Vienna, VA

A smooth trip home on a plane full of happy folks on vacation and on their way to visit family for Thanksgiving. I love flying on weekends – sure beats the general weary road-warrior atmosphere of the weekday flights. Happy to be home myself – I think the guys (my husband and teenage son) are tired of “batching it”, and I hope they’re glad to see me (even tho’ it means that the homework nag is back in town). And I get to pick up my daughter from college on Tuesday for the long Thanksgiving weekend.
Sometimes when the audition tour is over, the best repertoire and casting for the upcoming season come into focus immediately. This year is going to be different. We heard so many good people in all vocal categories that there seem to be an infinite number of options. Thomas and I started to talk through casting possibilities at the end of the tour, and I told him I think my brain is going to explode.
Thanks for taking this trip with us – wish we could’ve brought you along. Hearing all of these talented and dedicated musicians is inspirational, and having the opportunity to participate in the careers of some of the best and brightest is a real privilege. Hope you can join us in June to see how it all turns out!

Los Angeles

Auditions held on the campus of the University of Southern California in the lovely Schoenberg Institute Recital Hall. Wish we had more time here. The Metropolitan Opera National Council is holding its Western Regional Finals across campus, and several of today’s singers were auditioning in both places.
Also finished our apprentice coach and apprentice director interviews today. Haven’t said much about this aspect of our process, but I don’t want to neglect it. We search for an opera coach and an aspiring opera director to function as junior members of our staff for the summer. (“Coach” is the term for the pianist who plays rehearsals and prepares the singers for roles; both Thomas and I are coaches.) Career-entry opportunities for these professionals are even rarer than opportunities for singers, and we’re happy to be able to participate in the training of these people who are so vital to the future of our business.

Houston

Some of the recent interest in how companies like us select our singers comes from the “American Idol” phenomenon. No surprise that we’re different in a lot of ways…
Getting in the door – In order to be heard on “Idol”, you just have to get in line early and sleep outside the hotel for a couple of nights. In order to be heard in an opera audition, you just have to take voice lessons for about 10 years, get a graduate degree or artist diploma, and become reasonably accomplished in a minimum of three foreign languages.
“Thank you very much” means that your audition is over – The “Idol” panel is notorious for cutting folks off after 30 seconds. In fact, in the musical theatre audition world, 16 bars is considered a generous amount of singing. We’ll very rarely cut you off. As a matter of fact, we have a particularly tolerant policy; almost always two full arias (that is, if the combined singing time is under 8-9 minutes). Even when we’re fairly sure that the auditioner isn’t ready for our program, we feel strongly that one of the things we can do for developing singers is offer them repeated experience with the process of auditioning.
The prize – If you win on “Idol”, you get a recording contract. If you win in our world, you get a chance to spend the next summer at “opera camp”.
The panel – My colleague Thomas is jollier than Randy, I’m not as good-looking as Paul, and neither of us is as nasty as Simon.

The Aria List

Interested in which arias are being offered in our auditions? We’ve compiled lists for each voice type. This year, we’re hearing 148 sopranos, 65 mezzos, 3 countertenors, 49 tenors, 60 baritones, and 20 basses.
Each singer must offer 4 arias for the audition. (For us, the list must include one aria by Mozart or Handel.) It’s incumbent on the applicant to do two things:
1) Choose arias that demonstrate his/her unique strengths
2) Include as wide a range of styles, languages, and characters/roles as possible within the limitations of #1. (Got that?)
We took the four-aria lists for each singer and compiled them to see which pieces were chosen with what frequency. You can find the lists by clicking on the links below. Editorial comments are included; opinions are purely personal and rather subjective. Remember, these lists represent the repertoire offered for audition, not the selections we actually heard.

New York, Day 4

Last day in New York. Back in the acoustical wasteland of the Orchestra Rehearsal Room. Yesterday was spent in Rehearsal Room 1, a much livelier acoustic. What’s interesting is that while the singers prefer Room 1, it’s not always an asset for them. A few kinds of voices benefit, but because we’re aware of the flattering aspects of the reverb, it can have an ultimately negative effect as we try to mentally cancel out the acoustical enhancement. What’s surprising is that a live acoustic actually picks up and magnifies certain troublesome aspects of certain kinds of voices. The drier room is more honest for us, and we actually tend to deliberately overlook some things because we know how naked the sound is.
Random warning to auditioners: Over these last few days we’ve had a couple of less-than-acceptable responses to our choice of a second aria. To recap the process: the singer gets to choose his/her first aria, and then we choose an aria from the remaining ones on that singer’s list. Now, I’m aware that the remaining selections may be ranked in the singer’s mind, from enjoyable to purely functional (a required aria in English, or a required Mozart or Handel selection). And we may not pick the one he/she prefers. But please, practice a pleasant (or at least noncommittal, poker-faced) reaction to whatever our request may be. Disgust doesn’t cut it. I’m not a difficult person to please, but this is a business environment here, and we all have to do our best to be professional.

New York Day 3

Lots and lots of good singing. WTOC alum Jason Hardy’s performance of Claggart’s aria from Billy Budd will stick in the memory for a long time. Best alternate aria: Sventurata (Clorinda’s aria) from Rossini’s La cenerentola. 4 minutes.
After dinner, a late night meeting with composer John Musto and conductor Michael Barrett. Michael, John, and John’s lovely wife Amy Burton had just finished a rehearsal, and we talked about commissioning a new opera over pasta and wine at midnight. John’s Volpone was such a huge hit at Wolf Trap last year, that we can’t wait to get started on a new piece. Looking for co-commissioners.

New York, Day 2

A few unfortunate incidents with printed music in the last couple of days. I always think that we do a good job of reminding singers to mark their music clearly, but I’m repeatedly surprised by failures to do so. The biggest problem is cuts. Even the best audition pianists can’t read minds (actually, they do, but that’s another story). Faint pencil marks or grayed-out Xeroxed marks won’t do it. We need huge big old black lines through the music to be cut.
Today’s aria : Je suis Lazuli from Chabrier’s L’etoile. This one is a huge winner. If you’re a lyric mezzo and you want to distinguish yourself from the pack singing Siebel’s and Stephano’s arias, you really should check this out. In addition to showing off line, agility, and fabulous French language skills, it just plain puts everyone in a good mood.