Wolf Trap Opera

Brain Drain.

All sorts of things interfering with blogging.  This week included a trip to New York for preparations for our upcoming workshop of Musto & Campbells Inspector opera.  And the little remaining office time was clouded by fumbling attempts at writing marketing copy for our 2010 shows. (You’d think that struggling with Twitter would have given me some practice at being simultaneously clear, intriguing, detailed, and entertaining in 140 characters.  But it seems to have just made me dumb and inarticulate.)

The other clog comes from struggling to write a post on the recent Pro-Am discussion that’s been going on at various places on the interwebs.  I’m fascinated by this subject, and I’m of at least three different minds on it.  I have written and rewritten a blog post on it so many times that I could’ve filed a dissertation by now.  Sadly, little of it is coherent. 

So, if it intrigues you, here’s the pertinent linkage.  Take a few minutes to read and discuss, and I promise I’ll be back shortly with some sort of take on it!

Newsweek’s Welcome to Amateur Hour

The Mission Paradox on Creating Scarcity
On one hand it is easier then ever for work to be created and if you believe (like I do) that a world with more art is a good thing . . . then that’s a good thing. On the other hand, this incredible increase in both the number of artistic producers and the amount of artistic content has made it much more difficult for any individual artist to make a living through their art.

Butts in the Seats on Outsourcing Creativity to the Rich
…as people acquire competence and are willing to perform a task for less money, or have the resources where they don’t care about their losses, starving artists ended up starving more.

Create Equity on Arts and Sustainability
If the only way to earn money is through exposure, and the only way to get exposure is to spend thousands of hours making (and marketing) art that you could otherwise spend earning money, the people who need to earn money now are at a major, perhaps definitive, disadvantage. As a result, over time, you would expect to see more and more people who were lucky enough to have a cushion early in their careers (if not on an ongoing basis) persist to become professional artists, and fewer and fewer who have had to do it completely on their own.

January is Alumni Month

I love productions that contain a critical mass of Trappers.  Last summer’s Huguenots at Bard Summerscape came up in a conversation yesterday.  7 alums, representing two decades of WTOC excellence

And, in the Canadian Opera Company’s announcement of their 2010-2011 season, we discovered this fabulous pairing in Cenerentola!

As we prepare for our California auditions, I thought this would be a great opportunity for a guest post. Joshua Winograde, Artistic Planning Manager for LA Opera, is a great friend and colleague of the WTOC, and he spent several chunks of his career so far with us – as a Filene Young Artist, as the originator of the title role in Volpone, and as the administrative engine behind the development of the Wolf Trap Opera Studio.

I keep telling Josh he should have his own blog, but he seems to prefer sending guest posts for mine… Hmmmm

There are endless adages encouraging people to see the larger point, even at the expense of detail. They are wise sayings, and apply to many situations. But believing in these morsels of wisdom too much can be a downward spiral for singers. I’d like to propose that seeing too much of the bigger picture (or at least DWELLING on it) can be bad.

You know when you learn a word for the first time, and then over the course of the following week you hear it seemingly in every newscast, radio show, and conversation you have? Well, over the last two weeks I have come across 3 situations that involve the exact same theme: “DO

SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF” (AKA “PAY ATTENTION TO THE TREES”, AKA “THE PARTS ARE GREAT, TOO”). So I saw it as a sign to get this information out there …

I offer this important disclaimer first: Nothing applies to everything or everyone across the board. So don’t take this too literally …just some food for thought.

(By the way, all details have been adjusted ever so slightly without altering the point. So don’t bother trying to guess who these are about … you won’t, and you’ll end up spending 10 fruitless hours on google )

Situation #1

A young and very talented conductor friend of mine was lamenting recently about his career not being quite as important (yet) as he had hoped it would be by his age. He used the wondrous, spectacular, unreal, phenomenal Gustavo Dudamel as an example of what he hoped he would have accomplished by HIS 30th birthday. The large picture was this: “Dudamel is my age, why am I not famous? What can he do that I could not, if given the same opportunity? Why don’t I have MY own orchestra? Why are LA’s streets not covered with posters of ME?”

First I want to just point out that my friend is NOT an egomaniac. He is just concerned that the WHOLE seems to be LESS than the sum of his parts. So I asked him the following questions: “Well, what about the time you guested with the XXXXX Symphony last year?” “Oh,” he said, “that was kind of a bomb. The orchestra hated the piece and I had a cold so I wasn’t very pleasant or charismatic or inspiring.” My response? “When was the last time Dudamel was UN-inspiring, do you think, even with a cold and a horrible composition?” The answer, of course, is NEVER.

My advice was simple. Don’t worry about the big picture. Just be excellent. Don’t think about Dudamel’s explosive career. Just conduct well. Don’t worry about whether there might be a chance for you to catch up with someone your own age who is doing much better than you. JUST. BE. EXCELLENT. The next time you conduct, do it well. Someone will hear it and will tell someone else how amazing you were, but DON’T think about that. The next time you are in front of an orchestra, just be excellent. They’ll love you because you were excellent, and you’ll get another job from it, or an agent, or a poster on the street. But you’ll have gotten those things because you were excellent, not because of a larger, abstract agenda to be famous, likable, charismatic, etc. And I am sorry to say that, very often but not always, if you didn’t get good things as a result of your performances, it’s because they weren’t excellent. Got it?

Situation #2

One of today’s most famous directors just told me this story about his first big break. He had been the assistant director for many years of another SUPER famous director, and was given the opportunity to finally direct his own show. It happened to star several of the most famous singers in the world, and he was FREAKED. “How do I make sure they like me? How are they going to react to some young, unknown punk telling them what to do? How will they take me

seriously? What if I bomb?” This young director took his concerns to his mentor (the SUPER famous one), who replied with this: “Start by fixing their mistakes.”

It was a revelation to this young AD (who by the way had a HUGE success). In other words, don’t worry about their perception of your expertise. Just fix mistakes. Don’t get hysterical about whether this will get good reviews. Just direct well. You can’t control whether they have already formed an unjust opinion of you since learning their director was an unknown punk. JUST. BE. EXCELLENT.

The famous singers will tell all their famous friends about how great you were. People will ask you for the DVD to see your work. You will be hired again by the same company. But it will be because you directed excellently, not because you somehow strategized to become loved, or successful, or to get good reviews.

Situation #3

I saw a video of a cello master class taught by the most successful cellist in recent history. The student he was working with was getting flustered by his critiques, not because the teacher was impatient or unclear, but because the young cellist student said she “couldn’t quite get a complete picture of the appropriate Bach style” he was asking for. His response: “Start by playing beautifully. And in tune.” There was dead silence for about 10 LONG seconds before they just continued. It was as if the statement was so simple that no one could understand it.

By this point in my ramblings, you get it …

So in summary, how does this apply to singers? Are you anxious about your career? Do you want us to like you? Are you unclear about which managers to approach? Are you confused about which YAPs might want you? Do you want desperately to understand bel canto style? Mozart recits? Handel ornamentation? Do you want to make a good impression and be re-engaged by the company you are working at currently? Do you want to get on the good side of someone important? Blah blah blah … forest for the … whole is greater … too big picture … waste of time … yuck.

Start by singing excellently. The next time I hear you, be excellent. Sing beautifully. And in tune. Pronounce your words excellently. Is your top short? Fix it. Do people tell you that you go flat sometimes? Fix it. Make it excellent. Are your runs sloppy? Fix them. Are your recits unnatural and “un-Italian”? Make them idiomatic. The next time you sing, and the time after that, too, just do a REALLY good job. Trust me, if you are excellent, we’ll like you. You’ll get re-engaged. You’ll get a job like Dudamel’s. Your Bach style will be wonderful.

YES … I can hear the screams from here. “Do a good job? That is so abstract and more complicated than you think! This makes no sense! If I COULD just be excellent I wouldn’t need to keep studying! You can’t just WILL yourself to sing in tune, JOSH!!! Coloratura is hard!”

And you are absolutely right if you thought any of these things to yourself. I have completely over-simplified the process and I myself can hardly believe some of the idealistic and intangible things I’ve said. But if you REALLY don’t think anything I have said applies to the coming audition season and to the rest of your career, then please allow me to tie this up cleverly in a sweet little bow: maybe you just can’t see the forest for the trees.

Getting down to some brass tacks this week. The outline:

• Monday – Depth vs. breadth
• Tuesday – Standards vs. fresh fare
• Wednesday – Cuts and alternate versions
• Thursday – Stretching
• Expert Friday – Don Marrazzo, Glimmerglass Opera; & Joshua Winograde, LA Opera

So…

Jack of all Trades? Master of One?

Depending on when you ask me to address the issue of versatility vs. specialty / breadth vs. depth, I’ll give you a slightly different answer. If I’ve just been treated to a series of superficial and glib performances by artists who know a little bit about everything and really not much about any one thing, I’ll rail against spreading oneself too thin. If I’ve spent time with a young singer who refuses to show any interest in anything except the one genre/composer that speaks most easily to him, then I’ll go on and on about how important it is to immerse oneself in all of opera history and styles.

Here’s the good news: American singers are the best-trained, most versatile singing actors out there. Having wide-ranging interests and a smattering of training in a broad range of styles is a wonderful thing. You avoid the trap of specializing too soon, possibly before you have a chance to discover your unique strengths. And to an extent, everything you learn – no matter how far afield from your core knowledge – has the potential to make you a more vivid performer and a more interesting artist. This acquisitive spirit is the essence of liberal arts education, and it has its place in the development of a performing artist.

But, at the age of 25 or so, when you hope to move beyond the classroom, can you really be good at everything the YAP industry expects you to demonstrate? Italian, French, German & English at a minimum. Maybe Russian, Czech or Spanish, too. Baroque improvisation, Mozartean elegance, bel canto fireworks, lush Romantic lyricism, and contemporary 20th- and 21st-century musicality and stagecraft. And on and on.

We on the other side of the table demand versatility. The specific requirements vary across different companies, but we invariably ask for multiple languages and styles. And face it, you’re going to be better at some of it than the rest. So let’s think about it critically and do some triage.

In my brief stint in the mental health field, we would think in triage terms on a daily basis. It seems cold and clinical, and it probably is. (It’s of medical origin, and Wikipedia tells it pretty straight if you’re interested in learning more. Not strictly necessary, so feel free not to link.) Triage helps any time you have to face what seems to be an overwhelming task.

Divide what’s in front of you into 3 categories:

• 1) Your undeniable strengths. What speaks to you. What you’re intrinsically good at. The music that will continue to grow and improve because the pursuit of it is intrinsically rewarding. This is probably where your bread and butter will lie once you get past the point in your development where you have to be all things to all people.
• 2) The challenges within reach. A step removed from #1, these roles and styles will form the periphery of your career. If you open yourself up and work honestly, this music can become a part of you. But it won’t be as comfortable as the first category, and it will take longer to find a level of familiarity. You ignore it at your peril, though, for stretching in this way keeps you sharp, and it just may give you enough diversity to make a living.
• 3) Music that makes no sense at all to you. Don’t bother. Really. For every singer there is a subset of the repertoire that is a bad fit. There is no shame in this.

Now, the dangers of this approach are not insignificant. This exercise is not static, nor is it ever really over. You will grow and change, and these three lists should be allowed to fluctuate. Something that makes absolutely no sense to you right now may smack you upside the face in amazing clarity in two years, and you should be open to it when it does.

What’s important is that at almost any point in time, you should have a decent instinct for which music lies at which point in this spectrum. At this moment. Then craft your aria list accordingly.

Tomorrow, the first Expert Friday, when my colleagues in other YAPs weigh in with their advice!

I’m supposed to talk about paperwork (audition applications) today, and I will. But before we shut down our right brains, I want to call your attention to this blog post by Seth Godin. One of the great things about Seth’s posts is that they are rarely long, typically under 500 words. So visit the link. You have time.

Welcome back. Think about Seth’s hierarchy of success as you approach this audition season, and focus on the top two as he suggests:

1. Attitude. This permeates everything, in surprising ways. More of it than you think is telegraphed to others, and it has unavoidable implications for your staying power and the quality of your work. Yes, working your way up in any business is tough, and the entry level in almost any field has its peculiar challenges. But if you find yourself bitter already, this doesn’t bode well.

2. Approach. No amount of careful attention at the 11th hour will save you if your beginnings are thoughtless and haphazard. Care about the details. Which brings us to….

Paperwork!

Look at it this way. If you were pounding the pavement looking for a “real” job* right now, you’d be writing dozens and dozens of customized cover letters and tweaking multiple versions of your resume. So cranking your way through a modest number of YAP applications is not hardship duty.

Pay attention to the instructions. If it requires you to regurgitate things already on your resume, just do it. Do not say “refer to resume” if the instructions say not to. It sounds petty, but if I’m looking at 700-800 forms, I need to be able to compare apples-to-apples, not sift through resume columns.

Don’t send materials that aren’t requested. If you already have a press kit with audio, review clippings, professionally written bio, etc, then good for you. We just can’t pay any attention to them right now, though. Although it makes me cringe to toss them, I will. For years I would set those things asidebecause I couldn’t bear to trash them, then still have to toss them months or years later. Don’t waste your time and money sending them to us. (More discussion of résumés and headshots in a couple of weeks.)

And finally, reconcile yourself to paying the fee if that’s what’s required. You don’t have to like it. I don’t like spending money either. And I know how little money you have. (A few years ago I found the ledger in which I kept a record of our expenses while my husband and I were in grad school. 25 cents entries for every newspaper or Diet Coke, meticulously accounted for.)

So if there were ways for us to avoid charging, we would. We’ve been looking for audition tour underwriters for decades and will continue to do so. We could hold court here in our own theatre and make everyone come to us, but that would be neither fair nor fruitful. So until we find a way to pay for the travel, lodging, space rental, pianists, monitors, staff time and server space, we’ll have to charge a fee.

As to application fees vs. audition fees, well, that’s a bit more volatile a subject. There are regular rants on this topic in singer forums and chat rooms. Every so often we discuss upping the amount and returning fees for those who don’t get scheduled for an audition. So far we’ve not moved in that direction, and this is why.

First, we know (anecdotally) and believe (based on other models) that we would get many more irrelevant applications from folks who aren’t really in our target demographic if application were free. And we’d get a lot more incompletely and inaccurately submitted materials. But I don’t want to overstate this, for it isn’t the big reason.

The real reason? It takes time (and therefore money) for us to seriously consider every application. Data entry isn’t a big problem now because most of our stuff is digitally submitted and goes directly into the database. But we do have to pay for server space to receive and manipuate the data. We track submissions and match them up to materials (resumes and headshots) and recommendation letters (Studio only). Then at least two of us look at every single resume and form. In detail. We make remarks about our decisions. So that, if we turn you down (and yes, take your money), and next year you apply again with some significant progress being made in the meantime, we’ll know that we should really consider your application in a new light. This process consumes most of our work hours for over a month.

So go ahead and flame if you like. We can take it, and we know you mean it in the best of all possible ways.

* Just kidding. Find yourself a sense of humour. It will be more useful than you can ever imagine.