A secret center of the musical theater universe lies nearly 3,000 miles from Broadway in a modestly grand home on Toluca Lake. On a late summer day, the most striking feature of the house was the figure of a white standard French poodle. Visible through one of the windows to the side of the front door, she sat so still that she might have been mistaken for a statue, like the lion dogs that guard the entrance to a Shinto shrine.
If musical theater had a dog guard, it could very well be a standard French poodle. But no. When the door opened, the dog, Belle, sniffed politely before trotting deeper into the house, flashing neon green painted nails, to pause next to her owner: Eric Vetro, perhaps the foremost singing teacher and trainer of bold names on stage and screen, including several leading roles in the upcoming film adaptation of ‘Wicked’.
Ariana Grande, who plays Galinda, has spoken often and at length about how long and how rigorously she worked on raising her pitch and sharpening her voice before auditioning for her dream role – and Vetro is the man who coached her .
Just like he coached Jonathan Bailey for his role as Fieyro. Just as he teamed up with Jeremy Allen White for his performance as Bruce Springsteen in the upcoming “Deliver Me From Nowhere” and Timothée Chalamet for “Willy Wonka” and the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown.” And Renée Zellweger for her Oscar-winning performance as Judy Garland in ‘Judy’. And Lea Michele for ‘Funny Girl’, Austin Butler for ‘Elvis’, Josh Gad for ‘The Book of Mormon’ and ‘Frozen’, Emily Blunt for ‘Into the Woods’ and ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling for “La La Land” and Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy for “The Little Mermaid.”
The list goes on and on. It also features numerous equally well-known artists, such as John Legend, Shawn Mendes, Katy Perry and Pink. When a famous actor or singer refers to the work he did with a singing coach, chances are he is talking about Vetro. Always in very positive terms.
“Even though I have always had a high soprano range,” Grande says via email, “Galinda requires a very different technique and has a very different sound than the one I use to sing my pop music. Her voice is classical and operatic, and I had the honor of working on that with Eric every day in the preparation. (He) painted Belle’s nails pink and green and put little pink ribbons in her hair to send me off for every audition or callback,” she adds. “Not only is he the best at what he does, but he is truly the most thoughtful and kindest man in the world.”
Dressed, on this day, in a black Prada jacket and shoes that match his carefully groomed short beard and hair, Vetro, 68, cuts an arresting figure, with an easy and dazzling white smile and the slender, expressive hands of a pianist. This is how he initially came into contact with music: he has been playing the piano since he was five. He studied voice at New York University and worked for many years in cabaret, where, he says, he learned the valuable lesson of listening, as well as what a person’s voice is. can do, and also what it is should Doing.
Voice coach Eric Vetro is teaching at his home this summer.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
“So many young girls can belt it out and they are known for having a big voice. But that deceives them. You have to listen carefully and adapt, make them understand that some voices are more beautiful when they are not bigger.”
His work as a musician, teacher and consultant led him to LA, where, he says, “I continued to meet people and get coaching jobs. If you put yourself into it 100 percent, you will be noticed.”
In the beginning, most of his clients were outside the entertainment industry: nurses, waiters, people who just wanted to sing better. He was then hired by Craig Zaden and Neil Marin to work on the 1999 remake of “Annie,” which led to “Chicago,” “Hairspray” and “Hairspray Live.” He started working with Bette Midler during her Vegas residency, Hugh Jackman for ‘Boy From Oz’ and Grande, who started working with Vetro when she was 23. “Once you get started,” says Vetro, “it just snowballs. Now I no longer work with ‘ordinary’ people at all.”
Now he works on films, theater shows and music tours, enlisted by directors, producers and music directors to work with artists with a variety of experience levels and demands – singers, like Grande, who move into musical acting roles; actors, such as Blunt, in their first singing roles; artists on tour and artists looking to grow their voice or achieve a specific sound.
For actors like Butler, White, Zellweger and Chalamet, who need to channel a familiar voice, the first step is becoming aware of the voice they have.
“We start with voice lessons, so they understand their own voice,” says Vetro. “Then we start with the realm of another voice. It could be the pronunciation, or where they breathe or the accent. We begin to vocalize in character – I asked Renee, “What would Judy think of this exercise?”
The goal is to capture the essence of the person, he says. “You don’t want it to be an imitation.”
Vetro says he has turned down only one client: a famous model who had landed a role on Broadway. ‘He looked very handsome and charming. And then he opened his mouth. I said, ‘If this was a movie, maybe, but you singing on Broadway will never happen.’ His girlfriend called me later to thank me.”
However, thanks to a recently released BBC Maestro series, ‘ordinary people’ can get the Vetro treatment. He films it on this special summer day, when his house is filled not only with two pianos and several keyboards, but also with lighting, cameras and sound equipment.
For about 30 minutes he collaborates with old students, singer-songwriter Heidi Webster and singer-actor David Burnham. Burnham, who played “Wicked’s” Fiyero on Broadway, began working with Vetro after being cast in a Universal Studios theme park show. “Eric retuned my voice,” he says. “I have recordings of him teaching classes that I use for every Broadway show.”
Vetro with students Heidi Webster and David Burnham.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
“Lessons” include singing scales with hands in the air, dropping on the high note, or bending over and being pulled up by the rising notes.
“We’re like athletes,” Burnham says. “Runners don’t run without warming up.”
There are also many breathing exercises – the famous ‘hee hee heeee’, breathtaking, wagging the face, waving the arms and humming through a straw, sometimes into a cup of water.
“It’s amazing what you can do with a straw,” says Jonathan Bailey via email. “I thought we upped it two notches when instead of a cup of water we used champagne flutes, which I thought was the height of sophistication. He always had a mischievous twinkle in his eye and we laughed and laughed and laughed.
To prepare for “Wicked,” Bailey started working with Vetro, often over Zoom, while he was still silent filming ‘Fellow Travellers’.
“A real challenge for me was that I was filming in Canada and London and going back and forth. With ‘Fellow Travelers’ I was working 21-hour days where I either had to shout or sometimes smoke,” he says. “(Eric) sees you at all different times of the day and at all different levels of irritability. It’s amazing, you start with him in your kind of home environment and build such a kinship and friendship that he becomes a kind of spiritual guru.”
Vetro’s love for his customers and craftsmanship is palpable. The walls of his studio are covered with photographs of his students (and their various awards), and the affection with which he speaks of them seems boundless and completely sincere; he radiates positive energy. That’s what he needs to do: being the entertainment industry’s favorite vocal coach isn’t a 9-to-5 gig. Vetro works virtually 24 hours a day and often advises in different time zones. After filming the BBC piece and doing this interview, he will work with a student in Australia at the age of 5 and with another, in London, at the age of 11.
Friends tell him he needs to go on vacation every now and then, he says, but he has no interest in it. There is always, as they say, a new opening, a new show.
“I just like it so much,” he says. “It doesn’t feel like work. I’d rather do this than anything.”