Campbell Vertesi

I don't need to post much content here.  If you've been reading my postings for the last few weeks, you know exactly what I mean.

But tonight I've come across a couple of phenomenal posts on other sites that deal with the issue, and which helped me feel a little better.  A little linky goodness:

Have a vegetable

Inside Wolf Trap Opera Casting

 I also had a very interesting talk with my father-in-law about sports - really, one doesn't talk about much else with him - that turned into a private pep talk.  He had no idea he was giving me a motivational chat, but it turned out that way.  He was telling me about a kid on my brother-in-law's football team, who was considering leaving the team in his last year of high school.  And it's so sappy to say this, but I really empathised with this kid I've never met whose name I'll never recall.  Because I really was thinking about quitting.

So my father-in-law reminded me about all of the other things I get from singing, and how much I've already invested here.  It would be stupid to stop now - I've put in so much energy and time, and I'm only starting to reap the rewards.  I have nothing to complain about, except that the structure of the industry is really hard for singers.  Well, yeah it is.  Tough shit.  This kid had put up with three years of working his tail off in practice, but getting hardly any play time.  I've gotten lots of play time - much more than most of my colleagues at my level.  So dealing with the opera industry means wading through a lot of crap.  That really shouldn't stop me.

i made my decision about my career six years ago, and I still believe that I have a product worth developing.  I know that this is a tough business, even for basses.  But dammit, I'm going to keep shovelling the shit until something sticks.  Maybe I'm stubborn, but I really don't see enough of a reason to give up yet.  The bullshit around young artist auditions is really only the foothills of the vast mountain range of bullshit that I'm going to have to deal with in this business.  But this is the only business that could motivate me to deal with it. 

My name is Campbell Vertesi, and I'm still an opera singer. 

ed: sorry for the disgusting analogy there in the last paragraph.  Pretty foul.  I'll post some clean stuff next time to make up for it, I promise.

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! 

I left San Francisco and flew to Chicago directly for an audition weekend.  Merola on Saturday, with a possible Sunday callback.  There was some bouncing around between the houses of my generous friends - no couch sleeping this time, everyone had an extra bed for me - but it was otherwise a nice little trip. 

For Merola, I sang my Verdi aria, Il Lacerato Spirito.  I felt quite good about the whole thing, comfortable throughout.  Hell, why dance around it - I felt like I sang the shit out of that audition.  Unfortunately, no call back there.  I suppose they heard another bass they liked better for Commendatore.  Still, at least I presented myself well.  Hopefully they'll hear me again next year.

I found out that Des Moines Metro Opera was holding auditions int he same building that same afternoon.  Perfect opportunity to crash, right?  I showed up with my resume and headshot, and amazingly they had enough time to hear me.  I sang not so amazingly.

Maybe it was how live the hall was, maybe I was just vocally tired (I've been working particularly hard on my recital rep lately), but that Verdi wasn't as good as it had been a few minutes ago.  And then they called Bartolo's aria... which had been fine for the previous two weeks.  I was excited to show what I could do with it in an audition.

And here I learned a life lesson: it's a bitch to go from Verdi to Mozart in under 30 seconds.  I started out OK in that second aria, but by the time I got to the end, I was dying up there. Really, I don't know if I've ever botched an aria quite that badly.

So despite the fact that I sing it well, I'm taking Bartolo off the package for the rest of the year... or at least until I can sing it well right after singing Verdi.

 Anyways, them's the lumps, right?  Everyone has to sing badly sometimes.  At least mine was for a Young Artist audition.  Could have been much much worse....

My friend and I walked out. 

But first, the positives: the singing was good, though our seats weren't the best aurally (Orchestra Right, 5 rows in.  Perfect if you're a trombone fan, not so great for the overall effect).  I could hear a lot about the voices, though it wasn't as overwhelming a sensation as I normally like. Tamino had wonderful high notes, but his voice was too heavy for my taste in the role.  I like my Mozart tenors easy and lyrical. This guy sounded good, but I really wanted to hear him sing Puccini.  The Papageno was a great vocal match for the part, and had a wonderful sense of comic timing.  I assume it was the director that asked him for so much old-timey mugging; I find comedy much funnier when it comes from a character who takes himself more seriously.  The Queen of the Night was a particular highlight - her O Zittre Nicht was dynamically nuanced, musically exciting, and generally bang on.  I'm always frustrated by the lack of movement traditionally afforded the QoN in this aria, and this show was no exception.  They chose exciting production machinery over exciting character drama as per usual: the Queen descended in a stage-machine moon, and delivered her aria standing a good 15 feet off the stage - and a good 20 feet back from the acoustic sweet spot for the hall.  It really says something about Erika Miklósa that she could dominate the aria so well while being upstaged so badly by the production.

And now the highlight - why we left.  The treatment of Monostatos and his "moors" was just offensive.  For the uninitiated: there's always some issue in the Flute with the treatment of the black slave characters - not to mention the generally misogynistic text - and different productions gloss over it differently.  The fact is, in the 18th century black people were considered less than human, and "blackface" style comedy was cutting edge humor.  Monostatos is written as that kind of character, but there is a lot of room for flexibility if you look for it.  Most productions do, and make the whole thing unoffensive to modern tastes with minimal intervention.

So maybe this was a traditionalist production.  Monostatos and his gang were essentially in blackface, albeit in different colors. Neon spandex, padded to look like an 18th century charicature of a black man, with huge buttocks and haunches, a gut, and parody tribal markings all over their bodies.  Matching face paint.  Their clothing was a loincloth and turban, generally with big lobe-stretching stage earrings and primitive stylized jewellery. The whole crew cavorted about and acted like idiots - this much is certainly traditional, but given the "green-face" costuming, it came off as a racial caricature of the stupid negro tribesmen.  I kept looking for a bucket of fried chicken to appear onstage.

Monostatos from a production photo (too bad you can't see his stance, or his buddies):

 Now, maybe I'm just over sensitive about this sort of thing.  After all,  I live in a city where racial tension is a very serious issue.  In in truth, coming from a part of Canada where racism is a relatively minor issue (relatively), just the fact that I live in a country where lynchings still occur makes me edgy about the whole thing.  Maybe they really wanted to depict tubby aliens with big posteriors, wearing their own tribal markings/loincloths/turbans and diving around like idiots.  This viewer was not convinced however, and even less so by the first act finale, when Monastatos looked like he wanted nothing more than to shout out "massa, massa!".  All you had to do is change the color of the leotard, and voila! Old time blackface comedy.  Don't we all wish THAT made a comeback.  My New York/South American friend felt the same way, and we didn't come back after the intermission.

It's the first time I've ever walked out of an opera.  I appreciate that many people will think I overreacted to a squat green man costume, and that's ok.  But my reaction was shock, then discomfort, then disgust.  I could not stay in good conscience.

I wonder what I would do if I were IN a production that incorporated elements like this?  It gets a lot harder to leave at the intermission when you're paid to stay. :) 

Saturday evening was my first audition of the season - Sarasota Opera, hearing singers in Chicago.

For a first audition, I felt good about it.  At the last minute I quailed and took La Vendetta off my package.  It's just not quite at the point I want for an audition aria... I like my audition pieces to be roll-out-of-bed-and-sing confident, and this is just not there yet. I'm leaving it on for the rest of the season though: I'm about to spend two weeks working on that role.  I expect it to pass that line of comfort by the time the shows are done.

Anyways, this audition was in a room I hadn't seen or sung in before.  It was an odd, long hall with a boomy quality to it... though pleasant for the performer, to get to hear oneself so well. The committee was friendly and nice to sing for (as far as committees go), and I felt good about my singing.  There were a couple of notes that were a bit out of control - pitchy or not quite in full resonance.  Still, I think I sold the arias just fine. 

I ended up making some stupid decisions about my focal points, which I regret.  In an aria you always have to focus somewhere in the room - usually it's a mimed character you're singing "to" - and you generally want to place that focus just above the committee's heads.  This way they get the "full blast" of the acting, without feeling assaulted by you.  Me, I got stupid and placed my key focus somewhere in audience right.  I guess something about the odd dimensions of the room got me confused.  Not that it destroyed the performance or anything, but it wasn't optimal.  Oh well - a lesson to remember for the rest of the season.

 I found a bit of an obstacle in the cold I've been working through.  My throat is fine, so I haven't really mentioned it here.  But my right ear is stuffed up completely... I can't hear out of it at all.  This has some consequence for how I hear myself sing, but that isn't so critical.  (You have to learn to ignore your own perception of your sound, since it will change so dramatically depending on the space you're singing in) A larger problem was the fact that the pianist was to my right.  Which means that while I think she played very well, I really just had to take that on faith most of the time.  I tried to get in front of the piano a bit, so my left ear could pick up the slack. 

Tomorrow I leave for Mendocino California, to sing my first ever Nozze di Figaro!  Stay tuned... 

The itinerary is finally settling down for this month.  This Saturday I leave Cincinnati in the morning, carpooling with two goood friends.  We drive to Chicago, sing auditions for Sarasota Opera, and then settle in for a good famly dinner. 

On Monday I fly from Chicago to San Francisco, where my ride to Mendocino awaits.  I can't wait to sing Bartolo!  My time in Mendo is bisected by a trip home for my grandmother's memorial service. I'll fly back to cali the following Monday to sing in the preview concert, with the full performances on the following weekend.

Then I fly back to Chicago, where I'll (hopefully) audition for the Merola program at San Francisco Opera.  Then it's back to Cincinnati by bus, where I'll be preparing for my Master's recital!

And amid all of that I'm still working remotely, preparing recital rep, and trying to grow my Bartolo character, who has been sadly neglected through all this moving in mess.

Just looking at that schedule makes my head spin!  I'l be taking this one step at a time... what a great job to have, though. 

On Sunday we closed out La Boheme, thus ending a very successful summer season at Ash Lawn.  It's all over but the crying.

Actually, the crying is over, too.  This is a funny business, in that you meet people, get to know them very intensely and personally for a few weeks, and then part for years at a time.  I think I posted about this once before: the single serving friends phenomenon.  (note for regular readers: that's the day I proposed to Bryn!)  Anyways, we're all well used to this parting process, so we all said "see you in New York" and went our separate ways.

I made some wonderful friends that I hope to keep for many years to come, and learned a boatload about singing and my own instrument.  I found that I can, and do, have very good control of my passaggio (the difficult "transition" of the voice), given the right circumstances.  Now I've gotta make that consistent across all sorts of circumstances.  I found and pushed the limits of my endurance, and sang rep in a higher tessitura than I ever thought possible to me.

My only complaint, is that I never got to work on audition repertoire.  Last year in Central City I had wonderful coaches available to me, but I wasn't vocally ready to start working on new rep.  This year I was vocally ready, but never had the time/voice to spare!  

So, in this coming audition season, my priorities are clear:

1) get my Green Card application in order

2) get a job

3) record an audition CD properly - ie, in more than one session, with time in between to critique

4) add to my audition rep a ballsy, exposed high note (Tu Sul Labbro, or Come dal Ciel) and something fast (Calunnia? Handel? Osmin?) and prepare the crap out of them.

5) Solicit feedback from the directors/conductors I worked with all summer. 

All this before the first batch of applications are due, around September 20th.  Sounds like fun! 

All apologies for the sudden break in postage - I had psychological business to attend to.

I did not get accepted to the CCM AD program.  The head of the opera department requested a meeting with me to tell me personally, and to explain why.  Since then, I've been to talk with my coach and some of the other students who were not accepted, in an effort to get some clarity in a complicated situation.

Paraphrased, I was told that though this is not an acceptance, it is not a rejection either.  The faculty were apparently most impressed with my audition; the department head was effusive in her praise of my second aria (Susannah) in particular. As I understand it, they want me to continue in this direction, and to re-audition for Winter Quarter.  Winter auditions are by invitation only (to my understanding), so that bodes well at least.  The department head also told me that by then, she thinks I may not even want to re-apply.  That I may find in the professional world that I am more "ready" than I think I am.

To some extent, she has a point.  I'm a smart guy: I know how to prepare a role.  I can do my own translations and dramatic preparation without a course to guide me through it.  In that sense, the AD program doesn't have a lot to offer me, and perhaps she will turn out to be right about how "ready" I am.

On the other hand, my sights are set a good deal higher than an average career in opera.  I believe that I have the potential for much more than that, and in order to achieve such an enormous ambition as mine, I do need more training.  I need to fix my German, and learn Russian. I need to learn trust for my dramatic toolkit, and dammit - I need to have a much more consistent vocal technique than I have at the moment.  Again, maybe they're right, and all I need for these things is another two semesters at CCM.  I'm not so sure about that, though.

So it's on to plan "B".  I've applied for a major artist development grant, to allow me to create my own course of intense private training.  I've plotted out eight months of private lessons, coachings, acting and dance lessons, and physical training.  I'll spend an academic year creating real art out of the roles that will be the backbone of my young career - Sarastro, Colline, Sparafucile and the like.  In short: I'll have a year of massive vocal and artistic development, with or without CCM.

Plan "C", for reference, is not nearly as enticing to me.  There is a group of students who are going to Europe in the Spring of 2008, to do an audition tour there.  Bryn and I weren't planning on moving to Europe quite so soon, but it is a serious possibility.  We'll see... 

 But no matter which plan I go with dear reader,  rest assured that regular blogging is a part of it.  Starting now, it's back to the daily post with me.  In fact, I'm setting a new goal: 2 posts per day, regularly.

The second day of auditions is over, and man do I feel relieved!  All this tension I didn't even know I had has melted off of my shoulders.  I literally feel like a new person... I've been so out of touch with the world, wrapped up in my own universe of "AGH! AD AUDITION!"... it's nice to be back.

 On the second day, we had our formal audition for the combined voice and opera faculty.  Then we waited awkwardly for a final, individual interview.

When I warmed up, I knew I was in trouble.  Things were lining up, my breath was under me, and that French piece - the one I struggled with in coachings the day before - was working just fine.   Not the best I'd sung it, but it was working perfectly well for performancee... and I wanted to show them that I could sing it.  I wanted so badly to put this new (2 weeks old at a stretch) on my audition package - but no, that would be reckless, wouldn't it?

I did it.  I had already printed up my rep sheets without this new French piece, so I went in and offered the scary aria as my opener.  My teacher was in the audience - I didn't look to see his reaction.  I just started.  It wasn't the best I'd sung it: one or two normally easy notes were distinctly woofed and flat... but I recovered quickly, and fixed them on the repeat. All the high notes lined up basically right, and shock of shocks - I sang lyrically.  Now I really have to get that acting more specific... it's kitchen table time for that aria!

They asked - as everyone always does - for my Susannah aria.  The creepy, "date rape" aria, for which I have to take off my wedding band.  I feel too creepy to keep that ring on my finger! The aria went well, and as always I felt disgusting when it was done.

At the interview, I got some very positive comments on my singing, which is a good thing.  I had the opportunity to give any last comments, and I stressed once again what a good fit I believe this program to be for me.  I walked out feeling good: I had said what I wanted to say, sung in a reasonably optimal way (i gave it a personal 9/10 in my journal) - at this point, if they decide against taking me, I'll know that it isn't for any illusions in their minds.  I don't mind if they think I am not the right fit for their AD program,  so long as they have a proper and honest idea of what stage I am at in the first place.

 So now the waiting begins.   I'm moving on to the rest of my life, setting up "plan B" for if I don't get into the AD program, starting to go to school and work again.  Back to normality!

We're partway through the first day of the AD audition at CCM.  There are only 4 of us auditioning this weekend, which is a good thing.  The fewer the better! :)

We had an interview session with the two chairs of the Opera Department, as well as 20 minute coaching sessions with each of the three coaches.  I felt good about the interview, though I rambled a bit.  The more I learn about this program, the more perfectly it seems to fit what I want to do, what I believe to be the optimal next step in my training.  It is largely self-directed,  which plays to one of my great strengths.  The coursework is acting, movement, and performance classes, along with whatever other training you want to take from the vast resources of the university.  They really want you to learn how to get out there and do your role work and get those jobs...  It is exactly what I want to be doing!

Unfortunately, my experience in the coachings wa a bit of a mixed bag. In my first session, I just couldn't get my breath under me!  I got tense, lost  a lot of tone... in short, I was not at all satisfied with my work.  My second coaching was with Tibby Plyler - quite possibly my favorite coach in all the world.  It took all of 30 seconds in her studio to get my breath moving, and we had a wonderful session.  My last coaching was also much better - a coach who I am familiar and comfortable with, who really knew how to make a big voice work in a scaled back piece like the lullaby I brought in.

In exactly one minute, I'm due for the next item: improv sessions with one of the directors.  Keep those fingers crossed!