I’ve promised to hand out of gobs of knowledge to the young
singers who attended British Youth Opera’s career advice day (and also to those
who didn’t) so if you’ve come to the blog today hoping to read about, say,
barmy tenors, pancakes or train journeys you’ll be bitterly disappointed. You
might learn a thing or two though. Some of this is stuff I said at the seminar,
some of it is new.
GETTING FOREIGN WORK
Getting work abroad in the first place is pretty difficult
unless you have an agent. Well, that certainly always used to be the case, but
it is feasible that you can simply contact the casting department at most opera
houses and see if they’ll give you a general audition. And who knows what might
happen next? Certainly it shouldn’t put you off because for all the auditions
you do that provoke no response whatsoever, you will possibly do one that has
someone in the stalls thinking “Eureka!”
Very few casting directors will give you feedback, though there
are some who will tell you exactly what they think straight afterwards while
you’re still gasping and trembling in the wings.
Some companies send people to London to hear singers, but not so much these
days, and if they do you can bet that the agents have all their time
pretty-well sewn up.
My first work abroad didn’t come as a result of auditions.
It came from British-based directors and conductors asking for me to be hired
by foreign companies for their productions. And that would be true for many
singers I know.
If you want to work abroad then your best bet is probably
baroque repertoire (especially if it’s in English) and modern British music
from Britten onwards. There are a lot of foreign companies who recognise the
need to have Britten operas in their repertoire but who aren’t entirely
comfortable with casting them. They know who would be best for, say, Verdi, but
not for Britten. I once found myself helping a Franco-Russian director in Rome cast “A Midsummer
Night’s Dream”. All he could see was a list of British names but I knew which
ones would be good for the piece and which ones wouldn’t. If you go to a
foreign house and try and sell yourself as a Nemorino, you’re up against
singers from every corner of the earth who are also selling themselves as
Nemorino. If you sell yourself as a Novice (from Billy Budd), you’ve narrowed
down the competition by a massive margin. So bear that in mind when you choose
your rep and when you’re thinking about what it is you are trying to achieve by
auditioning in the first place.
Unless you have a Green Card I wouldn’t think about
auditioning for American companies at the outset. The visa issues are immense.
US opera companies won’t generally consider hiring you unless it’s for a
starring role or something very
specialised for which they can’t use one of their own, and even those roles are
extremely rare. The unions are very
strict about keeping American work for American singers. You will probably find
that your first work in the States is as part of a visiting company on tour. Though,
just because I can, I will enlighten you in future posts about some of the joys
and pitfalls of working there. It’ll be fun!
On the one hand singing opera abroad can be exciting and
thrilling, but on the other it can be soul-destroying, lonely and miserable.
There’s no escaping this and I’d be deceiving you if I didn’t make this clear. If
you are a travel junkie like me (and I use the word “junkie” advisedly) it
presents enormous possibilities. You can truly immerse yourself in another
culture for a significant amount of time, visit fantastic museums at your
leisure, buy food at wonderful markets… always remembering though that you are
there to work and you may find that all you actually want to do at the end of a
day’s rehearsals is buy a frozen pizza and slob out in front of the TV. You
wouldn’t be alone. It’s what a lot of singers do. More on that later.
There’s no doubt about it: singing abroad is generally good
for you domestic career. Apart from the fact that it gives you a certain amount
of kudos, learning and performing a role away from the acid gaze of the London critics can be
very useful. What can be better than bringing a role home that you’ve conquered
abroad?
The fees abroad are generally much higher than at home. I’ve
been paid four times what I get at ENO for the same role. But don’t let the
size of the fee fool you into thinking you have struck it rich. More on that
later too. Besides, I’m afraid the recession is hitting everywhere and fees are
shrinking the world over. More good news eh?
That’s it for this gob. Next time I’ll be writing about LOGISTICS.
Thrilling stuff, but which comes to occupy your every waking
moment once you are climbing the greasy pole. Believe me.
Labels: conductors, directors, opera, singers