There's been a blog post from "The College Audition Blog" circulating among my singer friends/colleagues/teachers called "What does an opera career look like?" (I'd tag back to the post, but it's giving me a 404 error. Here's the link to the main blog page.) The author, a professor of voice at Shenandoah, talks about the various steps in the process toward a career in opera - undergrad, grad school, young artist programs (YAPs), the DMA, comprimario roles, auditioning for agents, the whole 9 yards. While I don't take issue with any specific item Mr. Edwards describes, I wanted to take a moment to respond with the benefit of personal experience and some hindsight.
If you don't know me, here's the short version: I'm a professional singer about to move to Germany to start my first Fest contract. I've been guesting in Europe for the last two years in opera, longer in concert repertoire, and singing opera professionally in the US since 2007. I have an undergrad degree in church music from the University of Southern Mississippi (major instrument - piano, voice), a masters' in musicology from the University of Exeter (UK), a masters' in vocal performance (also from Southern Miss), and a DMA in vocal performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. I attended two young artist programs (Seattle Opera and Tanglewood), one pay-to-sing program (La Musica Lirica) and did two summers of language and voice study at Middlebury College's German for Singers program. I placed at a few competitions in the US, won a smaller competition in France, and was awarded a Sullivan Foundation grant in 2010.
I didn't win the Met, I didn't win the Richard Tucker, or the Giulio Gari, or the George London, or the Licia Albanese, or the Liederkranz, or the Young Concert Artist auditions. By the time I was singing professionally, I was two years into my DMA at New England. I took my doctoral qualifying exams during the first two weeks of my young artist apprenticeship at Seattle, and finished my dissertation during a run of Magic Flute at English National Opera. I turned in my dissertation the day before I left England and had two days at home before I went back to Seattle to do Midsummer Night's Dream. I came home, graduated with my doctorate, and started looking for a job. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I wasn't going to be a singer. I was going to be a choir director, a voice teacher, a professor, but never a professional singer. I coached singers, I music directed and played in the pit for musicals, I stage directed for undergraduate opera seminars, I taught secondary voice to non-majors, I taught piano to children, I taught elementary music in the Mississippi public schools, I taught show choir. I had staff singing jobs. I worked in the shop at my church. I did data entry work in the summertime between other teaching jobs. All of this is to say that singing was never my be-all-end-all desire. I think I'm hella lucky to sing and get paid to do it for a living. But I wanted a life in music, not necessarily a life in singing. Get what I'm saying here?
First, I want to address the idea that there's a path from where you are to professional singer. I thought there was a method to everything. I get my degree, I get the next degree, I acquire skills, I get hired to do the thing I do. This is not true. No path is replicable. Scan the names of the Met winners who won the same year as Renée Fleming. Some heavy hitters (Ben Heppner, Susan Graham), some people who made great careers but aren't household names (Heidi Grant Murphy), and all those other great singers. Winning the Met isn't an ace in the hole.
Likewise, getting into a young artist program isn't a guarantee of anything except an opportunity to spend that time working your ass off. I did one year in the Seattle Young Artist Program. Why did I go there? Because they asked and no one else did. I was rejected from every other year-long (read: non-summer) young artist program, and many didn't even grant me an audition. Same with Tanglewood. I went because they asked.
"Yeah, yeah, everyone's path is different, blah, blah, you're saying the same thing this guy said, why does it matter?"
Here's why it matters. Mr. Edwards laid out a lot of solid information about how one may go about seeking a career in performance. What he neglected to mention is how essential it is to be able to support yourself in the meantime. There is no "once you make it." Once you "make it," you still have to pay your student loans. You still have to pay your phone bill. And there will be good years and better years and bad years with no gigs or only crap gigs. You may work professionally from January through December and still make barely enough to pay your tax accountant because you had jobs in 9 different states and you have to file in all 9. You may have one really great gig that seems like it's going to lead to amazing things and then it doesn't do that. Or you may have two really great gigs but they happen to be 10 months apart and the only thing between those two great gigs is a recital in the middle of nowhere that you're doing with a friend because if you don't do something musically fulfilling you'll go bonkers.
It's not about singing. It's not about how hard you work. It's not even about how badly you want it. Read that again, and understand that I mean it. It's about how long you can survive and thrive, despite the difficulty of the career. It's about taking jobs to pay your bills that won't suck your soul away. It's about being able to pay your bills AND take lessons AND having the time and energy to continue to hone your craft. It's managing the risks of this career, knowing yourself and how much risk you can handle, and making an honest judgment about how long you can ride this ride because your big girl panties must be THIS big to ride this ride. I had to leave my day job last April. I was at that job for nearly two years. I made it as portable as I could make it - everything electronic, everything I could do from my iPhone or my laptop. My office went with me from place to place, country to country, time zone to time zone. And finally, it wasn't a workable situation for me (or for my very generous boss) any longer. But I haven't been flying without a net. If I didn't have an amazing spouse who was totally behind this endeavor, I would have had to hang it up. Not because I don't want it. Not because I'm not good at it. But because I wasn't willing to sacrifice everything - time with my family, time with my husband, my mental and physical well-being - just to be able to sing and be paid for it. Notice I did not say "sing for a living."
I haven't had an address for about seven weeks now. We moved out of our apartment in preparation for the move to Germany. I've been living out of my carry-on suitcase since then, and it'll be this way until we get to the place in Germany next month. I like method. I like order. I get great personal gratification out of sitting down with a new score, using colored flags to indicate which bits are ensembles, which are arias, and binding up the parts I'm not singing with paper clips. I have a pencil case with all of these office supplies, plus my favorite mechanical pencils, and it lives in my bag. I say this to illustrate how little I enjoy the Steve Winwood "Roll with it, baby" attitude that is material to making this career work. I suck at rolling with it. I am good at making plans, backup plans, and backup plans for the backup plans. I have had a five-year plan since I knew what that was, and none of those five-year plans included rolling with anything. But here I am, rolling with it.
It's easy to romanticize. I get to dress up in fantastic costumes and sing amazing music and, after the government and my agent take their bites, try to pay my bills with what's left of my paycheck. But I'm not that kind of romantic. I'm a professional musician, and making that work occupies the greater part of my brainpower. So here's what I have to say to you:
1. If you think you want to be a professional singer, take as many language classes as you can. You can never have enough. Ever. Buy books in foreign languages and force yourself to read them. Underline the words you don't know and look them up later. You never know when you'll be on a job in a place where no one speaks more than a few sentences in English.
2. Be as creative as you can with your side jobs. Create your own opportunities to teach and perform. Don't take side jobs that suck at your soul or your physical and mental health.
3. Be frugal. Consult with a financial adviser. Save save save save. Don't build up lots of credit card debt - there WILL come a last-minute-do-or-die audition that you need to take, and you will have to put it on that card. Sephora and Banana Republic are not good enough reasons to eat into that emergency reserve.
4. Maintain your friendships and professional relationships. You will sleep on more couches and futons than you ever wish to, and you will do this well after you're 22 and backpacking with a Eurail pass. Your classmates may become your colleagues, and they will remember if you were a self-centered pain in the ass. If they couldn't stand you in grad school, chances are they won't invite you to stay on their sofa at the apartment that just happens to be two blocks from the opera house where you're auditioning.
5. Be professional. Be polite. And if you can't be either of those things, then keep your mouth shut. Period. At the same time, be tenacious. Take nothing for granted. Do not assume that other people have your best interests at heart. Read the fine print, or ask someone you trust to read it with you. This goes double for contracts. Ignorance is never an acceptable defense.
6. Never leave your house without thank-you notes in your bag. This career is brought to you by the letter P (for 'please') the letter T (for 'thank you') and the number 2 (for the average number of nights you will sleep on someone's couch during an audition trip). Gratitude is a never-ending cycle - sometimes you're the benefactor, sometimes you're the beneficiary.
You can do all of these at the same time, I promise. And if you choose not to pursue a career in singing, I hope you'll choose to pursue something else that makes you happy and apply all of these tenets to that career. This isn't just about singing. This is about grabbing the rest of your life by the horns and wrestling with it every single day. So get going.
No comments:
Post a Comment