Campbell Vertesi

As of my last audition this week, I'm officially resetting to default arias for me.  I'm slaughtering myself getting Tu Sul Labbro ready, after Bartolo's aria turned out to be a no-go (see my lesson about singing Mozart right after Verdi).  Frustratingly, my very efforts to prime this aria on the quick are tiring me out so much that I can't sing it in auditions!  By the the time I arrive at a given audition, I've been coaching and lesson-ing for 5 days that week, and have done all my homework on the aria in a practice room... so my voice doesn't have enough left to sing it well.

So I decided to fall back on last year's package.  Jeeez - another year of an audition package with nothing higher than a D and nothing faster than a drone.  It wouldn't bother me, if I couldn't actually sing that stuff.  But for the last two years, I've been working professionally and as an apprentice, singing fast, high music.  Sadly, it's all ensemble or in English.  Either way, it's all useless in an audition.

On the bright side, I'm making technical leaps and bounds with Ken.  I've been singing high Ds and Ebs that sound (and feel) soooo much easier than ever before - and I'm doing them piano.  Actually, I don't like using the word "piano" in this context, because with a voice like mine it never really gets soft in terms of decibels.  Let's go with "dolce" instead.  So I've been singing dolce Ebs and Ds, and (relatively) easy, well grounded E naturals and Fs in lessons and in practice rooms.

Unfortunately, I can't show any of it off in my audition rep, because I'm fighting old habit.  Still, I'm reliably turning out what I would have called a fantastic performance of my old package 4 weeks ago... it's not 100% of what I'm capable of producing now, but it's hard to be too dissatisfied.  I'm really looking forward to working on my scenes/rep for Sarasota.  I'm expecting to be able to do some very pretty things with that music, indeed!

In the meantime, it's back to the old faithful arias, so I can devote more time to making this new technical stuff concrete.  I've got two months to learn a bunch of new music - should be fun! 

One of my classes is "oratorio", which mixes lecture-style learning with performing oratorio arias for your class.  Great stuff.  My first aria for the semester is "due" this coming Thursday, and it's one that had me worried: "It Is Enough", from Mendelssohn's Elijah.  It had me worried, because that's actually a bass-baritone role... and not an easy one, either!

So on Friday I took the piece into a practice room, and - lo and behold! - I can actually sing it!  Piecemeal, anyways... which is part of the battle.   Of course, it's a completely different beast a tempo I'm bringing it to my teacher on Monday, and we'll see how it pans out then.   I may still have to tell the prof that I can't do it, but even the fact that I can sing that stuff is a very encouraging sign for me.  A year ago - heck, even six months ago that would have been impossible.

It's also an example of how the fach system of voice categorization is so confusing, even for a relatively simple voice like mine.  I'm clearly a bass instrument, but there's every so often a  bit of bass-baritone rep that I get to sing.  In fact, it's a long term goal of my training to prepare me to sing heavier bass-baritone rep.  Imagine how confusing it must be for a fach that's more difficult to pin down, like a lyric soprano!  

I have a good friend who has been waffling back and forth between Mezzo- and Lyric soprano, and it's been a real head trip for her.  It's not an easy thing to change the entire way you think about your instrument and your musicality, never mind the change in rep.  For many other voices, discovering that you can sing rep in a higher fach is a troubling thing.

What a business! 

This weekend I had a new experience in the audition chamber - singing for another bass. And a bass auditioner knows exactly what it means when a bass singer has such conservative rep: no high notes.

Or at least, that's often what it means. In my case, it really means "my high-note rep is not as good as this roll-out-of-bed stuff", or possibly "My standards for audition rep are too high to include something I've only been singing for a year", or even "all my high note rep is from roles that I won't sing till I'm 35". Heck, let's go with all of the above.

So in my audition, the auditioner asked me point blank about my high notes. I told him the arias I was working on, and offered to sing the higher segments of the role in question as excerpts then and there... but since I didn't have the piano music with me, this didn't fly. I ended up singing scales to touch an F.

Not that there's anything terribly wrong about that - and I did give the provisos that I hadn't warmed up above a C, so he was judging on raw Cam-warmup singing - but I felt like a real idiot for not having more showy rep on that sheet, or at least bringing the tricky excerpts from the role.

So I did the unthinkable today - I wrote the auditioner directly. I explained that I was caught off guard by his frank questions about my high range, but that I had thought of some recordings I could send him that might prove its existence and quality. I sent him the Sparafucile duet from this site, and offered a few other recordings that I should be able to get my hands on... my Commendatore from last year, and the concert Sarastro I sang to spite IU. (rest assured gentle reader, that if I do get my hands on these recordings, you will too)

I know I overstepped my bounds as a singer - I'm supposed to present my product at the audition, and get out. But frankly, I know that I do the role in question very well, and I really want to be a part of this production. It was my mistake not to present a more complete picture of my vocal ability at the audition. I hope the auditioner won't be taken aback by my gall at writing him directly.

This means some revising of my audition guidelines: make sure to show off all of your abilities, particularly those that are usually a problem for your fach. Within those boundaries, select the most conservative, roll-out-of-bed repertoire you can. How's that?

Today was going to be a big day for me.  Today, I was going to crash my first audition.

 Tanglewood was one of the summer opportunities whose application due date flew by me this year.  It's a very prestigious program, and by all accounts a very good one, too (those two do not always correlate).  But the application required a recording, and at that point I hadn't finished mine. 

Their audition is at CCM today, and I thought "what the hell?  Let's try crashing!"  I'm gonna be here all day anyways, right?  So I got all dressed in my suit, warmed my voice up just right, and went to a computer lab to print off my materials.

The usual process for crashing an audition is to arrive with a filled-out application in hand, along with all your usual promo items (resume, headshot, audition rep list).  You sit outside THE CHAMBER and wait for someone to no-show.  Then you take their time slot, and sing the shit out of it.

In looking at the Tanglewood application however, I realized that this was not an audition I would be doing today.  They want every singer to bring a complete repertoire list to their audition, with a special emphasis on song.  Asterisks for the pieces you've performed.  You must also bring a letter of reference from a non-teacher.   And then your usual materials on top of that.

And you know, that's just not going to happen.  I don't want to begin to think about the songs I've learned - I've given annual concerts since 2002, remember - and honestly, if the program has that much emphasis on art song... it probably isn't for me.  There really isn't a very large repertoire of art songs written for specialty voice types like a low bass.  What's more - and here I brace myself for the onslaught of rebukes - I just don't like art song that much. 

Art song always feels somehow unsatisfying to me. To have a piece of music void of a larger dramatic movement just doesn't thrill me the same way.  The scale of that kind of singing is also no fun for me, especially the way they are sung nowadays.  One is expected to scale down one's voice, to perform dynamics that would never carry across a proscenium, and to cherish each little note with a caressing touch.  It's not that any of this is impossible for me (though the ranges tend to be challenging, certainly)... it really is that it's fundamentally unsatisfying to whatever it is that moves me to love my music.

I like a plot and theme that moves explicitly in the music.  I like singing about concrete things.  I like singing when the stakes are high for a character, and the music is moving the drama somewhere.  With individual exceptions, art song generally doesn't do these things.

 I should mention that there are definite exceptions.  One is permitted operatic-scale dynamics on certain individual songs, or in particular cycles.  I get a reasonable facsimile of the drama I enjoy when a piece of music intersects with my own life.  For example, Poulenc's "Ponts de Cé" is a piece with great personal meaning to me, and I love singing it.  Or more obviously, individual pieces of great Romantic cycles that have a connection to my personal love life.  (can we say "Ich Grolle Nicht"?)  But these exceptions form only a small handful of the larger song repertory.  

I sing arias and oratorio whenever I can.  I sing art song whenever I have to. I feel like a bad musician saying this, but the truth is that art song just isn't to my taste.

OK, now go ahead and torch me.

In catching up on Kim Witman's blog, I found that she's already posted her audition frequency list for this year.  This is a list oof how often each aria is presented in each voice type, and what percentage of applications each voice type represents.  Go check it out.  My favorite part:

Sopranos: 44%

Mezzo-Sopranos: 17%

Countertenors/Male Sopranos: 2%

Tenors: 14%

Baritones: 14%

Basses and Bass-Baritones: 9%

That 9% looks bigger than it is.... Bass-baritones make up the majority by far, and I don't compete with them.  Still, it makes me feel better to know that I have it approximately 5 times easier than a soprano of equal ability.  Sweet, sweet bass advantage.

Like it or not, one of the big keys to making it in this stage of the opera business is the art of auditioning. Every singer should know that this is entirely distinct from any other kind of singing you will do - the audition is its own environment, with particular expectations and pressures. If you want to get hired, you have to know how to have a good audition.

Most of these items deal with stress. How is it that every time you have an audition, you spend 30 minutes rushing around, printing a resume (and headshot for some), scrambling to find your rep sheet, taping music... why would you do this to yourself?

One of the biggest factors in an audition is your own psychological state, and the more stress you pile on your brain, the less likely you are to feel comfortable and confident in THE CHAMBER OF AUDITIONS. (I call it a chamber because of the relationship to torture chambers, airtight chambers, etc. The point is, (as Hank would have it) nothing good ever happens in a chamber) It's ok to feel nervous about the accompaniest, or the acoustic. But why would you make yourself stressy about the things you can control?

Prepare your audition materials in advance. Long in advance. Sit down tonight, and copy your 10 possible audition arias. Not just the ones you know you're using, but the ones that you might use in a pinch as well. Use scotch tape to double side the copies for the accompaniest. Get little sticky tabs for each piece, so a pianist can turn to the right piece without unnecessary page flippage. Put it all in a nice looking binder.

Print off 5 copies of your most recent resume, get 5 copies of your headshot, and put them all in that same binder. Print off a couple of very general rep sheets (just in case) and stick them in there too. Try and keep a float of 5 complete packets of this kind in there.

The idea is, if you find out at 1 that you have an audition at 1:30, you should be able to grab this binder and spend your time warming up, drinking water, and doing your hair. In other words, while the competition is scrambling for their resume wasting time, you get to do your important preparation. Believe it or not, this actually happened to me last year. I accidentally crashed an audition, and got a slot for an hour later. The audition was a complete success.

Be 20 minutes early. Quite apart from the good impression this generates, 20 minutes gives you time to calm down, sing a little to remind yourself of how your throat feels, drink water and do whatever else it is you need. Most importantly, it lets you relax and get comfortable in your environment. You can ask other auditionees about the acoustic in THE CHAMBER, you can get your materials in order, or twiddle your thumbs. And if they're running ahead of schedule (does that EVER happen?), you can be ready and prepared to impress. I call this giving myself time to get lost on the way. Because that's happened, too... and there's no reason why I should let that spoil my audition.

Sing your best rep. This seems obvious, but I'm going to go over it anyways. You know that new aria you've been working on, that you're dying to get a chance to perform? Leave it at home. Until you can sing a piece rolling out of bed with a cold and a circus in the room, it has no place on your audition repertoire sheet. Sing the things that you sound phenomenal doing, no matter how long you've had them in your rep.

Remember that your one advantage is the ability to pick the tortures they can inflict in THE CHAMBER. Choose the poisons you're already immune to. You're a young singer, not Leonard Warren. Singing an incredible aria isn't as impressive as singing an aria incredibly.

This goes double for the first piece you sing. If you have Otello on your rep sheet, let them choose it. But start with your easiest, best piece.

Know your enemy. I think it's Diane Zola (of Houston Grand Opera fame) who says that 75% of this job is done at the kitchen table. It's true. Before you walk into an audition, find out everything you can about the space, the people hearing you, the company. FInd out who they've hired in the past (and what that says about their tastes), what kind of operas they like to put on, and where they've worked. If you have a connection to the auditioner already, use it to get information. Ask a teacher who has worked with that conductor, or your coach, or your friends. Know what they like, and then cater to it.

I'll give you an example - in a recent audition, I did my research beforehand to find out everything I could. I found out that THE CHAMBER would be Curtiss hall in Chicago (very live acoustic, but a bit boomy), that the director had directed Zauberflote hundreds of times, and that the house loved big voices. I tailored my rep accordingly - runs and fast movement are hard to pull off in that kind of acoustic, so anything with quick details was right out. I know I can sing a "bassier" Sarastro than most of the singers he's heard in the role, and he's heard it enough to appreciate that - so I'll start with one of those arias. And they love big voices, so my Verdi is good on the rep list, but the Monteverdi not so much.

All of this information gave me a plan, and foreknowledge of what to expect. An added bonus is having seen the director's bio and headshot, I could recognize him in the elevator and introduce myself. Do your research. Know your enemy.

Keep records. Remember the last great audition you had? What did you eat that day? What did you warm up with, and how long before? How did your throat feel? What about the last terrible audition? Can you remember what made it so bad?

You should be able to answer those questions. You should be able to go back to the last time you sang aria X, and remind yourself what went wrong and how to fix it. You should have enough information at your disposal that your audition routine can begin at 8 o'clock that morning, honed over years of experience auditioning. For those of you with a mind like a steel trap, this might not be a problem. Me, I would forget my own name if the opportunity arose.

So I keep a notebook. With every audition and performance, I make a record. I note 10-scale ratings for Voice, Technique, Acting, Presentation, and Overall. I note in detail problems or good things I did. How was the space. How did I feel about it. What should I have done differently. What's interesting is that I don't have to go back over these notes very often - the process of writing them down already helps tremendously. It makes me think critically after the fact, to evaluate and make decisions for next time. And next time, I don't make those mistakes again.

Learn by watching. That notebook can be very useful. Everytime you see or hear a performance, write about it. Use the same scale if you like, that you use to rate yourself. What did the performer do well? What should he/she have done differently? What really annoying habit did they have that you want to make sure you NEVER EVER DO? Write it down. All of a sudden, that useless masterclass with a teacher who wants you to talk like the sun shines out of her ass becomes a valuable resource. You get to hear 5 people sing, and it's OK to have your notebook with you in the audience!

This habit has literally revolutionized the way I sing. You look at your own performance differently. You learn A LOT, without having to make those mistakes yourself. Two of my biggest performance "revolutions" have come from this kind of critical work, no coach or teacher required.

They say that very few people learn by hearing about a mistake. A handful more learn by watching a mistake. Many more only learn by making the mistake themselves, and most people don't even learn then. Make sure you're in one of the first two categories.

Know a successful audition when you have one. You know, deep down, when you've nailed an audition. Whether you get hired or not, you know that you sang the shit out of THE CHAMBER, and either the auditioners were too stupid to notice, or they had to hire someone else against their better judgement. Either way is a long term "win" for you: you get saved from the name of a bad company on your resume, or you stick in their minds for next year. Identify that "nailed it" feeling, and reward yourself when you get it. It doesn't matter if you get cast or not - what you know is that you created something great, which is the whole point. Go have a beer in celebration.

There are a million other factors in an audition beyond "how well does she sing/perform", factors that are outside of your control. Personal taste is one, but more than that - what if the tenor they hired for Tamino is 5'2", and you're a 6'1" Pamina? I don't care how well you sing, you aren't going to get cast - this year. Maybe they have no wig budget, and your hair won't work with their period stylings. Or the director got dumped in the break before you entered, and he was too distracted and angry to notice your awesometacular performance.

The point is, you cannot control those factors. Everything you can control is contained in that "I nailed it" feeling. So shoot for it. Consider the audition a success whenever you achieve that feeling, no matter whether you get hired or not. In the long run, if you come out of every audition knowing that your performance was that good, you will get hired.

Wellsung has a great post up today about an "only weird for opera people" moment.  The setting is a community choir Halloween concert, with a theme of "dangerous women."  They sang lots of stuff, including the lascivious "Dance of the Seven Veils" from Salome. Nice, right?  Until they had the local dance troupe come out to perform that number - who were all actual 15 year old girls.  Can we say "awkward"? 

I can think of lots of great stories like that, where a piece of opera was taken completely out of context in a way that is just plain wrong if you know the meaning of the words or the plot.  Not wrong like a test answer is wrong, but Wrong like a 10 year old at a striptease class is wrong.  Or Wrong like the wild success of the Jackass movies is wrong.

A tenor friend of mine was asked to sing at a funeral - they had him sing Nessun Dorma ("no one sleeps", the aria of a man facing his death in the morning).  I can't count how many times I've heard of O mio babbino caro being used at weddings (the aria of a girl twisting her father around her finger to let her marry her boyfriend, of whom the father disapproves) .  I mean, we can all aknowledge that this is beautiful music, but couldn't you pick something else?  How about the Liebestode?  That would be a fine fit for a wedding...

 Anyone else have good stories about inappropriate uses of arias?

NOTE: this is STILL not the awesome post I was hoping to write yesterday.  I'm starting to get discouraged.  But certain reliable sources are promising (again) that I'll be able to post it as soon s TOMORROW.  Don't hold your breath - I'll do that for you.

48 hours and counting...

In two days I take off for sunny California - and I can't wait!  Any trepidation I had with the role of Sparafucile is gone. I mean, I can't say I sound like Kipnis yet, but I'm happy with the noises I make in the role.  It occurred to me that they might not be planning on making a recording of the show from which I could extract erm... extracts.  So I'm bringing some very modest recording equipment of my own, just in case.

Speaking of recording, in about an hour I'm heading across campus to make my audition recordings!  I was a bad little singer yesterday, and sang my throat out... but I've been vocal rest-ing all day, so I certainly HOPE I have enough left to make a recording!  Anyways, it's not like I'm singing my hardest rep.  I'm a strong believer in the "good enough to get an audition is good enough" theory of audition tapes.  The function of my audition tape is to convince the listener that I'm worth hearing in person - IE not tone deaf, with a reasonable sound and musicality. No one makes any final judgements on who to hire based on the audition tape.  It's either you cross the line, or you don't.  So I sing my easy stuff, a handful of "opener" arias that are very solid.  Leave the hard stuff for the audition (if even then!).

Wait - strike that last sentence.  Rephrase: "leave the hard stuff for the practice room!"  This is probably not true for other voice types, but for big throats like mine... patience is the name of the game.  This is not the time to try and prove in my audition package that I'm the next Jerome Hines.  This is the time to pick pieces I can sing the socks off, and have them hire me as a baby bass, so I can get experience.  Lots of young guys go in roaring E's nd F's... I've got those notes, but I have no interest in being hired for them yet.  If you walk in and sing Banquo's aria (Come dal Ciel... marvellous music), what's the positive outcome you're hoping for?  Because god forbid they hire you for Banquo at 25 years old!  

No, better to walk in and sing from the roles you'd like to be hired for.  In my case, that's Sarastro, Colline and the like.  Maybe a standard like Lacerato Spirito, because it's so commonly sung that no one expects you to follow up with the role.