The Way I Prepared Secco Recitatives

Secco recitatives — they were both my greatest ally and, at times, my fiercest enemy.

Given that the bulk of my career lived in the world of 18th-century opera, recitative wasn’t just part of the work — it was the work. Preparing them took a long time. And let’s be honest: not being fluent in foreign languages, particularly Italian, made that process even more complicated.

My first task was always to break down the sentence structure — figure out where each thought began and where it ended — and speak it, simply and naturally, before even touching a word-for-word translation. Only after feeling the shape of the language would I move into the details: underlining double consonants, marking stressed and unstressed syllables, getting my mouth and brain working together. It could be tedious (and it was), but this groundwork ended up being gold once I stepped into character with my director and fellow castmates.

Now, keep in mind, I started out before personal laptops were a thing. So I would sit there, dictionary in hand, translating every word painstakingly by myself. Later, during especially busy stretches, I might — just might — have been guilty of leaning a little too heavily on CD booklets for quick translations. And if you’re sitting there judging me… be careful. You probably did the same thing!

These days, apps like Google Translate, Mate Translate, and Lingvanex have made that first step so much faster. But no matter the tools, there was no shortcut around the next step: writing everything into my musical score by hand. (Hello, carpal tunnel.) I would also create a personal translation — not just literal, but in my own everyday language. This was crucial. Suddenly, the character wasn’t just a cardboard figure mouthing words; he became human. The storytelling became natural. Memorization was sturdier. Mistakes happened less often because the meaning was living inside me, not just the sounds.

One of my favorite parts of the process was working the recits alone, in my hotel rooms or apartments on the road — pacing, experimenting, finding where to push the pace, where to pull back, shaping the story like a potter working with clay.

When I started this post, I said that secco recits were both friend and foe. That’s true. Preparing them could be absolutely exhausting. But at the end of the day? They were my favorite part of the opera. The arias — yes, they are glorious. They’re the jewels the audience comes to hear. But the characters — the real flesh-and-blood souls of the drama — they live and breathe in the recitatives. And when they’re prepared with joy instead of resentment, everyone — the singers, the directors, and most importantly, the audience — can feel it.

Learn to love your secco recitatives. They’re not just bridges between arias. They’re where the real magic happens.