Opera, goodreads, and other goodies

Training and certifying coaches. Now accepting a limited number of new coaching clients.

_____________________________

Rome is, indeed, a marvelous city. That handsome young man on the right, there at the Pantheon, sold me tickets to hear a concert of favorite arias from operas, one of highlights of my trip. There at the Pantheon.

____________________________

Goodreads is a great family site. I got on it because my granddaughter asked me to. Family-friendly sites are so important for the kids today.

As to this book, "Who's Afraid of Opera?" I'm not surprised they don't have the book cover. I'm probably the only person who's read it, I don't know.

Well, I love opera and found it very enjoyable. Perfect what I call "airport fiction." And, BTW, Lufthansa has an opera station on their earphones. Another reason to live in Europe ...

So here are some great quotes from this book, Who's Afraid of Opera, by Michael Walsh - you'll recognize his name as music critic for TIME magazine.

BTW, I took the what opera would you be quiz on facebook and I'd be "The Magic Flute." That's Mozart, and I can't think of a "nicer" opera to "be." This is the best starter-opera, in fact it was mine, and wonderful for kids as well as adults. While I prefer Verdi and Puccini, operas with the dynomite arias (like "Othello" and "Madama Butterfly"), what's not to like about that magical magid flute opera?

OK, ready? Here we go --

1. The opera is like a husband with a foreign title: expensive to support, hard to understand, and therefore a supreme social challenge. (Cleveland Armory)


2. I have always believed that opera is a planet where the muses work together, join hands and celebrate all the arts. (Franco Zeffirelli)


3. To write an opera demands a range of skills that are not limited simply to the musical. The opera composer must also be a judge of literary merit, able to work collegially with a partner (the librettist); a student of the theater, knowing eexactly what effects are possible on stage, and an impresario, adept in the ways of money-raising and patronage. [It is no wonder these men were giants - Wagner, Verdi, Puccini, Rossini]


4. Words were of paramount important to both Verdi and Wagner.


5. As proud as Boito (the librettist) might have been about his own contributions, though, the sense of his letter ... makes it clear that his words are meant to serve the composer, who, in turn, is serving the dramatic situation .... Which in the end, is what opera is all about.


6. The essential condition of opera is .... that it have something to say to us about the way we live our livews, and the social and moral circumstances in which we find ourselves.


7. THERE IS NOT A SINGLE OPERA WRITTEN BY A WOMAN.


8. It has been said that more has been written about Wagner than about anyone else with the exception of Napoleon Bonaparte and Jesus Christ; that's how important Wagner was, and is.


9. [In the Rhinegold and the Ring] Wagner created a metaphor for society and social disintegration that is even more potent today than it was a century ago.


10. Mozart admired Papa Haydn above all composers.


11. For it is the composer who gives moral shape and meaning to the story through his marvelous music.


12. Otello (Verdi) is, indeed, an opera to die for.

Facebook Scrabulous barred

Talk about an emotional issue. I was playing Scrabulous via Facebook in the earl hours of Tuesday, and suddenly something was wrong. Well, I thought, just temporary. We in the Scrabulous community had been frustrated with a few glitches ... like requesting to host a table and having a game set up with the same person 5 times.

But no, this was sometthing serious, for a LOT of people.

From The New York Times, the HALF A MILLION PEOPLE who played Scrabulous daily had the rug abruptly pulled out from under their feet.

I'll admit I'm a Scrabulous fan and spent and hour or two daily, for relaxation. I got on line as usual, and there was a notice - no Scrabulous. I didn't even get to get my final stats on BINGOS. I played with my sister, my nephew, my niece, and a host of people from all over the world I knew nothing about. Sometimes we chatted, sometimes we just played. Everyone had their own style at Scrab.

I know it was a big thrill in my life that just that day I'd put down a 98 pt. bingo. The highest one before that was AFFLUENT for 95. I have a list of my Bingos tacked up on my bulletin board. My stat was slowly building as I learned strategy from people I played with - from all over the world.

I joined the environment of the Scrabulous community - the controversy over word lists and "cheaters," the 'adult' lists, the people who would write in their requests when wanting to host a table - no porn, no chat, just fun, and brain power only.

From the article:

The Calcutta-based brothers who developed Scrabulous bowed to legal pressure and barred North American users from playing the game on Facebook.

The demise of Scrabulous was sudden but not wholly unexpected. The game, a favorite time-waster among cubicle dwellers, was created by two brothers in Calcutta. On July 24, Hasbro, which owns the North American rights to Scrabble, sued them for copyright infringement. On Tuesday, the brothers made Scrabulous unavailable to Facebook users in Canada and the United States, citing legal pressure.

The backlash was instant. Bloggers denounced Hasbro, howls of protest flooded message boards, and new Facebook groups were created with names like “Down with Hasbro.” Although some people spoke up to defend Hasbro’s rights, most people jeered at the company, calling it everything from “short-sighted” to “technologically in the dark” to “despicable.”

I have had many hobbies and pastimes, and this was the latest one. Following on the heels of a long study of opera, I might add. New interests and hobbies are refreshing!

I had wondered how two brothers from India had been able to come up with something that worked so well, most of the time.

A waste of time? That's silly. One should have some time during the day to "waste." It was fun. It cost nothing, could be played at any time, connected me with some interesting people, and was a harmless activity.

Now I'll have to find something else.

Such is life!

King of the High Cs does an F

Hear Pavarotti hit a high F.



The high F is from I Puritani, Credeasi Misera

Here are the others giving it a try:



William Matteuzzi, Nicolai Gedda, Gregory Kunde, Javier Cortes, Albert da Costa, Benvenuto Finelli and Paul Groves .

If you're a music lover, join Club Vivo Per Lei. We live for music!

Opera Prompters, Life Coaches & Emotional Intelligence

HOW ARE COACHES LIKE OPERA PROMPTERS?
BTW, what's an opera prompter?? And what's that got to do with emotional intelligence?
by Susan Dunn, M.A., Personal Life & Dating Coach
sdunn@susandunn.cc

5 hours you’re standing on-stage, often not singing yourself, but still required to be present. How do you keep from drifting off? Soprano Christine Brewer, soprano with the San Francisco Opera, admitted, in a Wall Street Journal article by Thomas S. Burton, entitled “It’s Not Over (Yet) for Those Who Cue Divas,” that in a recent 5-hour performance of Wagner’s TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, it happened to her. She drifted off, and Jonathan Kuhner saved her life.

Jonathan Kuhner … Philip Eisenberg … know these names? Philip Eisenberg’s name appears on the SF opera program as “Philip Eisenberg, Assistant for Artists, Emeritus. What do these gentleman do? They’re PROMPTERS for operas, and, according to one source, there are fewer than 10 prompters working full-time in U. S. companies these days.

Are they needed?

Well according to Baritone Nathan Gunn, “They always get the biggest applause at cast parties.” One can imagine how many lives and careers they have saved. Don’t you wish you had one?? Well now you can ... but read on.

Gunn pointed out that if you see a singer standing longer than they should at front-center stage, it’s probably because they’re lost and looking to the prompter to lead them back.

Or looking for confidence. A recent article described James Johnson, 68-year-old prompter, descending into the prompter’s box (it doesn’t even have a real name!) minutes before the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin,” where, as the orchestra of the Chicago Lyric Opera began, he kept the beat with his hands, said the first word of many lines, and [exuded] confidence so the singers stayed calm.”

Many of the prompters are ‘of an age’ – many operas must be known (and remember, each has ‘so many words’), and many languages (those ‘many words’ are not always in the singer’s native tongue). They also have to have a lot of emotional intelligence. Opera singers say they can also serve as “your voice of reason and practicality,” when the conductor speaks in that foreign language they do, i.e., “sing like an obelisk,” or “you’re making a sound that’s domelike. I want a parabola.” The opera stars look to the prompters to interpret.

Don’t you wish you had one at work, when your boss says “prioritize according to the functionality,” or “I don’t care, just make sure you choose the RIGHT place.” (This is what personal life coaches do – help you interpret.)

Or don’t you wish you had one to guide you through your role as leading man or romantic heoine in your own romantic drama? Someone to help you keep the beat (how often to call her, how often to see her), to interpret the silence (why doesn’t he call?), or to translate the foreign-speak (“What does a woman mean when she says…?”) This is what personal life coaches do.
Back to those opera prompters, I guess since the orchestra sits between you and me in the audience, and the singers on stage, we do not hear, for instance, when the beat gets ragged and the prompter pounds on the floor of the box to make the beat more pronounced to the singers. Or when, according to a Wall Street Journal article about prompters, Christine Brewer lost her way, started singing the role of another, and the prompter leaned out of the box and yelled, “Stop singing.”

The WSJ article hastens to laud Ms. Brewer’s voice … why are we so hesitant to acknowledge that needing assistance about certain things does not negate other skills? Of course you’re tops in the field of law, but that’s a lot different from courting the woman of your dreams? Of maybe you’re Wife and Mother of the Year, but your career sure could use some coaching.

Prompters are like coaches, because they prepare the singers beforehand, as well as guiding them during. “The prompter’s job,” says Burton, in the WSJ, “combines the skills of a conductor, musicologist and linguist, with an unusual ability to listen to the orchestra, keep time with the hands and deliver the singers’ lines a moment before the downbeat.”

Kuhner describes it as “juggling.” That’s often how I feel as a coach – maintaining the beat for the client’s juggling act!

“Operas just have so many words,” said soprano Susan Graham, in praise of the prompters, who are making a comeback. “I’m a big lover of prompters,” she said.

Need it be said that in Italy, where they originated, they’ve continued all along, but opera houses in the U. S. are bringing them back after a lapse.

Wouldn’t you like to have a prompter when you’re stage-center, whether it be in dating, career, parenting or retirement? That’s what coaching is all about: preparing you beforehand, and making it easier during, for a professional and successful outcome. It’s someone to teach you the lines “when there are so many words,” to interpret the words of others, prompt you and prepare you so you are self-assured, and stick with you until your Perfect Performance is completed and the applause is ringing in your ears. Also I might add, and this will make you laugh -- to tell you when to stop singing!

A personal life coach can also greatly increase your productivity. Caruso wouldn’t have thought of performing without a prompter, and because of this, he typically did one opera one night in one town, and another opera the next night in another town.

Consider, for instance, if you are seriously looking for a lifetime partner on online dating sites. How on earth do you keep track of it all, and how do you know what to do when with each contender … kind of like a 5-hour Wagnerian opera isn’t it? Thank heavens for prompters, and thank heavens for coaches. I know I have greatly increased the success-capacity of many clients, and together we have pulled off some “bravo” and “encore” performances.

“My coach is someone to come back to and check in with along the way,” says one of my clients. “Susan eliminates a lot of static for me so I can concentrate on my game.”

In fact, pretty similar to WSJ’s description of a prompter as “…a safety net and a friendly face, allowing performers to concentrate more…” adding, “They help keep complex and loud passages together.”

For coaching, email me at sdunn@susandunn.cc . Dating coaching a specialty.

Luciano Pavarotti, 1935-2007

Luciano Pavarotti 1935 - 2007
This week we mourn the passing of Luciano Pavarotti.

As happens, I had just finished reading the book his manager wrote about their years together -- Herbert Breslin's "The King and I."

Coming to mind particularly at this time was the reason Breslin was hired. Someone told Pavarotti that he was such a nice guy, he needed a mean manager.

Breslin, like most publicists at that time (he was publicist first, later manager), asked for a retainer. He said no one ever paid it. How surprised he was when the checks from Pavarotti arrived every month, like clockwork.

Breslin also admits, somewhat begrudgingly, what all of us in public relations know - you can only promote what is promotable.

Surely there will not be another Pavarotti in our lifetimes.

The cartoons register the pulse of the world as we mourn the death of Pavarotti. One of them shows St. Peter welcoming Pavarotti to the Pearly Gates, phoning in, "Tell Caruso to take the night off."

Was he the greatest of all tenors? If he was to you, that is what matters.

Another shows the King of the High Cs, then mainstream, then beyond. He thrilled the crowd early on with 9 high Cs in one aria (Mes Amis), and went on from there.

Not only did Pavarotti have the voice of the century, he was eminently promotable as a person - charming, willing to meet the public that supported him, gracious about critics, generous regarding other artists. You can read some quotes about him, and from him at www.susandunn.cc/pavarottiquotes.htm .

Breslin quotes him as saying, "We are all eating off the same pig," quite often. Yes, he loved his food -- a fitting analogy -- but he also had that sense that we are all in this together. He said the critics had a right to criticize, he praised other artists, and he moved willingly in to the "mainstream." What this has meant to the world of opera, we have only begun to see.

It should be noted that no opera singer can make a good living doing operas alone, and Breslin enumerates the reasons. The lifetime of the voice, at its prime, is limited. They are not paid for weeks of rehearsal time (which, admittedly, Pavarotti didn't always bother with). There is transportation (in his case of a whole retinue, and also his favorite foods and wine - Lambrusco!). There are limited engagements. The money must come from concerts and other things.

One of the things that made Pavarotti great, besides the voice itself -- Breslin said that even after all the years, when he heard the voice, it gave him chills - was his willingness to please his audience. Well, not just please but to thrill. His performances were always sold out.

Before every opera or concert, Pavarotti would say, "I will bring them to their feet." That was his goal. Every time. (He was always very nervous before a performance.) He also said, "I know what the people want. They want Nessun Dorma," and so he sang it for us, over and over.

There is no question that he did more for bringing opera to the masses than any artist, with his late-in- life concerts with artists as varied as James Brown, Mariah Carey and Bono. Criticized for this by some, it remains that he brought the consideration of opera into many minds where it had not been before.

The tributarial videos are pouring onto www.youtube.com, and there you can also find videos of him singing all your favorites. The comments are poignant. "I was raised on his music," writes one viewer. "He is in my very soul." "The voice of god," writes another. Many mention a particular time when they got to see the maestro live, clearly great moments in their lives.

Breslin points out that while Carreras, for instance, was always planning what he would do "after," Pavarotti never was able to. Carreras has done some conducting, some teaching. Pavarotti just wanted to keep on singing.

Somewhere I'm sure he is.

For us here on earth, the silence is defeaning.

My favorite cartoon shows him mouth wide open, arms extended and it says beneath it, "Leaving a huge hole in our world." But perhaps the most eloquent ones are silent -- a single note on a sheet of music...his tux hanging on a hook forming the O in Opera...and the one that shows an empty score entitled "Finis."

I also like the one that shows him ascending on wings. He said in one interview that he dreamed of waking up 60 lbs. lighter and being able to fly.

You can view the cartoons here: http://cagle.com/news/Pavarotti.

Luciano Pavarotti

Luciano Pavarotti ... b. 1935 d. 2007

Always battling his weight, he said in an interview that he wished he could wake up and weight 60 lbs. less and be able to fly.

It is with heavy heart ed una furtiva lagrima ...

"Penso che una vita per la musica sia una vita spesa bene ed e a questo
che mi sone dedicato."
"I think that a life dedicated to music is a life well spent, and this is
what I have devoted my life to."

See MORE QUOTES FROM and about LUCIANO PAVAROTTI HERE and on www.susandunn.cc/vivoperlei.htm.

Don't miss the video of him singing with his father, Fernando, at the Modena Cathedral in 1978, Panis Angelicus.http://search.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/search/results.pl?tab=all&go=homepage&q=pavarotti+video+with+father&scope=all

Tributes from his fans:

Thank God for the time with pavarotti . I grew up with his music and my soul was filled up with his voice .Rest in peace and sing to the eternity .

Una lagrima for Luciano, what a glorious voice, our loss is Heaven's Gain! You'll be singing in Heaven eternally. Adieu Luciano, may you rest in peace.

many furtivas Lagrimas on my face... Luciano is my favorite of all times. You will remain alive in our memories and hearts. Viva Luciano

Rest in peace voice of the god :(

he is singing on heaven now

He has given me more pleasure than any person in my life. My feeling of loss is profound.

The silence is deafening.

Good night sweet prince, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. And he will be with the angels now.

Two days ago I had just finished re-reading his manager, Herbert Breslin's, Book about Pavarotti called "The King and I." How it shines with the spirit of the man, Pavarotti. Breslin admits that he never, in all the years, quit getting chills when he heard that voice. Especially compelling are the remarks Pavarotti says about other singers and performers in his interviews. Always radiant, always gracious, always generous. The same for the critics (he said he said they were his best friends), the same for "bad times" in opera (there were none, he said).

Breslin affirms that, besides having the voice of the century, Pavarotti, the man was irresistible because his goal was always "I will bring them to their feet."

Sic transit gloria.
Rest in peace.

Adio e grazie Sr. Pavarotti.

Philippe Jaroussky - the tone of an angel, the virtuosity of the Devil

Enjoy Philippe Jaroussky who won the French Lyric Artiste Award for 2007. Phillipe Jaroussky began as a violinist, then started singing. He is a soprano countertenor. Here he sings a beautiful Vivaldi aria. For more on Vivaldi, see CLUB VIVO PER LEI. He sings well with the strings. I love the plucking strings of Vivaldi, don't you?

'This young singer with the tone of an angel and the virtuosity of the Devil has come into the limelight in only a few years as the great new French vocal talent' - La Terrasse

Absolutely incredible, PHILIPPE JAROUSSKY, Vivaldi aria

Paul Potts Criticized by Herb Breslin, Pavarotti's Former Manager

Hollywood Hookup : Paul Potts Criticized by Pavarotti's Former Manager - Take a Hike Breslin!

Paul Potts is such an inspiration, singing Nessun Dorma on Britain's Got Talent and winning a 100 pound contract from the growly Simon. A phone salesman, 36 years old who dreamed of one day being able to do what he was meant to do. Bullied as a youth. An incredible voice. He takes on Pavarotti's signature song. He has never had a voice lesson. He is going to use some of the money to pay off massive medical debts from an illness.

Is there something about this story you don't 'get'?

And here comes Pavarotti's former manager, Herb Breslin said (according to the above article):
“Nobody can sing Nessun Dorma and really do it justice unless with it, they have five to 10 years of experience. If they want to have a totally inexperienced, untrained voice sing Nessun Dorma and the audience is going to fall off its feet, it’s ridiculous. But that’s the way things are in the modern age.”

Come on, Mr. Breslin. Even Ask Jeeves has changed!

ThinkFashion writer says it best: "What [Breslin] doesn't realize is that the phenomenal thing about Mr. Potts is not his perfect voice (although he does have a perfect voice in my opinion) - it's his incredible story, his humble attitude and his raw talent for touching people's hearts when he sings."

Now if that isn't about emotional intelligence I don't know what is. Reality-testing ... flexiblity ... the most marvelous things in this world are not logical and defy rational explanation. You also have to 'get' what's going on. There's no analogy I can give that doesn't sound wrong, but I'll forge ahead ... this is saying that it's amazing Dolly Parton is a star when she's so short, or that the only reason Edith Piaf was a superstar was because she could sing ... or going to MacDonald's and complaining about the service.

Or that thinking we the people, when so overwhelmed with this man's story are interested in whether he can hit 9 high Cs like Pavarotti. ThinkFashion says "some people can't enjoy other people's happiness" and that's what happens when you don't get on the bandwagon and for the wrong reasons.

I love this man. I was overwhelmed at his COURAGE. How would you like to walk out there and tell Simon Cowell you're doing to "sing opera"? Nobody can sing opera. Didn't he know that? I was afraid for him. There's nothing worse than opera when it's not done right, and you certainly can't do it without formal training. It's like how can you mess up doing the Texas two-step but for heaven's sake don't get out there and try the Tango until you've been doing it, and with that partner, for 5 years.

Watch Paul Potts here and get out your tissues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA .

Vincero! Vincero! Vincero!

And incidentally, this man has already introduced a host of people to opera and Puccini. I've been checking the blogs and keep reading "I'd never heard opera before ..." Check out our Club Vivo Per Lei site. This is the kind of joyous total situation we can never get enough of.

BTW, can I just say Puccini rocks! :-)

Paul Potts sings Nessun Dorma and the Crowd goes wild

It's sweeping the Internet -- and what a tribute to the human spirit. Paul Potts, a cell phone salesman from South Wales, bring the audience to their feet in less than a minute, singing "Nessun Dorma," the signature Puccini aria of no less than Luciano Pavarotti.

This crowd (how many do you think have heard opera before? they call this aria "a difficult song") cannot be fooled. A beautiful voice and spirit, and the soul of Puccini ...

Enjoy!

Mixing Memory : What Does Your Music Say About You?#more#more

Mixing Memory : What Does Your Music Say About You?

I don't know about you, but when I meet someone with my same taste in music, to the same degree, I feel like I've found my soul-mate (and there aren't that many).

Vivo per lei (www.susandunn.cc/vivoperlei.htm) -- I live for music

This study shows that a person's musical taste reveals a lot about them (emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually), and that we know it.

In one study, people asked to get to know one another on the Internet spent more time discussing music than all other topoics combined.

Were they talking about what they loved, or trying to find out about the other person -- maybe the same thing.

Great blog article by a cognitive scients and yes, cog. scientists have been on to studying music for a long time, as opposed to social scientists.

Who Are You Grateful To This Thanksgiving?

URL: http://www.susandunn.cc/
Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc

WHO ARE YOU GRATEFUL TO?
Acknowledging the Team

This article is for you if you’re a behind-the-scenes kind of person: the administrative assistant who gets the presentation ready for the guys in marketing but doesn’t get to go to the meeting; the PR pro who writes all the CEO’s speeches and answers all the complain letters; the at-home mother who makes sure the concert pianist practices; the deputy chief whose job description is doing all the things the chief doesn’t like to do or can’t do; or the paralegal who prepares all the pleadings, knows all the codes, and does all the licking and stamping.

This article is also for you if benefit from the work of one of those people.

Temistocle Solear, Antonio Ghislanzoni, Henri Meilhac, Jules Barbier, Michael Carre, Giuseppe Giacosa, Luigi Illica, Renato Semoni, and Nicola Haym all know what this is like.
Who on earth are these people?

Well, even if you’re not an opera fan, I bet you’ve heard of the composers Verdi, Bizet, Mozart, Strauss, Gounod, Handel, Donizetti and Puccini. And I’m sure you’ve heard of some of their operas: Aida, Carmen, Cosi fan Tutte, Madama Butterfly, Faust and Don Giovanni, for instance.

Did you know that these composers wrote the music for their operas, but not the lyrics? Solear, Ghislanzoni and the other individuals in the list are what’s called “librettists.” It is they who wrote the words (the libretto) the opera singers sing, without which you would be listening to a symphony, not an opera. And we never hear their names! In most cases, the words were written first, and then the composers whose names we know so well, wrote the music.

Like Gilbert and Sullivan, they worked together in pairs. The inimitable Richard Wagner was the only one to compose all his own operas entirely by himself, creating both music and lyrics, which may account for why they are so powerful, so Wagnerian. This is quite a feat because composing music and writing words require different parts of the brain.

Sometimes the composer and librettist met in person, while other times they worked via correspondence. Strauss worked exclusively with one librettist, after writing his own lyrics for his first opera and finding out he wasn’t good at it, but most other composers switched around, finding the right librettist for the job, or one who was available. It’s not unlike the way many of us work these days, long-distance and by contract.

What an incredible collaboration an opera is. It takes costume and set designers as well, because an opera is as much visual as it is auditory, and it is what makes Grand Opera, grand. In the Santa Fe opera’s production of “Turnadot,” when the moon appeared, she iwas personified and costumed in a magnificence that seemed to dominate the stage for half an hour. Another opera I hope to see one day is Verdi’s “Aida,” I mean Verdi and Ghislanzoni’s “Aida,” on stage at the Bath of Caracalla in Rome. The Triumphal March of Rhadames features live elephants and horses on stage. Now that’s entertainment!

What we don’t see at an opera is the orchestra, a crucial element. They’re listed in the program, of course, and given their bows at the curtain call, but we only hear them, seated below in the orchestra pit.

Many elements go together to produce the opera as see that bears the name of one man only.
Take “Turnadot” for instance. It was librettist Semoni who gave Puccini the suggestion for the opera in the first place, telling him about Turandotte, a play written by Gozzi, based on a fable from the Arabian Nights.

Puccini had been searching for two years for a suitable plot for an opera, and at the age of 61, began “Turandot,” instructing his librettists, Adami and Semoni, to “pour great pathos into the drama.” Puccini, of course, is know for the most beautiful melodies in opera. He was also know for being extremely demanding, requiring endless rewrites from his librettists.

From his point of view, however, the librettists were difficult. We can read his letters begging them to do their work. Semoni was in charge of Act III, and Puccini’s letters beg, “The third! The third! The third!”

At one point, he confessed to a friend “Music disgusts me,” as he evidently had periods of self-doubt and composer’s block. Toscanini paid him a visit and gave him the encouragement to keep going. Every team has their Toscanini; or should.

Puccini was justified in urging completion of the opera as he died before the completion of the third act. The collaboration continued, as Toscanini found a composer named Franco Alfano, whose name is rarely mentioned, to complete it. The world premier took place on April 25th, 1926, the work of one guiding genius and many hands, hearts, and minds.

It isn’t that teamwork and collaboration is new, it’s that it’s newly being recognized. Most of us realize we couldn’t accomplish anything alone, while those behind the scenes who work long and willing hours, long for some recognition. “Appreciation,” after all, top the list when employees talk about what they want at their job. It’s number one so consistently, it’s a wonder it isn’t heeded more.

Richard Montuori, town manager of Bellica, Massachusetts, knows and appreciates his team. I love [my] job, he said in a newspaper interview. “Every day is different and presents new challenges. Finances are a daily and yearly challenge, but no one person ever accomplishes anything alone. We have excellent department heads and town boards that help keep the town moving in the right direction.”

Isn’t it nice to hear someone publicly acclaim the team that makes them shine? I hope your boss or manager does this for you, and that if you’re the boss or manager, you appreciate and acknowledge and sing the unsung heroes in your midst.

But how do you praise everyone? There are always so many.

Here’s a leadership trick I learned from a pro. At the culmination of a fundraising banquet engineered by many, and funded by many more, the director of the benefited-agency rose and thanked everyone who helped make it possible. Then he added, looking around the room, “and I’d especially like to thank someone – you know who you are – who made this happen.”
I thought it was me! So did many other people, I’m sure, and that was what the director had in mind, he told me later when I asked him whom he had in mind, because his glance around the room was professionally ambivalent.

It works. And it’s always, always true.

Susan Dunn, MA, The EQ Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc/. Providing coaching, Internet courses and ebooks around emotional intelligence for your personal and professional success. I train and certify EQ coaches internationally. Email for info on this fast, affordable, comprehensive, no-residency program. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for free EQ ezine.

ORDER YOUR DEFENSE BUILDER NOW. Get your immune system built up for the holidays. Shop safely online with me at MyArbonne. To your health!