An overview from the Voice Whisperer.
It seems and is appealing, what’s not to like. Being paid to sing a solo role in a top opera house is a peak experience, a total high, addictive. But then there are the accumulated years of time spent alone in isolation, 25 in my case. The living in glamorous cities (Ghent), the elegant parks with naked sunbathing (Berlin), the soigneé fountains in shady boulevards (Lyon), the bike rides along vineyard-cuddled rivers (Luxembourg), the midnight skiing (Salzburg), the 3.00am frites with mayonnaise (Antwerp) and the haute cuisine (Strasbourg). Glamorous (the curtain calls) and lonely (night after night alone in a foreign apartment), stressful (over-demanding directors and conductors), modified by surprisingly personable co-cast colleagues (generous and empathetic).
Singing Madame Flora in Antwerp for Music Theatre Transparant 1997.
My breakthrough moment to singing in real opera houses.
If you are able to get your voice technique ready for purpose you will then need to venture out to auditions. Your voice will need to have a firm core, a centre which can soar over the orchestra. This is not a question of volume but of resonance which comes with a free function, resulting in a natural ring.
Put a wine glass too close to your chest and it will no longer ping.
Tighten the surrounding muscles against your voice box and you have a clamped sound.
Unfortunately, a lot of conservatoire voice training places too much emphasises on fussy technique, too much over-control so that voices are perfectly formed but have no carrying power.
My primary teacher Josephine Veasey emphasised the necessity of
1. Core singing.
2. Speaking on the pitches rather than singing.
3. Great rhythmicality.
"You’ll never get a job, Susie, unless the tone is right."
Josie would say in her appealing East End accent. And she was right - somehow by dint of my insane level of determination I achieved the required sound. This was much to the surprise, even annoyance, of my professors from the Royal College of Music where I had sung as a treble choral scholar.
Singing Medea by Michael Christie in Extraordinary Women: Self 1991
Auditions became my friend in the end. This was as a result of my hard won totally secure vocal technique combined with a rebellious attitude of self-love and self-reliance. There is no room in this game for self-criticism.These self-determined qualities are paramount as one of the worst aspects of being an opera singer is that at whatever level you are singing at, you are liable to be pushed and pulled, bullied and abused by:
1. Sadistic casting agents and management.
2. Your own agent.
3. Directors who don’t know what they want.
4. Conductors suffering from sadistic projection.
The Crazed Conductor
He is a stray dog running from the street down the steps into our yard.
He is in pain.
His eyes are crazed, his belly inflamed.
I have never seen such suffering.
Sharp twigs are sticking out at all angles from his stomach.
He is the conductor at the opera in Strasbourg,
He tyrannises me and all singers.
“You’re flat
I don’t like the tone of your voice”
He bellows like a Alsatian dog.
But this is a dream and I gain the upper ground.
I stick up to him.
He calms as
I remove the wounds, stick by stick from his dogged belly.
Analysis: Self,2019
https://vimeo.com/359964166?share=copy
Of course, there are some lovely ones too! So if singing is your passion then you must do it!
However it is best to be prepared for the reality. It is also important to develop your own artistic agenda and entrepreneurship so that you are not simply a hostage to fortune.
So do you still want to be an opera singer?
My advice would be that if it is your passion, that if nothing else would satisfy you as much, then go for it.
Make sure you have the best personal support from the best singing teacher that you can find also from a musical career/voice coach like myself, The Voice Whisperer, to guide you into success.
The Voice Whisperer
Offers meaningful career support for professional singers via
Residential consultations in Coastal Norfolk,
Day experiences in Ely,
Extended sessions near the Wigmore Hall in London
Email
selfmademusic@aol.com for more details
Dr Susannah Self has sung many solo roles for The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, The Vlaamse Opera, Opéra du Rhin, Lyon Opera, in the opera houses of Salzburg and Luxembourg as well as Katisha in The Mikado in London’s West End. For the Royal Opera House’s Garden Venture she created HEROIC WOMEN which went on to tour to the Far East, Syria, USA and Europe.
Susannah Self is a British singer who also sings Mistress Quickly in Salzburg, her Mrs. Grose was as good as any I have heard.
Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine, 2005
