Parking and Barking (singing with limited theatrical movement)
“Park and bark” refers to when a singer—especially in an opera—parks in a certain place and barks out the music. Modern performances try to eliminate “park-and-bark” by having a performer move while singing.
“Park and bark” has been cited in print since at least 1994 and “parking and barking” since at least 2004. “A ‘park and bark’ aria, where they stand there and sing” was printed in The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM) on July 15, 1994. “Without compromising the singing, she must see to it that there is sufficient movement to ensure that the vocalists are not simply standing and singing, or, to use the vernacular, parking and barking” was printed in the Leader Post (Regina, Saskatchewan) on February 19, 2004. “park and bark referring to performers who plant themselves in one spot and sing instead of moving around on stage” was entered in the Urban Dictionary on May 18, 2015.
“Stand and deliver” is another, older term for the “park and bark” style.
”The Times for 10 April 1957: ‘The Carl Rosa Opera Company has established a style of performance which has become traditional—the stand-and-deliver style’” was printed in a 1960 lecture. “The old stand-and-deliver style of Caruso and Nellie Melba” was printed in the San Francisco (CA) Examiner on October 6, 1966. “The Wagnerian style park and bark, stand and deliver” was printed in Maclean’s (Toronto, ON) on February 3, 1997. “I despise the ‘park and bark’ ( also known as ‘stand and deliver’ ) school of opera performance” was posted on the newsgroup rec.music.opera on November 15, 2000. “Most of Ponnelle’s staging is of the ‘stand and deliver’ or ‘park and bark’ variety” was printed in Cultural Daily on March 22, 2017.
Wiktionary: Park and bark
Phrase
park and bark
1. (theater, slang) Used to denote a performer who speaks or sings while stationary, as opposed to while moving or dancing.
Google Books
The Selection and Training of Mixed Choirs in Churches:
Based on 3 lectures delivered at the Royal School of Church Music on 8 August, 1957
By Charles Cleall
London, UK: Independent Press
1960
Pg. 39:
A pleasant picture of habitually ugly sound was given in the columns of The Times for 10 April 1957: “The Carl Rosa Opera Company has established a style of performance which has become traditional—the stand-and-deliver style.
Newspapers.com
6 October 1966, San Francisco (CA) Examiner, “Berlin’s ‘Soft’ Ballet” by Kenneth Rexroth, pg. 37, col. 3:
The Berlin cast did not help by singing in the old stand-and-deliver style of Caruso and Nellie Melba.
Google Books
Glyndebourne Festival Opera (program—ed.)
Glyndebourne, Sussex, UK: Glyndebourne Productions
1974
Pg. 95:
By the end of the season the extensive rehearsals and frequent performances ensured that the singers could just ‘stand and deliver’.
Twitter
24 January 1983, New York magazine, “Music: ‘Ring’ of Fire” by Peter G. Davis, pg. 54, col. 1:
As for the singers, they were expected to do little more than stand and deliver.
Google Books
Opera Anecdotes
By Ethan Mordden
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
1988
Pg. 178
Yet her art reproached that of the stand-and-deliver singer who might be able to distinguish Puccini from Massenet but not Minn from Manon.
Google Books
Wagner in Performance
Edited by Barry Millington and Stewart Spencer
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
1992
Pg. 31:
But they must also be read as attempts to stimulate contemporary singers and their stage directors to think in terms of more than stand-and-deliver performances of set-piece arias .
Newspapers.com
15 July 1994, The Santa Fe New Mexican (Santa Fe, NM), “Song of Fitness: by Hollis Walker, pg. C-1, col. 3:
Freeman currently is directing a modern version of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. In Come scoglio, which historically has been performed as a “park and bark” aria, where they stand there and sing.
Newspapers.com
10 November 1995, Tallahassee (FL) Democrat, pg. 31D, col. 1:
Family-oriented ‘Hansel and Gretel’ is not simple-minded
Director encourages performers to avoid the “park and bark” scenario
By Mark Hinson
Opera fans know this dreaded syndrome all too well:
A singer in fine voice and grand costume enters the stage from the wings with a grand flourish. Then he or she stops, plants feet, locks knees and remains steadfast in that spot until the song or aria is over.
“The students came up with a term for that,” opera director Michael McConnell said. “They say, ‘Oh, you mean you don’t want me to park and bark. And I say no. Don’t park and bark.”
3 February 1997, Maclean’s (Toronto, ON), “Nude angels and ‘creepy’ people” by Scott Steele, pg. 65, col. 2:
Panych is part of a new breed of stage and film directors breathing fresh life into an art form no longer limited to, in the words of Vancouver Opera communications manager Pamela Post, “the Wagnerian style park and bark, stand and deliver.”
Google Groups: rec.arts.marching.drumcorps
Wilmington Scores
Michael Furey
6/27/97
(...)
I loved their closer, though it had a bit too much “park and bark” for my taste.
Google Groups: alt.arts.ballet
Lincoln Kirstein
ewa
Jul 21, 1998, 3:00:00 AM
(...)
The same case could be made for the latter nineteenth century—not only versimo and the development of the dramatic voice, but also Wagner and the Bayreuth “park and bark” school of performance.
Google Groups: rec.music.opera
June Anderson’s Anna Bolena
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
11/15/00
(...)
I despise the “park and bark” ( also known as “stand and deliver” ) school of opera performance; and I will forego a lot of trills to get an overall performance as good as Anderson’s. She made all her high notes with plenty of assurance, and by the end she was very convincingly nuts (the woman must do a great Lucia)
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
TITANIC Question: About the Original Staging
Harlett O’Dowd
Apr 24, 2001, 5:07:39 PM
(...)
But yes - the park-and-bark staging for this scene worked - with more credit going to the performances and the material than the simplicity of its staging.
Newspapers.com
6 July 2001, Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), “Joel Silberman leaves his mark on Chicago” by Bill Gowen, sec. 6, pg. 9, col. 3:
(Joel—ed.) Silberman knows today’s audiences are very sophisticated. And that doesn’t relate to age, either, as opera audiences grow younger. The old “stand and deliver” operatic technique doesn’t work anymore. Audiences demand singers who can act.
“I call it ‘park and bark,’ and it just bores me,” Silberman said of the operatic technique born in Europe centuries ago.
Google Groups: rec.arts.theatre.musicals
Just saw FLOWER DRUM SONG
Harlett O’Dowd
Oct 23, 2001, 9:54:52 PM
(...)
In its way, Wagner is opera for people who don’t care for the “park and bark” non-dramatic bell-canto Italian operas.
Newspapers.com
7 February 2002, Press & Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY), “TCO singers meet challenger of bel canto classic ‘Elixir’” by Sarah D’Esti Miller, Good Times sec., pg. 7, col. 5:
As in many bel canto operas, there is a lot of stand-and-deliver singing—what I have heard jokingly called “park and bark.”
Newspapers.com
22 June 2002, Calgary (Alberta) Herald, “DIvas taught in the act” by Bob Clark, pg. ES5, col. 2:
Sing hallelujah! The days when opera singers simply stand and deliver—or in today’s parlance “park and bark”—are almost over.
19 February 2004, Leader Post (Regina, Saskatchewan), “It’s another ‘mutation’ of the Cinderella tale” by Nick Miliokas, pg. D3:
As director, another of Hermiston’s tasks is to strike a balance between singing and movement. Without compromising the singing, she must see to it that there is sufficient movement to ensure that the vocalists are not simply standing and singing, or, to use the vernacular, parking and barking.
Google Books
Opera Coaching:
Professional Techniques and Considerations
By Alan Montgomery
New York, NY: Routledge
2006
Pg. 111:
“PARK AND BARK”
Before leaving bel canto and entering into Verdi, I feel we should touch on the singing style jokingly, affectionately, and accurately referred to as “park and bark.” What is that?
There are moments in operas when people, usually alone onstage, stand centerstage at the footlights and sing an aria. In some productions this aria is “delivered” in an uninvolved fashion or in a generically phrased way in an attempt to please the audience in the rafters. This tends to come across as a show staged for those in the nosebleed seats, and it has minimal effect dramatically. In essence, the singer “parks” him- or herself in the most important part of the stage and “barks” the music to the rafters, which is to say he or she doesn’t sing it very well. Barking of dogs has no musical line or meaning, and neither does the delivered aria.
22 October 2007, The New Yorker (New York, NY), “Our Local Correspondents: Man Behind the Curtain” by Rebecca Mead, pg. 149:
There was no parking and barking by Natalie Dessay, who was so kinetic in her first scene that she stumbled as she skipped across faux heathland on the raked stage; tumbling into an unchoreographed seated position, she continued gamely with the aria.
Google Groups: Mario Lanza, Tenor
Re: Questions about singing and musical terms
Derek McGovern
12/19/10
(...)
The “bel canto” period was at its peak in the earlier part of the nineteenth century and refers to operas (and a type of singing) that is primarily concerned with making beautiful sounds rather than dramatic effect. Think of the “park and bark” operas like Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor or the operas of Bellini. People may still die in these operas, but they die “beautifully” 😊
Google Books
What Every Singer Needs to Know About the Body (Second Edition)
By Melissa Malde, MaryJean Allen and Kurt-Alexander Zeller
San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing, Inc.
2013
Pg. 189:
Singers who think of themselves primarily (or only) as generators of perfect tones and beautiful musical phrases and don’t claim their responsibility to communicate with the movements of their entire bodies are the source of all the tired jokes about “park and bark” singing.
Twitter
The American Opera Project
@AOPopera
Stop parking and barking! Learn acting for opera from Lauren Flanigan… #operatraining http://conta.cc/XB1nXW
11:56 AM · Apr 9, 2013
Google Books
Integrative Performance:
Practice and Theory for the Interdisciplinary Performer
By Experience Bryon
New York, NY: Routledge
2014
Pg. 3:
The parking-and-barking days of opera are gone. Actors are required to have skills in extended movement, as the creation of more physical expressions of theatre is becoming the norm.
Urban Dictionary
park and bark
referring to performers who plant themselves in one spot and sing instead of moving around on stage.
1: He can’t even put on a good show. There’s no razzle, no dazzle. All he does is park and bark.
#park #bark #performance #razzle dazzle #sing
by Amadeus.Cho May 18, 2015
Google Groups: musicology-announce-2
CFP: Operatic Acting, Oxford Brookes Univ., 8 Sep 2016
AMS Office
May 26, 2016, 3:56:17 PM
Conference: “Operatic Acting”
CFP Deadline: 1 June 2016
Conference date: 8 September 2016
Web site: https://obertobrookes.com/conference/
Venue: Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
Academic studies of how opera singers act are few and far between. Yet the subject of operatic acting is a fascinating one, not least because demands on singers have increased in recent decades. Modern directors and composers often require artists to perform athletic or acrobatic acts while singing, and the ‘park and bark’ approach is now largely considered unacceptable.
Free Times (Columbia, SC)
Broadway Veteran Gillian Albrecht Leverages Her Experience to Train Others
Act Your Songs
By August Krickel
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
Broadway performer Gillian Albrecht remembers rehearsing a song from the musical Godspell, when she struck a graceful dancer’s pose.
“What are you, a tree?” her director demanded. “Put your arms down.”
She learned an important lesson that day.
“It’s not about posing, or [achieving] that perfect look,” she says, “it’s about what you’re saying” in the song.
(...)
“I’ve always had a mission,” Albrecht says, “that singers can’t just stand and sing — that’s not what the theater is about.”
She coined the phrase “park and bark,” something she strives to help students overcome.
Cultural Daily
Come from Away, B’way’s First 9-11 Musical, Plus Idomeneo at the Met
Broadway/Opera Review
By David Sheward on March 22, 2017
(...)
Most of Ponnelle’s staging is of the “stand and deliver” or “park and bark” variety where the singers are planted center stage and hold forth for their solos.
YouTube
Lin-Manuel Miranda Teaches You Broadway Slang | Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair
Nov 27, 2018
Vanity Fair cover star Lin-Manuel Miranda teaches you Broadway slang.
Vanity Fair
SLANG SCHOOL | SEASON 1 | EPISODE 35
Lin-Manuel Miranda Teaches You Broadway Slang
Vanity Fair cover star Lin-Manuel Miranda teaches you Broadway slang.
Released on 11/27/2018
Transcript
(...)
Park and bark.
Park and bark refers to when you’ve got an actor
and they’re not gonna do the dance moves
everyone else is doing,
we’re gonna stand ‘em there
and they’re gonna sing their solo or say their lines.
We don’t trust this actor with too much blocking,
so just park and bark.
You’ll notice, the ensemble of Hamilton
dances a lot more than Hamilton.
A lot of park and barking.
Google Books
Multivocality:
Singing on the Borders of Identity
By Katherine Meizel, Ph.D
New York, NY: Oxford University Press
2020
Pg. 97:
Wagner’s operas are also often assigned the blame for the now-derided “park and bark” or “stand and deliver” method of opera staging, in which a singer remains stationary during an aria or number (for example, a Vancouver Opera communications managers blames Wagner for this (Steele 1997).
Twitter
D.E.
@ShakespeareJD
Preprandial (before the theatre): First 90 minutes or so of Don Carlos from Vienna. Covid-era production from September. Playful. The current stand-and-deliver staging at the Met really allows the more powerful themes to land. “Park and bark” has its place in the canon.
9:44 PM · Mar 13, 2021
Twitter
John Uhri
@y0mbo
Replying to @rickyleepotts
In an old school opera, when a singer stands in one spot singing and waving their arms, it’s called a “park and bark”.
9:10 AM · Nov 18, 2021
Twitter
OperaGarb
@OperaGarb
👀👀 Remember this? 👀👀
We’ve sold a few of our ‘Park and Bark’ bottles, and they’re out in the world hydrating la voce of many #singers!
More bottle designs coming soon!
#water #bottle #opera #choir #hydration #not #lubrication #drink #dontdropitinrehearsals #park #bark
7:01 AM · Jul 6, 2022