“It's an art-defining moment..”
(Lucy Arner, quoted in "Life is a Caballé," Opera News, November, 2002)

Lucy Arner has worked with some of the world's most famous and respected classical singers. Included here are some photos from her collection and tidbits about her work with singers (both established and just-starting-out) from around the globe.

Ms. Arner is in great demand as a recital accompanist in the United States and in Europe. She has worked with many prominent singers including Placido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Joan Sutherland (these three pictured at right), Aprile Millo, Alfredo Kraus, Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne, Jennifer Larmore and Ruth Ann Swenson, to name a few.

Lucy Arner has been instrumental in helping young singers and orchestras develop their operatic skills in areas of the world where operatic training is usually difficult to find. She has taught, played, and conducted in Tel Aviv, Israel (Israel Vocal Arts Institute), Mexico City, Peru, China (pictured, at left), Japan and many other places one doesn't usually think of when one thinks of Grand Opera.

Lucy's work with Monserrat Caballé caught Ira Siff's attention when he was writing an article on the great diva for Opera News. Lucy's articulate memories of her experience with the Spanish soprano were extensively quoted:

Caballé's heart-stopping rendition of Schubert's "Du bist die Ruh," justly famous, came up in conversation with Met assistant conductor Lucy Arner, who worked with the soprano at the Liceu between 1987 and '91. "A musicologist could sit and write a ten-page critique of what's wrong with it, and it simply doesn't matter at all. If you need to explain Montserrat Caballé to somebody, you play a tape of that rendition. Then you play five other totally correct, wonderful, expressive recordings that don't have a tenth of what it has. The weight of the silences throughout the song, the moments in which the rests are greater than the roar of anybody -- that silence and those pianissimos have a weight and a tension and a sound in and of themselves. It's an art-defining moment." One can only agree. And if one looks at the page and sees that the ascending lines are marked with a crescendo where Caballé floats a pianissimo, one can only conclude that the page is wrong.

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Caballé's idiosyncratic and spontaneous approach to music-making separates her from the musically correct artists in abundance today. Arner feels that this approach must be understood and appreciated, citing the case of Leonardo Balada's Cristóbal Colón, an opera commissioned by the Liceu for the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America. "Montserrat was Queen Isabella, with José Carreras in the title role. There was a second cast with Adelaide Negri as Isabella. Negri is one of those singers who can sing anything, and learn it in two days -- really amazing. It was a very expensive production of this piece, the quality of which was somewhat questionable. We rehearsed it with Negri, and at a certain point Montserrat came. Nobody on the music staff really loved the piece. Miss Negri came very well prepared and sang the piece perfectly.

"In comes Montserrat, and she starts doing her thing. After a few days we start to think, are we just getting used to this piece, or is it maybe not so bad? As Isabella, she had some of the most appealing music, and she would take great liberties, great rubatos with it. Later, we started rehearsing for the two additional performances which involved Negri. All the sour faces on the music staff returned. On looking closely, we realized that Miss Negri continued to sing the role with great accuracy, while Montserrat had semi-adjusted the recomposition of it in a way that made it sound much better, tailored perfectly to her brand of musical and vocal expression, a sort of contemporary zarzuela! I remember thinking to myself, there's a lesson to be learned here, perhaps a lesson that composers could learn from, in writing for singers."

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