Some Thoughts on the Business of Singing

August 31, 2007 - Since Opera Vivente published its audition dates a few weeks ago, I've been processing audition packets pretty much on a daily basis. The beginning of autumn (yes, I'm afraid we all have to face that summer is on the wane now) also always means a ramping up of my vocal coaching duties as singers seek to prepare and polish their "package" for the onslaught of "audition season". So, in addition to slogging through the last musical numbers of the Orpheus translation (see last post for an in-depth discussion of the joys of translation), I've been thinkin alot about the business (perhaps some would say art) of auditioning, self-marketing, and generally getting hired that is, in short, the business of singing professionally. And it occurred to me that whatever insights I've gained into this process over the past 10 or so years of being a general director might be of interest to singers and non-singers alike. So, here goes.

The Audition Listing - for better or worse this is generally the first step in the process which every singer hopes will lead to them performing a role on opening night. OV, much like other companies, will post its audition information in various sources known to be frequented by singers. OV personally uses our own website, Classical Singer (both website and magazine), the Peabody Placement Bulletin, and new this year YAP Tracker (that's Young Artist Program not a slang for someone's mouth as in "Shut your yap!") and Opera Source (sponsored by Opera America). We strive to give as much information as possible in this listing, but after many years of doing this, I'm convinced that many singers cause themselves (and the companies) a lot of unecessary trouble by not reading the listing carefully enough. So, suggestion number one: read the listings carefully before you start throwing together the things that you think we need. Send all the materials requested together. Many companies will simply trash what is in essence an "incomplete application". Also, make note of where the audition is being held. Many singers assume that all auditions happen in New York, but increasingly companies are having auditions in their own city. OV is an example of this. We only audition in Baltimore. We're happy to hear out of town singers (and regularly do hear and cast out of towners) but they have to come to us for the audition. Location is important because you might decide that traveling to an audition may be prohibitively expensive or more importantly, not worth it to you personally simply for the possibility of being cast. Which leads me to some of my next points.

Repertoire - many companies publish the repertoire for which they are hearing singers. Before applying willy-nilly for an audition, make sure that 1) there is a role appropriate for your voice in the opera(s) that are being cast and that 2) you are at generally the same level of accomplishment and experience as those singers that the company has cast in the past in comparable roles. I remember a number of seasons ago when we did Puccini's Le villi. Now Le villi only has three roles: soprano, tenor, baritone. Be that as it may, I had applications from numerous mezzos saying how interested they would be in singing in Le villi. In addition to being an impossibility, the other unfortunate by-product of this is that I began to wonder about all other facets of this singer. In what other ways would they be caught having "not done their homework" so to speak. The second item is illustrated by the number of young singers with very little or in some cases no stage experience who come to audition and refuse anything except a major role. While OV is certainly not the Met or Chicago Lyric, a quick Google search of the singers who have done big roles for us over the past several seasons will quickly reveal that they all have considerable experience with other companies. The other aspect of this issues is one which many singers don't want to accept but which is in fact a reality. It is often referred to as "paying your dues". I prefer to look at it as "risk management" on the part of the small to mid-sized company. We don't have the luxury of cover contracts or pulling in a last minute replacement so generally we are at first inclined to offer a singer a smaller role in order to see what they are really like. The exceptions to this are 1) the singer is truly extraordinary or a very unusual voice type or 2) they have plenty of companies on their resume that we can call for additional information and references. And speaking of resumes:

The Resume (and to a lesser extent, The Headshot) - I continue to be astonished at the sorry state of many singers' resumes. This document is often the only thing that a company initially has by which to judge you and yet they are often littered with typos, inaccuracies, and, to be charitable, "half-truths". So singers, spend time on your resumes. Make sure that they are updated regularly, because nothing causes more errors than a hastily "revised" resume. Make sure that you run them by several knowledgeable people. By knowledgeable I mean individuals who are familiar with the spelling, punctuation, and capitalization rules for opera titles, character names, and composer's names. Also, make sure that what is on the resume is really the truth. Now the obvious example here is saying that you've done a role that you haven't or worked for a company that you haven't worked for. But there are more subtle "half-truths". I find that they particularly occur in that category that's referred to as "masterclasses" or "other study" or some such title. This is where we often see very famous names appear. Now, if you in fact have had numerous coachings with Marilyn Horne or Leontyne Price, that's great. If I can call up Marilyn Horne and ask her to give me her assessment of your abilities and career potential, even better. But if there's no way that Marilyn Horne or whoever is going to know your name because your only contact was that you sang one aria 10 years ago for a masterclass that she did at your university, then don't put her on the resume. Same with the category of "directors". If you were in the chorus of Il trovatore under the direction of Frank Corsaro 15 years ago, I'm sorry, but you have not "worked with Frank Corsaro", at least not in any way that is meaningful for someone trying to assess your casting pontential. Often, simply thinking about the purpose of a resume will sort these questions out for you. It's really about giving a full and ACCURATE accounting of meaningful artistic training and experience. A word about headshots also: if your friends, family, and co-workers can no longer recognize you in the picture, it's time for a new one.

Application Fees - this divides many people at all levels and so I don't expect to achieve consensus here but for what it's worth here's my advice. If the application fee is roughly equivalent to what it would cost you to hire a pianist to play your audition and the company is providing an accompanist, go for it. You're none the poorer. If the company is not providing an accompanist but the fee is still comparable, I'd still say go for it because the company is probably using your fee to offset any administrative costs that they incur processing your application. If the fee is considerably higher, then beware. It could be that the company is just using auditions as an unofficial "fundraising" activity.

Last point:
The Audition - once you've gotten past the first hurdle and received an audition date and time please be prepared in the following ways:
1) Be comfortable with starting with any of the arias on your repertoire list because you don't always get to choose what your going to sing.
2) Have arias listed on your repertoire list that are pertinent to the repertoire that's being cast. Even if you don't have an aria that is from the same show, you should certainly have something that speaks to the vocal demands of that show. Don't audition for a baroque season with nothing but Puccini. Don't audition for a heavily 19th century season with a lot of Mozart and Handel. If the company also specifies certain obligatory aspects, adhere to them. OV is an all English language company. We therefore need to hear you sing something in English, even if it's a translation.
3) Make sure that all your music is accurately and clearly marked for the accompanist. It's disconcerting when you cut and they don't or vice versa.
4) Make sure that everything on your list is completely polished and comfortable for you. Don't learn an aria at the last minute simply because you want to have something from the show. That doesn't do anyone any favors.

Okay, well that's enough labor for the eve of the Labor Day Weekend. Have a safe and happy one. And then brace yourself for the beginning of THE SEASON! (cue dramatic music). See you at the opera!

John Bowen

Nothing Happens in August and Nothing Rhymes with Orange

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 - Okay. First of all my deepest apologies for the long hiatus since my last post. As you can tell from the title of this post 1) I've had tremendous difficulty reaching many of the people that I've needed to reach and 2) I've been immersed in translating Orpheus in the Underworld. But more on translation anon. First things first.

I'm pleased to report that I've found a carpenter who will build the set for Alcina for the amount that we had originally budgeted. His name is Lewis Shaw and in addition to his set construction skills (an excellent example of which is the Globe-inspired permanent facility at the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival), he is also a fantastic fight-choreographer and one of the countries most sought-after crafter of stage weaponry. I've always been fond of working with "jack of all trades" types, being one myself. So, Lewis will soon be embarking on the realization of Milagros Ponce de Leon's curvilinear, Op-Art inspired set, and I can check one thing off my to-do list. Trouble is, generally when I check something off, I find that two or three items have been added to the bottom of the list in the meantime.

One of the ongoing to-do items is assembling the various text and graphic components for the graphic designer who is producing our season program. This is a fun-filled process during which singers who have not updated their bio or had a new headshot done in several years suddenly decide that they need to do so just after the print deadline has passed. A word of advice to all you singers out there. Get into the habit of regularly updating your bio and also updating your headshot at whatever point you feel it no longer looks even remotely like you. That way, when an overworked general director says that he needs your materials by such and such a date, you can just hit the attach and send commands and everyone is happy, happy, happy. Also, it's a good idea to have several versions of your bio so that you can adhere to any length restrictions that may apply. A bio of between a 150 and 175 words is a very usable thing to have. Much more so than the 800-1000 word CV detailing every prize, concert, scholarship, award, and performance you've had since you were 15 years old. Save that for your tell-all memoir that will be published either during a mid-life crisis or ideally, posthumously. Okay. Got that out of my system. But seriously, singers be prepared with this stuff. No one wants to have to work that hard simply so that you can be listed in the program. Moving right along.

My other rather time-consuming project for August has been the translation of Orpheus in the Underworld for our spring 2008 production. This is my sixth translation for Opera Vivente, and I find that every composer/librettist team presents a slightly different challenge. For Mozart, the Mt. Everest challenge is always those amazing ensemble numbers where several different singers are expressing often very different thoughts, ideas, emotions all within a tightly controlled rhyme scheme. Unfortunately, English is not overflowing with tons of words that rhyme and yet express radically different concepts, unlike say "amore", "rigore" and "orrore" in Italian. With Handel, the issue of when rhyme scheme is important or not always rears its head. Sometimes Handel is quite clearly using the Metastasian poetic forms to create structure in his music and sometimes he's just setting the text from a purely musico-dramatic standpoint. Rhyme scheme be damned in other words. For Signor Puccini, the revelation was that the melody clearly takes precedence over the words. Some scholars have even posited that Puccini might have written some of his greatest melodies well in advance of his librettist supplying the words that Mimi, Tosca, Pinkerton, etc. ultimately sing. When translating Le villi, Puccini's first opera, I just eventually had to accept that long, high notes were often found accompanying words like "the", "it", "and", because in the original Italian, Signor Puccini had those same long, high notes accompanying "la", "il", and "e". It's at this point that one realizes that opera in the vernacular is not just about a more direct communication between stage and audience but also about the insight into a particular composer's aesthetic values. Heady stuff, huh? But now, Msr. Offenbach is the composer in question. Well, there's a number of hurdles with this ribald piece.

Number One - French has no "agogic" accent. This means that a word can be accented on any of its syllables and still be technically correct. Okay, now before all you French linguists show up at my door with lavender-scented torches, beautifully carved battering rams, and explosive devices filled with molten foie gras, I know that I'm somewhat oversimplifying here. But after all, this is a blog not the entrance exam to the Sorbonne. So, taisez-vous, eh? Now the agogic accent thing becomes problematic for translators when composers take this lack of accent as license to set the same word in two different ways. For instance, the character Jupiter's name is set by Offenbach sometimes with the first syllable being accented, and sometimes with the last syllable being accented. Unfortunately, to English speaking people it's always JU-pi-ter, never Ju-pi-TER. This is but one example of the fun and excitement in which I've been engaged over the past month or so.

Number Two - Elision. Both French and Italian have this habit of sometimes using all the syllables of a word and sometimes "eliding" the end of one word into the beginning of the next word to make just a single syllable. Now there are rules that govern this kind of thing, and they are one of the things that upper-level French students sweat bullets over but they also make a translator's life most interesting when he's come up with a really great 8 syllable solution to a line only to find that a page later in the score, Offenbach has elided that same line of text into a 7 syllable line. Yippee!

Number Three - The "difference" between spoken and sung French. There's a legend that says that the many words in French that end with an unaccented schwa (that's the most common vowel in American English by the way, best heard in the ever more present word "duh") only voice that syllable when they are being sung, not spoken. Well someone should tell Msr. Offenbach that because he routinely usese both versions during the singing of these words. For instance, a chorus towards the end of Act I begins with the words "Aux armes" or "To arms". Well the first couple times around, Offenbach uses three notes for this phrase. Therefore I decided to translate it as "To battle". Well, I guess I needed to be knocked down a peg or two because a couple pages later, "Aux armes" is set consistently as a 2 syllable (and therefore 2 note) phrase. So there, we revert to "To arms" as the translation. Neato!

Anyway, these and other hurdles aside, the translation is progressing according to schedule and will be in the hands of singers by the October 1 deadline. I'm also determined to work in more consistent blogging during the last stages of translation so those of you who are eagerly awaiting each new post (I hold fast to the belief that you're out there) won't be disappointed. Best wishes to all of you during the last few days of the most inert month in the calendar, and as always -
See you at the opera!

John Bowen