Can you break glasses? 
I know you’re joking, but last year at the drunken after-party for a production of Puccini’s *Gianni Schicchi * I was in a bunch of us broke into the drinking song from La Traviata (this one ). At the climactic high note, with 10-15 people all singing at full bore, a huge decorative plate on the wall of the restaurant shattered and fell to the floor in pieces.
That and realizing that the production had probably been funded by a mafioso ( :eek: ) were the two biggest surprises of the night!
I was totally kidding - but that’s about the coolest thing ever. 
My wife and I met and talked with Joyce DiDonato last year (she lives in the same building with and is a friend of a friend of ours), and I was surprised to find out that her professional career didn’t start until her late 20s.
Do I recall correctly that, in general, the type of voice a singer might develop isn’t entirely settled until his/her 30s? So, a person who trains for years as one type is taking a small gamble that his/her voice may not be that successful? If so, how old were you when you knew that your style was fully developed? (My understanding is pretty rudimentary, so my apologies if my question is confusing.)
For me, coming from both perspectives, they have a lot in common - in a band, you sometimes get the solo, sometimes you’re comping under the solo with the rest of the band and sometimes you’re playing something where the band’s ability to keep together and in the groove is stretched to the limit. It is deeply satisfying to do well in any of these situations, but the most satisfying of all is to be in all three situations in the same concert.
In opera, the most inspiring thing is to be surrounded by good colleagues who constantly challenge you to do your best. You’ll get your moments to shine within the story, but the interaction with your fellow performers is what moves the story forward, and the story is what drives you to have your moments… When it works, it’s like a positive feedback loop, and it’s thrilling to be a part of.
There’s also nothing like those shows where you’re already doing your utmost, and someone walks out onstage and through their inspiration, takes everybody there with them to a higher level. Those kind of casts are what I live for, and it’s the operatic equivalent of what I’ve heard about in interviews with people who played with Frank Zappa, Miles Davis or Art Blakey, to name 3. You have a sense that you’re good, or you wouldn’t be there, and then someone walks up and shows you what great means.
A friend from the chorus in Toronto was mugged while crossing through Riverdale Park. Not a rough neighbourhood, but a dumb place to be after dark. Four guys jump him, he tells them he’s got about $20 and a pack of smokes. They say they’re going to beat him up anyway, so he chucks the smokes and the money over their shoulders, and as they approach, he launches into ‘La Donna é mobile’ from Rigoletto. A couple of guys punched him, he punches a couple of guys but he keeps singing at the top of his lungs. Sure enough, all the houses at the edge of the park start turning on their porch lights and yelling “Shut up; I’m calling the police; A**hole”. Couple more punches and the guys bugger off, they don’t want to stay around.
Best part was that he never told them about the chunk of hash he had hidden in his gauch 
Me, if I’m in that situation, I’m going to keep quiet until one of them’s right up close and sing a high ‘G’ right in his ear, see if I can stun him…
I’ve really enjoyed Joyce DiDonato the couple of times I’ve heard her…it’s cool that you got to know her a bit. But to your question…it really depends on the person. In my own case, it was clear from my late teens that I’d have a bass or bass-baritone voice, but it took until my early 30s for my voice to fully mature. Other voices are much harder to pin down (high baritone or tenor…dramatic soprano or mezzo soprano?), and it can make the process of training very confusing and stressful. The gamble you describe in your question is very real. You can tell very early if a person has talent, but you can’t tell how (or when, or even if) their voice will come into its own.
My late 20s felt like a second puberty because my voice took on a lot of weight that it hadn’t previously had, and I had to do a lot of work to update my technical approach to avoid singing too heavily (takes beauty out of the sound, makes the pitch sag, etc.) One reason why I jumped ship after a couple of years of freelancing and joined the 9-5ers is that I never knew which voice I’d have on a given day back then…the well polished one or the “holy crap - where’d that come from?!” one.
Another consideration for me was that many of the roles that suit my voice type are older characters, and I’m only now (mid 30s) getting to a point where I might pass for some of them on stage…and then only barely. (I once got a review in Opera News that called me “relatively unencumbered by youth.”) The irony is that I’m now financially committed to having no more than a part-time singing career, so I may never get the chance to capitalize on my advancing age. 
Wow - what a story! It actually made me remember a Dave Barry column in which he made the case for opera being hazardous to a person’s health. He cited a news article from Denmark about an Okapi in a zoo that died, apparently, from “stress caused by unusual sounds” during an opera rehearsal in a stadium nearby :eek:
You’re welcome - I love talking about myself, in case you hadn’t noticed.
So, money. Caveat - I’m talking about Canada, because that’s what I know about. It’s different in the States, and very different in Europe. I have no idea at all about NZ or Australia, either.
There are various levels of singer. You can be a member of the chorus - in Canada, only the Canadian Opera Company is fully professional. It varies drastically from year to year, but on average they receive $15,000 per season. Their schedule is strictly evenings and weekends, so many of them have other jobs on the side.
Then, there are various programs intended for singers fresh out of University/Opera School. These singers often get smaller roles and/or understudies in mainstage productions, larger roles in special productions/touring productions and school shows, and additional training opportunities. These tend to be for one season at a time, and most of them have some sort of age limit. Typical annual income would be in the $20,000 range.
Beyond that age/after your time in a ‘program’ is up, almost all of us are freelancers. Up here, we have 11 companies who together produce an average of 35 shows in a year, give or take. Out of that pool of available productions, the average singer needs to score a role in at least 3 productions a year to make $30,000.
From there, you move into the next round of things singers do to make a living - concerts, particularly with Symphony Orchestras are another mainstay of our livelyhoods. Your agent takes a bigger cut, but you tend to be in rehearsals for only a week or less, which is much nicer than the 4 -5 weeks away from home for operas. If one were to try to live off concerts, you’re probably looking at 6-8 concerts a year to make a living. Most of us aim for some combination of concert and opera.
There are lots of smaller, odder opportunities, like chamber music series, church concerts, contemporary music groups, workshops, early music groups, self-produced performing opportunities. Lots of us teach voice privately; juggling your teaching and performing schedule without alienating your students can be a real challenge, but it brings in more income and you learn so much from teaching.
In English Canada, there’s no union for concert work, but all the opera work is within the jurisdiction of Canadian Equity. There are minimums, but for mainstage work singers and their agents have usually negotiated a fee which is higher than scale. We have a group insurance plan for missing work due to injury, and a group RRSP, but we neither pay nor collect Employment Insurance. Our tax situation is not well defined, either. Medical Insurance in Canada is covered by our home provinces.
So to answer your question - looked at from one perspective, I’ve been a professional since I joined Equity 26 years ago. From another perspective, it’s not like you sign up and you’re set for life. In that period, I’ve been a choruster, a member of a program, I’ve had a couple of day jobs, one of which lasted about a year while I was in the chorus. I’ve had other years where I got to pay off old debts, top up the RRSPs and put some aside. I’d have had to quit on a couple of occasions if I hadn’t had the support of my wife and family, and in general, I’m very conscious of the fact that my vocation is more of a calling than a profession. The hardest part is the uncertainty - I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve finished one gig with no real idea of when the next one will come along. I’m not trying to be whiny here, and I apologize if I’ve given that impression. I make less than many of my friends, but I decided long ago that my personal artistic satisfaction was worth more to me than amassing wealth. And something will come along, it always does…
I’m also not a typical opera singer because I also play and teach guitar; I’ve gone from hobby to obsession to profession on guitar as well. Under my list of odd things to have on the side, I’ve been in musicals, commercials and voice-overs, I’ve been a subway musician, I’ve started playing in pit bands, I play and sing background for weddings, funerals, bar mitzvahs, satanic orgies… whatever anyone’s willing to pay me for.
Then there are the people who develop international careers; for your career to have attained a certain momentum takes an interesting combination of dedication, talent, ambition, demand, stamina, personality and fame. For them, the sky is the limit in terms of making a living, but they also represent a fraction of one percent of the profession.
Depends on the show, but there’s lots of interchangeability. The styles are different, but it’s still telling a story through music and singing. It’s more like asking a local baseball player if he can play softball… At different times, I’ve been in Carousel, My Fair Lady and Les Mis. I have a Man of La Mancha coming up soon.
I don’t know in the US, but in Canada - John Fanning, John Mac Master, Gary Rideout and Rebecca Caine all sang in Phantom of the Opera. Tom Goerz and I were both in Les Mis. John F., John Mac M. and Tom G. have all sung at the Met since their performances in the musicals.
Paulo Szot, who just won the Tony for ‘South Pacific’ was a terrific Escamillo in ‘Carmen’ in Toronto a couple of years ago.
Rebecca Caine deserves a special story - she was the original ‘Christine’ in Phantom in Toronto, and she was cast in the Canadian Opera Company production of ‘Lulu’ in 1991. There was much bitter gossip amongst the chorus and ensemble centered around how she was cast for her looks, she couldn’t possibly be heard, her German was terrible, she’d never be able to learn such hard music. She put in a solid year of work on the part, and didn’t listen to any of the negativity around her. First rehearsal - you could play any bar of the piece and she’d tell you exactly where we were, who had just sung, what her next line was, how she wanted to shape the next phrase. She looked fabulous, her dramatic line was completely thought through, her German was exsquisite, and she was game for any wacko thing the director threw at her. I was only ‘The Journalist’ in that production, but I listened in the wings every night. She earned a lot of respect with that production, and lots of people learned not to underestimate a performer because they had done musicals.
Yeah, since I settled into baritonedom, my bottom has continued to fill out and become richer, smoother, and, well, better. Sometimes I really feel like saying “to hell with financial security and family stability, I want to sing!” Not gonna happen though. Even if I really had the opportunity, I am always going to be crippled by the fact that I’m a baritone, and I’m short (and my voice isn’t big enough for Rigoletto).
What did you think of the opera singer on tonight’s “America’s Got Talent?”
Didn’t see it. What’d he sing?
(Stupid question; they always sing Nessun Dorma.)
This guy? (Oh, look at that, he’s singing “Nessun Dorma”).
Awful. Flat, unmusical… just bad.
Damn…that’s much worse than I expected. Plus, what’s with the wierd cuts in the aria? It’s not very long to begin with.
Do you dislike Nessun Dorma because of its ubiquity?
Full disclosure: Nessun Dorma was the first operatic piece I can remember hearing - it was the official theme of the 1990 (football/soccer) World Cup in Italy.
No, on the contrary, I love “Nessun Dorma” when it’s well sung. Unfortunately, it’s all too often sung by people who think they can sing but can’t, and it’s not an easy aria (it’s short, but pounds away at the top pretty consistently). It’s also almost always misinterpreted (by amateurs, at least); it’s not a tender love song, it’s an assertion of impending victory.
My non-professional-opera-singer – heck, my I haven’t had a voice lesson in over a decade self…
I have heard worse but well… I’m hearing this through a pair of headphones without an awesome sound card, but I actually did hear better at Macaroni Grill last Sunday.
I don’t know the format of the show; it’s possible he was required to cut the aria down to that length. Er, unlike the people in the youtube comments, I would not get his CD.
When I was in Catholic school, around the seventh grade, we had a professional opera-singer come to perform one song, “On Eagle’s Wings”. I have a very difficult time listening to that song now because of his performance – it was so incredibly stirring, so moving, that I have never been able to forget it. The room was filled with his voice, and yet it was not loud, per se. It was like every surface in the church vibrated with the music. It was like being inside the music.
I took singing fairly seriously in high school but did nothing with it later. I took “Per la gloria d’adorarvi” to State and had a pretty good showing despite a head cold. 
My treatment was somewhat different from above, being neither male nor Pavarotti. He took a lot more risks than I did, had a bit more fun with it and fun in different places. It’s a joy to listen to it again, honestly.
Oh! I should ask a question. I’m really not planning on getting into singing for anything more than a hobby – it’s not my life, and it would have to become my life if it was to become my living too. I can just join a choir, since we have a few of them around town, but I think I need a real live one on one voice teacher to train me back up. How would you suggest a person look for one?
What are some good websites for singers?
What method of support do you use? I forget the exact names that my teacher talked about. Resistance-down was one. He mentioned there were three main methods that singers adopted. Two involved the central abs and one used the side abs. Man I sound so ignorant…
If you live near a college or university with a music department, you can start there. Call and ask if they have a list of private teachers for referrals. If you do join a choir in your area, ask other members if they’ve ever studied privately and if there’s anyone they would recommend. Word of mouth is usually the best way. There are also lists of teachers available at websites like this one . Don’t be afraid to try a few teachers if you don’t feel like the first one you go to is a good match. Also, beware of bargain-hunting. Don’t be afraid to pay for a few good lessons with a quality teacher.
Good luck!