Getting from here to there

I love working with singers. I am so fortunate that, entirely by accident, I happened upon the career of opera coach. I think we literally never really do know what is just around the corner and what opportunity lies waiting for us, if we just have enough courage to recognize it and to take it.

It is a wonderful career. In more than 25 years at the Metropolitan Opera, I have had the privilege of working with the greatest singers and with beginning singers as well, during my time as part of the Metropolitan Opera competition.

What I have never come across is a perfect singer. I’ve known many singers who are perfectly terrific and perfectly thrilling and perfectly wonderful. But perfect? No. But I do know that this is a perfectly wonderful time for singers! Never mind the economic situation. We have increased access to more information for young singers than ever before. We have more teachers who are willing to share everything they ever learned, which was not the case some 25 years ago. We have more young artist programs. We have more summer programs.

As singers, you have more opportunities to make contacts, to treat yourself as a professional person, to avail yourself of the programs that really give you the opportunity to become a professional person, to work as one and to live as one.

Twenty years ago, you couldn’t get a book with all the phonetics written into it. You had to do all that work yourself. You could not avail yourself of all the information available on the Internet.

I believe we need to have more purpose in the preparation of our young singers. Singers need to know that the purpose of this aria and opera is to perform it. That’s what it’s all about, performing. It’s about your communication with an audience. In the long run, it’s about your ability to make music, to understand the style, your ability to bring out in your performance that which will bring the opera to life for the listener.

You may have a brilliant voice, you may have a round voice, you may have a gorgeous voice, you may have a thrilling voice. This voice is used to communicate to people who are there, ready, willing and able to be touched, reached, moved, (or reduced to giggles) by you.

This means that the vague and generic just will not do! It is necessary for each singer to find his or her strengths and use them. Develop the things that you don’t have, and do it now, do it fast, do it well.

One of the big problems for singers is that you have only about ten years to really become fully prepared. Between 20 and 30, you have to acquire many skills and the demands on the singer have become greater in the past years. The linguistic ability in opera today is more important than ever. With supertitles and subtitles, people understand what you’re saying -- and they’re beginning to realize when you’re not clear.

Visuals. “Visual” is a critical word in the world today. We’re all computer-literate, DVD-happy, video-happy, consequently, many people that hear with their eyes. You’ve got to look the part and you’ve got to move like the part. The “stand and sing” school is simply not there unless you are so extraordinarily talented, in which case, you don’t need to worry.

Most young singers really do want to do their very best; the problem we face is that all singers are not always physically or psychologically prepared to meet the demands of this grueling profession. You must use the little corners of time to continue to perfect your craft. Do you want to make the sacrifices in personal life that this career asks of you? Do you want to give up the evenings of friendship and play to connect with those language exercises, music studying, CD-listening, composer studying, all of the factors that are important in preparation for this intensely difficult professional life?

I find, in fact, that most of us worry more than we work. Yes, being a singer is incredibly intense, stressful and difficult. It is also absolutely rewarding. But it does really require the discipline and sacrifice that many people find difficult to make. That’s something that you must consider very seriously about yourself.

Ask yourself: am I the kind of person who likes living in hotels, flying on airplanes constantly, traveling all the time, under difficult conditions? Can I stand the strain of working at not catching a cold, of not being sick, of being far away from my loved ones or not having time for my loved ones? Can I take the financial insecurity, the emotional rollercoasters, the highly complex and difficult job of being a diva at night and student by day?

The fact is, not everyone is cut out to be an opera singer on a national or international scale. But there are many ways to be a singer that can accommodate the personality that you have. Consider that no matter what happens in the business world of opera, you will always be a singer. Your voice doesn’t leave you. If you want to practice the profession of singing, you have to decide, do I want to be in one place? Do I want to be a big fish in a little pond, a little fish in a big pond? Do I really like the security of being a member of a great group like the Metropolitan Opera chorus with secure financial rewards, time and place to raise a family, the benefits of having a vacation, and a social life? What about artistic satisfaction? Will I be happy singing smaller roles, so critical to each opera, and doing them exceptionally well?

Opera is part of “show business” and there are two components to that phrase, show and business. “Artistic types” must be practical about the business phase of opera. Preparation for being a singer is a very expensive undertaking. You need to be aware of the fact that you’re not going to get out of college and be ready to go out there and earn a living like your lawyer and doctor friends. You may have been the diva in college but it very seldom works out that you are one when you get out of college. This is a shock, as you come to New York and find that there are lots and lots of other people just as good or better. You have to live up to your own promise and acquire the training necessary to get you to the top of the list.

Figure out how to raise that money, work for it, find it. You’re going to need it.

The tracks to a career are basically two. One, you have to be technically prepared. Can you sing softly, can you sing loudly, can you sing high, can you sing low, can you sing in tune? All the time. Is your middle voice good? Are the low notes reasonably good? Does the top work 99 percent of the time?

Can you do the things with your voice that will be required of you? Intervals, portamenti, diminuendo? Does your voice do all of these things? And if it doesn’t, why doesn’t it? Week by week, month by month, work on securing your technique. Find somebody who can teach you. Do it now.

The second track is one of gathering information, on languages and styles of music, on performance techniques, on interpretation. For that, you need to get all the help you can. If learning music is a difficulty for you, sit with a pianist who will teach it to you. Put it on your tape recorder. Do whatever it takes. I know many, many singers who really have a kind of fright opening a new score and just won’t do it unless they’re sitting with a pianist and the pianist is playing out the notes. It’s okay. If that’s what works, do it.

If you study best alone, study alone. But try to get yourself a really, really good coach. We have more good coaches in New York than ever before. Try having two types of coaches: the young coach with all the verve, energy, enthusiasm and good fingers to play your music so you can practice singing it. Change that off with older, experienced coach, one who has done the operas, who is familiar with every part of them, who knows all the nuances, the traditions, what’s going to be required of you on the stage, one who will help you find the pitfalls and the high spots for your voice and your whole presentation, who will help you pace your performance and help you define your interpretation of the role, so your performance be tailored to show off what is so uniquely you?

If performance anxiety is a problem – and when isn’t it – there are many ways to help yourself today, be they spiritual, psychological, emotional or medical. Get this help so that you are not overwhelmed by a fast-beating heart, sweating, stomach problems and terror, so that you can endure your auditions and possibly enjoy them. Remember that the auditions are a way of our gathering information about you. The auditioners are not judges. We want to know who you are, what you sound like, and most of all, how we can use you.

Develop a wonderful personal relationship with as many people in this business as you can and let everybody know what a really wonderful person you are, and what a great colleague you would make. Diva tantrum stories aside, nobody really wants to work with an extraordinarily difficult person. We will if we have to, but it doesn’t enhance the stress that is inherent in the preparation of opera. We’re fighting against time and expense in trying to produce the best theater and music possible. With cooperative, humbly confident singers who encourage each other and come into rehearsal with a smile and a compliment for their colleagues, we can produce that product. Let off steam when you get home, but do it at home.

Of necessity, this is an extremely polite business, a very respectful business. It’s also a very gossipy business. What happens here today is known throughout our small world tomorrow. When you are the nicest person to work with who has ever been part of this particular opera company, the other opera companies will know about that.

I find it the most rewarding day of the week when I go to my mailbox and find a little note from a singer that I may have helped. It says, “Thank you,” “thinking of you,” “Just had a great success at La Scala” or wherever. It makes our work worthwhile. Acknowledgment of your coaches and teachers really makes our day.

Use us. I find that so many singers are hesitant to ask questions or to ask for an opinion – how does this sound, does this sound better, look what I discovered, how can I do this? Establish honest, forthright question and answer relationships with your teacher. If you can’t trust your teacher, you shouldn’t be there. If you can’t rely on your coach for encouragement and honesty, you shouldn’t be there.

Keep informed about your own profession. Have you read Musical America cover to cover? If you are introduced to a manager, will you know who he or she is? Do you read all the opera magazines, looking at the names, seeing what operas are being done? What could you do if you were out there? And if you’re not in the opera house twice a week, you should be, or at a concert. There are very inexpensive tickets, there is standing room. You need to be there, you need to see it live.

When you’re not at the theater, you need to be watching a DVD or a video of a performance. You need to know the past 60 or 70 years of singers were and what made them great. You need to know opera history. You need a vocabulary of operatic sound in your ear, an international sound, not just an American sound or an Italian sound. It’s important to have an international frame of mind, that we go to museums, that we understand the cultures, the food, the games, the humor, the art of many countries. If you are going to perform in those operas, you need to know, how did they really dress in Spain in 1600? Wear their hair? What was that war about mentioned in this opera? Who are these people? Where did they live and what was it like when they lived there? There is an abundance of historical information that must be literally and pictorially in our minds. Museums are a great place to research this.

Have you listened to the CDs of the major conductors of today? Do you know what their style is like? This conductor does it with appoggiaturas, this conductor does it without…this is the tempo he likes; this is the tempo another conductor likes. So that when you are in a position to have an audition for those conductors, you will know what the conductor’s tastes are.

Musical tastes change all the time, as are styles of presentation. We are very much in a time where music is being sung more exactly as it’s written than ever before.

The question of style is a difficult one, trying to understand the difference between what French music should sound like and what Italian music should sound like, so that they don’t sound like each other. I think it’s relatively simple when we go into a French restaurant. We know just by smell that this is not an Italian restaurant, and vice versa.

We understand the ambiance, the flavor, the spices of the food. That’s what you need to do with operas as well. You need to know the ambiance of French manner. What will make it sound like the French Manon and not the Italian Manon Lescaut? Italian opera tends to be straightforward, much as their food, simple but high quality ingredients.

The French opera has many more nuances, more complications and in some way, more sophistication, and certainly more vowels!

If you’re really prepared in your material and you can present it well vocally, technically, musically, linguistically and dramatically, you will engage your listeners. Competitions are a great way to be heard. Judges love to discover young talent. It’s exciting for the people who are listening to find somebody wonderful. We want you to be wonderful. We want to go home and say, “Hey, guess what I heard!” We want to go home and say, “Wow! There’s a new tenor coming down the road.” “There’s another great mezzo.” We want to find you.

I think it’s wisest to sing the simplest thing that you can sing marvelously well, as opposed to the most difficult. You will have a chance to show your talent. Someone will listen to you. You will be in a competition where you can shine. You will be in an audition where you have the opportunity to be hired.

It’s imperative that when you get that chance, you have it all together. Somebody will help you find a manager. Keep your networking going, meet people who know people and someone will call up and say to a manager, “Would you listen to this person?” Or you will find a manager who answers your letters. But if you’re not ready, you won’t get a second chance. The second chance is very difficult to come by. So be ready with proper repertoire, with repertoire that really shows you who are, what you can do, where you can go and work.

The theater is in the business of selling tickets and to please audiences. It’s not a circus but they’re in the business of finding the singers who can be the most successful for them. Of course, you can disagree with their choice. But there’s a reason they made that choice. Analyze what that person is that got them there.

Yes, it’s true, singers have bad nights, and not all the singers in the world have had glorious high Cs and svelte figures. But they have had something else and had it so compellingly, that their voices could not, would not be ignored. If your voice is that totally compelling, don’t worry about any of the rest of us.

Unfortunately, those voices come along once in a very great while. You really need to hone your skills.

All of us on this side of the business, coaches, managers, theaters, stage directors, conductors – we need you! We will be out of the profession without the vocal talents to put on these operas and vocal talent to put on all of the operas, not just the big dramatic ones, but Le Nozze de Figaro, Don Giovanni. We need singers with grace and charm and voices that can move. Can you sing Strauss as well as Puccini? Can you sing Verdi as well as Mozart? Have you studied bel canto? You may be better at one than the other, but experiencing that music is so important. You may find an unexpected strong point in your vocal and musical vocabulary.

Along with being a coach at the Metropolitan Opera, I really enjoy being a prompter as well. It puts me right there, right next to the singers who are doing it. And I very seldom see one who is not sweating. It’s physical effort and hard work, this incredible combination of poetry, vocal gymnastics which are sometimes like driving a fast car through a lot of traffic, responding to the conductors, responding to the directors, incredible musical imagination, all of these things that go on at the same time, the courage that it takes to get up on the stage and the very strong belief that you can do it. That needs to grow as well as your other skills. And you have to have a reasonable knowledge of when you can’t. Sometimes when you do an audition for a job, you actually get it. If it isn’t something that you can actually do, don’t audition.

I think the best advice I ever got was, “Be serious and be of very good cheer.” Never lose your sense of humor about yourself and about the business, too. There’s a good reason why singers like to tell jokes. It takes off all the pressure. Keep a few good jokes in your pocket and a smile. Keep your energy, your health, your mental well-being and give it all to this wonderful process of growth. And remember that growth really is a process. It takes work and it takes patience, but it does arrive. And each day, you feel a new part of yourself blooming.

We believe that the Israel Vocal Arts Institute offers a superb opportunity to explore all of these aspects of performance, as well as audition problems. We have a thoroughly professional environment where you can confront and solve not only vocal, musical and theatrical problems, but learn how to deal with the most important person – “yourself”. In this environment, you have help, guidance, advice and support from colleagues and teaches who have truly “been there,” great artists who can teach, with honesty and a real understanding of the challenges you face.

Don’t worry. Work. Work hard. It’s truly worth it. Be exceptional. Be yourself, exceptionally so.

by Joan Dornemann