Acting For Opera

"An opera singer is a professional communicator. The better the communication, then the finer the artist. " - Norman Cooley

Norman has been involved in the area of performance since he was 12 years old. He has a B. A. in Theatre from the University of California at Los Angeles (1975-79) and trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School (1980-82).

He worked professionally as an actor for 20 years performing with regional theatre throughout the UK and Europe including the Dundee Repertory, Manchester Royal Exchange, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, Lyric Hammersmith Studio, Vienna’s English Theatre, English Theatre of Hamburg, The Croydon Warehouse, The Wimbledon Studio, The King’s Head Islington, the Theatre Royal Bury St. Edmunds as well as acting in the West End of London, television roles included Cold Feet, Deadhead and Strange But True. He has also been seen in countless advertisements in the UK and Europe.

Norman trained in theatre direction with Michael Gordon, a noted American theatre and film director whose work included many Broadway productions and in Hollywood directing the film Cyrano de Bergerac with Mel Ferrer and numerous well-known films in the 50s and 60s including the romantic comedies Pillow Talk and Move Over Darling. At the Bristol Old Vic, he trained as an actor with perhaps the greatest acting teacher of all time, the legendary Rudi Shelley.

His first experience of opera seeing La Traviata at the San Diego Opera when he was 12 years old captured his imagination to the degree that he appeared in the company’s season the following year in four operas including Boris Godunov with the great acting basso Norman Treigle and culminating in a solo part in Menotti’s Help, Help the Globolinks.

Norman’s interest in opera has been life-long. He has seen opera performances at the ROH, the ENO, Holland Park Opera, San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, San Carlo Opera Naples, Hungarian State Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, Berliner Staatsoper, Freiburg, Innsbruck Opera, Macerata Festival, Arena Verona, Spoleto Festival in Italy, Australian Opera Sydney, the Bolshoi and the Mariinsky among others.

Norman’s approach to teaching acting to opera singers focuses on the telling of the story, as well as instilling the overarching vocation of good craftsmanship in the singer. In learning how to tell the story, often deceptively difficult, the singer will also learn how to develop the character as well as the relationships between the characters, character and plot progression, discerning the will of the librettist and the composer, period study and movement, stage confidence, basic to advanced stage deportment. All in the context of telling the story, as the story is the anchor on which all performance relies, from concert and lieder work to singing in the opera house.

Acting for opera singers should be secondary to the singing and support the work of the singer. It should be as effortless as possible to provide a safe harbour for the singer to sing at their best while creating a fully satisfying performance.