By Marie-Louise Gumuchian
LONDON (Reuters) – From singers Ariana Grande and Sabrina Carpenter to actors Angelina Jolie and Timothee Chalamet, vocal coach Eric Vetro has worked with numerous celebrities on honing their singing skills.
He helped longtime client Grande find a more operatic tone for musical “Wicked”, prepared Jolie to sing as soprano Maria Callas for biopic “Maria” and Timothee Chalamet to sound like Bob Dylan in “A Complete Unknown”.
In an interview with Reuters, Vetro spoke about his work and sharing his tips and techniques in an online BBC Maestro course.
Below are excerpts edited for length and clarity.
Q: What are the go-tos of a session with Eric?
Vetro: “I’m really careful in listening to (clients) and observing them and then I get a strong intuition of what they need. So some people I’ll be working more on technique right from the start, improving their voice. Some people, it’s more a matter of helping them to preserve their voice.”
Q: How did you prepare Angelina Jolie for “Maria”?
Vetro: “Seven months is nothing in training to become an opera singer, especially if you have never sung at all. And so, the first… lessons were just about making a sound… then we’d start doing a little bit more daring exercises… she was very diligent, she worked really hard, was very dedicated to it, and each week it would get a little bit better.
“And little by little, she started projecting her voice and all of a sudden, all these high notes started coming out. And we were all like, ‘Oh, she’s a soprano’.”
Q: How much more pressure is there when actors portray real-life singers?
Vetro: “I always try to think, what is it about this person that makes them so special? And if you can capture that, you’re ahead of the game right there… you can do an impersonation of someone and sound like them, but it doesn’t really capture their magic.”
Q: What has it been like making a course for the public?
Vetro:”I talk about the holistic approach to singing: what you eat, what you drink, that affects your voice, what you do all day… I try to put in a lot of really common sense tips…(and) everything that I tell all the stars that I work with.”
(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
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