Jewish Sightseeing HomePage Jewish Sightseeing
 2003-02-14 Norma
Opera
 

A woman's voice: Off limits for men?

S.D. Opera's Norma raises questions
 of bel canto versus kol isha

San Diego Jewish Press-Heritage, Feb. 14, 2003
 
By Donald H. Harrison

There is a style in opera known as bel canto—Italian for "beautiful voice." It refers particularly to early 19th century Italian operas that were written with the purpose of demonstrating vocal beauty and range.

In Judaism, there is a doctrine known as kol isha—Hebrew for a "womanąs voice." It decrees that a man must not allow himself to hear a woman other than his wife singing, lest he succumb to his evil inclinations.

Norma, an opera by Vincenzo Bellini that the San Diego Opera presents at the Civic Center Feb. 16, 18, 21, 23 and 26, is considered one of the premier examples of the bel canto style. It's a safe bet that you wonąt find any strictly observant Jews at the opera on any of those nights — especially because the songs "Casta Diva" and "Mira O Norma" — were written particularly to demonstrate the glory of the female voice. These songs have delighted audiences since the 1830s.

We have here what the Germans call a difference in weltanschauung, or comprehensive world view, that clearly divides "Torah-true" Jews from their more assimilated brethren who support, produce and perform in such productions as Norma.

There are many Jewish supporters of the San Diego Opera, notably Iris Strauss, president of its board, and Merle and Teresa Fischlowitz, who underwrote the company's most recent production of Fidelio.

San Diego Opera's general director, Ian Campbell, is a Jew. So is Tobias Picker, the composer of Therese Raquin, an opera that will be given its West Coast premiere by the San Diego Opera in March. Beyond San Diego's borders, the opera star Beverly Sills, another Jew, is widely known and loved.

Bel canto and kol isha— beautiful singing and the voice of a woman— seem to be related terms, and yet they represent such different philosophies of life. How did the two develop?

As we should when studying almost any Jewish doctrine, we turn first to the Torah to understand where the concern about kol isha originated.

After Moses and the Children of Israel were saved from Pharaoh's army at the Sea of Reeds, they broke into the song known in every synagogue as the Mi Chamocha, asking God in a famous verse (as translated from the Hebrew in the Stone Tanakh): "Who is like You among the heavenly powers, Hashem! Who is like You, mighty in holiness, too awesome for praise, Doer of wonders!"

("Hashem" is a word used in translations of Jewish texts to avoid having a reader pronounce God's sacred name.)

We are told in Exodus 15:20-21 that when the Children of Israel completed this song, "Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took her drum in her hand and all the women went forth after her with drums and with dances. Miriam spoke up to them, "Sing to Hashem, for he is exalted above the arrogant, having hurled horse with its rider into the sea."

Why did the women separate themselves from the men? According to Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort of Chabad at La Costa, "it is very clear that there are supposed to be gender separations." This is made clear, he said, even earlier in the Torah, in Genesis 18:1-10, when three angels of the Lord
visit Abraham's tent on the Plains of Mamre and "They said to him, 'Where is
Sarah your wife?' And he said, 'Behold!— in the tent!"

"Judaism is very concerned with gender roles, and more than that, with what Judaism views as maintaining human dignity," said Eilfort, a Chasidic rabbi who writes a regular column for this newspaper and also serves as one of the rabbis on the "Ask Moses" Web site.

"Judaism tells us that we have to act in a modest way," Eilfort said. "You have to have your body covered, not show off the physical form."

The rules are particularly strict for women because "men have a more difficult time controlling their thought process. Science bears this out: men's minds tend to go where they donąt belong more regularly than women. Women have a more intuitive knowledge, a greater awareness of God. Men are considered the weaker sex in Judaism. There is a teaching in Judaism that
before a blind man you donąt put a stumbling block."

For a woman to present herself immodestly before a man would be like putting a stumbling block in the path of a blind man— guaranteed to trip him up, in this view. "A womanąs voice, halachically (according to Jewish law), is considered nakedness— something that should be covered, something that should be concealed," Eilfort said.

"She is revealing an aspect of nakedness about herself that causes men to think impure thoughts," he added. On the other hand, "women can sing in front of other women."

On Saturday mornings, when a Torah portion is read in the synagogue, it is followed by a Haftorah reading — a selection from a later section of the Hebrew Bible. Typically, the Torah portion Beshalach, which recounts the miracle at the Sea of Reeds, is followed by the Haftorah comprising Judges 4:4-5:31 in which Deborah the prophetess and Barak the general defeat the
forces of the general Sisera, who serves the Canaanite king Jabin.

Following a momentous victory and the assassination of Sisera by Yael (the wife of Heber the Kenite), we learn in Judges 5:1-3 that "Deborah sang— as well as Barak son of Abinoam— on that day, saying: "When vengeance are inflicted upon Israel and the people dedicates itself (to God) ... bless Hashem. Hear, O kings, give ear, O princes! I, to Hashem, shall I sing; I
shall sing praise to Hashem, God of Israel..."

So here is a duet between a man and a woman. It would seem impossible for a man and a woman to sing such a duet without the man hearing the womanąs singing. Perhaps, then, the ban on men listening to a woman's singing is not absolute.

Some rabbis have answered that if the song is in praise of God, men and women may sing together in unison. A corollary of this opinion says that it is okay for a man to hear a mixed group of voices, such as a choir, when the voice of a specific woman can not be distinguished.

The question is no longer an issue in the non-Orthodox movements of Judaism, which have ordained women both as cantors and as rabbis. Among Reform congregations, Ian Campbell's own Congregation Beth Israel is led in prayers by Cantor Arlene Bernstein. Cantors Lori Frank and Kathy Robbins serve in similar roles at Temple Adat Shalom and Temple Solel, and Mryna Cohen has served for many years as a cantorial soloist at Temple Emanu-El.

The kol isha doctrine is not an issue at these congregations because the Reform movement does not consider itself bound by halacha. On the other hand, the Conservative movement does consider itself bound by the Jewish law.

Conservative Tifereth Israel Synagogue's Cantor Alisa Pomerantz-Boro, who was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary, says nowhere in Torah is there an explicit prohibition for men to hear the singing voices of women.

Instead, she said, the kol isha doctrine is the result of male rabbis, influenced by the sociology of their times, handing down a ruling that was accepted through the ages, just as in democracies, at one time, the notion that women shouldn't vote also was accepted. She noted that the Conservative movements considers halacha subject to evolution, and not fixed.
* * * 
Italian opera composers like Vincenzo Bellini were untroubled by any such concerns. Quite to the contrary, Campbell told Heritage, Bellini's music in Norma "is a celebration of the voices that God gave people."

"This kind of music is among my favorites," he added. "Its sheer beauty and sensuality is exciting, I don't mean in the sense of erotic, but like magic. One doesn't plan an opera like this and take a soprano, a mezzo and a tenor off the shelf."

The duet "Mira O Norma," between the Druid priestess Norma and her acolyte Adalgisa (who learn that they have been betrayed by the same man), "needs two voices so sensitive to each other that one more or less emerges from the other. One voice makes love to the other, they repeat phrases the others sing, they become one. I think that we achieve that with Galina Gorchkova (the soprano who plays Norma) and Mariana Pentcheva (the mezzo-soprano who
portrays Adalgisa)."

Nicolas Reveles, the opera's director of education and outreach, describes bel canto as an operatic style in which "the voice is the key — it emphasized the beauty of the voice, the voice was over everything, the most important element. The orchestra was considered subsidiary to the voice."

Reveles said "you canąt talk about Belliniąs music without also understanding his approach to poetry. These operatic composers worked very closely with the poets. How the poetic imagery was communicated through the music was important to the audiences. They wanted spiritual uplift, they wanted it to be moral. They were looking for the composers to take them on
an expressive musical journey.

"Bellini wrote long, beautiful and expressive melodies to communicate those texts," Reveles continued. "An easy way to describe it is singing the 'Star-Spangled Banner' correctly. It has the longest phrases. Try singing 'Oh, say can you see by the dawnąs early lightą in one breath. Most of us can't do it. We have to take a breath."

In the first act aria "Costa Diva" ("Chaste Goddess"), in which Norma sings a hymn to the goddess of the moon, there is poetic imagery "about the moon shining on her face and asking that the moon shine, unclouded and unveiled, upon her and her people," Reveles said.

"The melodic line twists and turns, as if the composer is almost drawing a picture of her prayer rising into the sky," he added. "The climactic note in the first eight phrases is over the word which describes the moon's face: Bellini underlines the word 'face' by placing that particular word at the
climax of the first verse. He is creating a phonic environment, so the audience can really believe the text, really believe that she is singing to the moon and treating it like a goddess."

Campbell said as "this is the first Norma for Galina, she is overwhelmed by the beauty of the music. It never occurred to her that she could get such satisfaction!"