Violinist Les Dreyer recently retired after a long and illustrious career in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra, including 30 years as associate-principal.
CS’ favorite violinist returns with tales of conductors and his criteria for what makes a maestro great, and not so great.
CS’ favorite retired Met violinist remembers the great tenor for his kindness, his humor—and his lack of talent at the chessboard.
CS’ favorite Met violinist returns with tales from his Juilliard days. The dilemmas Les Dreyer faced so many years ago are the same dilemmas many students face today: performance versus teaching as a career, and the challenges— for singers or instrumentalists—of music education degrees and musicology courses.
One of the many values of working with great coaches is the understanding and clarity they help singers find in the language of the music. Les Dreyer, CS’ resident Met violinist, leaves the orchestra pit for a bit to share his insightful and always humorous views on the importance of language for opera singers.
Now for a serious article, we bring you another installment from CS’ favorite Met violinist. Before reading, follow this recipe: Go to kitchen, retrieve grain of salt, and place next to magazine. Insert tongue in cheek, and read on.
CS’ favorite Met violinist returns, this time with tales of Mozart expert and Maestro Joseph Krips’s Met debut.
CS’ Met violinist returns, this time with tales from his student days at Juilliard. Little did Les Dreyer realize how getting kicked out of the best conservatory orchestra in the world would shape the rest of his life.
To fully understand the present, we must have an understanding of the past. Our Met violinist takes us down memory lane as he reminisces about his final evening in the pit at the old Metropolitan Opera House. The great singers of the past laid a great foundation for those who follow.
Our Met violinist returns, this time with a new word to add to your vocabulary: biffing. These stories are sure to make you laugh out loud, and bring to mind your own experiences with biffing (we all have them!). We’d love to hear about them. Go to www.ClassicalSinger.com, click on “curtain call” and confess your favorite biffing moment.
Have you dealt with monster conductors or have they all been angels? Les Dreyer from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra has had both.
Our Met violinist takes us back to the pit to see what is going on between conductor, singer and orchestra. This will help you understand why your accelerando, practiced so perfectly in rehearsals, can sometimes fall apart in performance.
Many opera singers have a guilty secret they only admit to their closest friends: They don’t like to watch opera—they only like to sing it! Here’s our favorite opera violinist, back with a guilty secret of his own!
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