms. Ludwig's "protege," was the most finished artist, sensitive to every nuance of the text (far more so than many top professionals, which might be what Ms. Ludwig likes in her). Her voice, though, was oddly muffled in the master classes (though it was secure) and seemed diluted at the concert. Physically, she struck me as uncomfortable, locked in tension from head to waist.
The baritone emoted, striking poses, which Ms. Ludwig had told him not to do. Another baritone, vocally more confident (his voice seemed many years older than he was), brought nothing to his music. A striking blonde mezzo minced almost like a little girl onstage, bending shyly forward, giving up her strength.

And here I'll add a personal note. I'd like to be kind to developing artists, but these singers made me despair for classical music. They aren't students; they're starting serious careers, especially in opera. And yet (to cite just one example of how lost they seem to be) the intrepid mezzo sang "Feldeinsamkeit" loudly, even though Brahms, in the printed music, marks the song piano, or soft, and even though the text describes transcendent solitude and peace.
She did learn to sing the piece quietly, once Ms. Ludwig told her to do it and showed her how. But why didn't she think of it herself? One clue came later, when Ms. Ludwig added subtle shadings to the new interpretation, and the singer said, in evident amazement, "These are liberties I don't know if I can take." "You must take your own liberties," Ms. Ludwig answered, matter-of-factly, "because otherwise nobody comes to hear you, because they already know the song." But later, in introducing the concert, she said something far more blunt: "It was most astonishing that the singers had the impression that an art song is not flesh and blood."
There are things no singer can learn without deeper culture and more experience; for instance, that Mahler's music grows from what Ms. Ludwig called "the Viennese soul." ("The Viennese," she explained, treating a serious matter lightly, "are only happy when they're sad.") But if you think you're not allowed to be yourself when you sing, if even in the simplest ways this music is a foreign art to you, what's the point of even starting?

Here's one more example of how poorly prepared these otherwise earnest and willing singers were. One of them -- the mezzo who bent forward -- bobbed her head in time with many notes she sang. When Ms. Ludwig told her she shouldn't do that, her amazed answer was, "No one ever told me that before!"

Ms. Ludwig, in exactly the same pleasant, forceful tone she used with the mezzo who was afraid to take liberties, said, "Well, everyone should tell you." 

And here's the problem. Like the other singers, this mezzo wasn't a student. In fact, she was about to make her debut in a major role with the Los Angeles Opera. She'd been to music school, had been in several opera-company apprentice programs  -- where nobody, apparently, ever told her that she bobbed her head in rhythm. 

Should we blame these poor singers, or their teachers?

Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2000