it’s just a ride

the past month has been so saturated with masterclasses, auditions and gigs that i’ve barely had time to get to a computer, let alone actually post. sorry about that. :p most of it is now a blur, but i shall bullet-point the highlights/lowlights below:

- masterclasses with sarah walker (‘aren’t you lovely? i have nothing to say’), ann murray (‘your coloratura is excellent and you sing beautifully’), and della jones (‘HANDS!’)

- various oratorio, including 2 nelson masses, a theresienmesse, come ye sons of art and a bach magnificat

- copious amounts of carol singing/festive alcoholic beverages, particularly at ralph lauren on westbourne grove, london, who had the most awesome hot spiced apple with cointreau on tap; also, a carol service which got picketed by zionist protestors

- getting a role in the upcoming handel opera; getting an audition for the maggie teyte; discovering i didn’t get into glyndebourne for next summer

- visits to the Royal Academy of Music, which is by far the most disorganised and badly-run institution of them all – rude staff, terrible stewarding, and a course structure designed to con as much money out of you as possible

in addition to all this, i had a massive row with my teacher, who basically told me a week before my first opera school audition that i had no technique and she was unsure that i would get offered a place. WHO DOES THAT?? seriously.

so, yeah. it’s been an interesting ride of late… last opera school audition tomorrow, for my own place. and my teacher’s on the panel. eek. i bought myself a new dress and shoes, so if all else fails i’ll look fab :) *crosses crossables*

more career investments

it’s been a while, mostly because things have been so incredibly busy. i got a job to supplement my income (or lack thereof). application to job offer took all of 48 hours, which in this economy is pretty unheard of. i also got the job in time to work most of half term, and will hopefully get a nice pay cheque before christmas. it’s a flexible contract, which more or less fits in with my studies, and i’m managing to get in one or two 6-hour shifts on an average week. finally, it’s a nice change to being at college 24/7, since things have been getting pretty intensely political of late which doesn’t do my head any good at all.

my head of department appears to have taken a personal interest in my career, which on the one hand is nice because it means i’m at the top of his list for opportunities… on the other hand, it also means he’s been getting far too involved in my day-to-day movements, and sticking his oar in where it’s not even any of his business. he’s gotten on the warpath with me lately because i don’t reply to vocal dept emails IMMEDIATELY, i.e. within the hour, and although i’ve tried to explain it to him that no, i don’t have a blackberry or an iphone or a laptop with wifi and no, i can’t be constantly accessing my emails on the college PCs because there’s always a queue and i have to attend the classes i’m paying for, he still continues to get all arsey about it. he almost lost me my accompanist over some spazout he had regarding an email for a deadline that was -two weeks- away, and the other day he barged into a coaching and made me look totally incompetent in front of my coach over an email he’d never actually sent and which i knew nothing about. seriously.

my phone internet bill is sky-high at the moment – my contract is only for free evenings and weekends wb access, and thanks to him i’m checking multiple times throughout the day an outlook site that is not mobile-friendly. i would bill him for it but he’d probably just tell me to consider the expense a ‘career investment’. :p

auditions and concerts have been plentiful these past few weeks. just had two of the masterclasses i mentioned before; both went pretty well, although that with sarah walker at the wigmore on thurs knackered me out for the one with ann murray in snape maltings on friday. so, i wasn’t on top form for the latter; however she said i had a beautiful voice, excellent coloratura, and said there was nothing wrong with my technique when i complained that it was all over the place :D (that bit was in private tho, obviously wouldn’t start whinging on about that in front of an audience!)

i have more auditions coming up – one for the banff opera as theatre programme on thursday, and another for some scholarship or other the following week. of course my opera school auditions are coming up pretty fast (first/second weeks of dec), and have a lot of prep still to do for those. meep. plus i need to submit an application for the maggie teyte/miriam licette comp. oh and then there’s BYO to apply to, the MBF, and everything else on top. i hate applications. i need a PA to do them all for me. :p

queen of whinging

the highlight of this week, by far, was the return of lucy schaufer to our stagecraft class. i have the biggest girl crush on her, but then i defy any self-respecting straight girl to not develop one upon meeting her. (‘you can’t be gay for one person! unless you’re a lady, and you meet ellen.’ ah, 30 rock, you give me a quote for every occasion.)

in any case, her classes are the kind that make you feel like you know absolutely fuck all about your craft, but also elated that there’s someone who can HELP you at the same time. which is a bit confusing, since she’s only with us for 3 weeks, and the class sizes are huge this term.

yeah, speaking of which – isn’t it a liiiiiitle bit fishy that the year my institution is having a funding shortage, the vocal department takes on a whole load of full fee-paying US postgrad students? funny, that. seriously, class sizes have TRIPLED since last year, and it’s making it really hard to get any performance time in classes because there’s a waiting list as long as your arm. in addition, they seem to have this high-school-clique-y superior attitude in classes, and i often feel like they’re watching and judging me when i perform. it wasn’t like that last year – we had a definite atmosphere of support, and the class sizes were markedly smaller so it was much more of a family atmosphere. i miss it :(

mighty mouse remarked the other day that i was the queen of whinging, and i totally agreed with him. as i told dirty harry yesterday evening, i haven’t had a good start to the term; it’s been a rollercoaster of departmental politics and financial strain. things seem to be evening out now, though, and i’m hoping my mood will pick up. i told myself that this year i would try to get some instrumentalists in on some chamber work. am going to get onto that. :)

still blech

unbelievably i actually managed to get into the concerto comp final. joys. am the only singer in the 10-strong line-up, and the thing starts at 1pm and finishes at 5pm. i’m on last. luckily i don’t have to stay and watch the whole thing – incidentally, it completely clashes with the dress rehearsal for Teseo which i was so helpfully -put- in last week (the possibility of a clash was actually one of the reasons i didn’t put myself forward in the first place. tits).

anyway, should be fun, despite having a full-blown cold at this point. whoops. i am having words with my mother for omitting to put her hand over her mouth when she coughs. >:(

in other news, i went to see turandot at ENO on thursday. was a fun evening – some really great singing, a naked guy, lots of cool fake blood/decapitated heads, and one of the best act IIIs i’ve seen in a turandot production. (for some reason, despite the fact that i’ll never be able to sing anything in the opera, i’ve seen it in no less than 4 different incarnations now. weird.) on the one hand i despise companies who attempt to make an opera more accessible to the populace by modernising it needlessly, but on the other hand i think, for the most part, it works in this production, and that it’s relevant to the plot and not just a gimmick to put bums in seats. (i know! let’s set giulio cesare on a council estate! augh.)

i’m quite excited about this season’s operas actually… for a start, there’s the schicchi/espagnole double bill at the opera house, which my teacher is in with another singer i know. also they’re doing rosenkavalier in december, which is my fave opera EVAR, and with the awesome lucy crowe as sophie who i saw in the same role at scottish opera a couple years back. at ENO there’s mafia rigoletto, which sounds like awesome fun, and turn of the screw coming up. yaye! now if only these things didn’t cost so much money. :p

asie, asie, a-tchoo. blech

i managed to catch a cold yesterday, just in time to sing the ravel shéhérazade in my concerto comp audition at 10.15am. what fun. and to add insult to injury, they haven’t bothered to send out the list of finalists yet – the final’s on monday at 1pm. kiiiinda need to know what’s going on now.

the audition went well, tho – i mean, as well as it could have on a tickly throat at the arse crack of dawn. the two guys on the panel (one being my head of dept) seemed to really like it and told me i’d set the bar pretty high for the other candidates. they also LOVED my pianist, who we shall call Nigiri. she is a total legend, since the shéhérazade has notoriously one of the most ridiculous piano reductions in the repertoire. and she nails it, every time. woop!

later on, i had a meeting with aforementioned head of department, which i’d scheduled at his request to talk about a lieder concert he’d had four of us do at the beginning of term. what he ended up talking about was how my onstage persona was far too hyperactive and distracting to the audience. i’m utterly tempted to ignore this advice, because it’s the first time i’ve heard anyone tell me i had too -much- energy – normally it’s ‘you need to energise this more… don’t switch off in this passage’ etc that you hear most often. and what does he want? another boring goldfish? seriously, despite the reputation of this institution for turning out the best singers, i sometimes despair at how utterly expressionless they can be on stage. YOU’RE NOT SELLING IT TO ME. gah. i refuse to be one of them. i’ve gotten this far doing what i do.

i’ll admit, i -have- been pretty hyper of late. still trying to work that out. i think it’s stress over the amount of work i’ve got on, coupled with running on empty and a fair bit of social anxiety in the mix too. 2 days ago i got an email from college saying ‘thank you for agreeing to be in the chorus for Teseo’ and a list of rehearsals and dates. er, at what point did i -agree- to be in teseo? could it have been while i was defiantly ignoring the emails about it? i don’t have a choice in these matters, since i’m on scholarship and they can make me do whatever they like, regardless of the expense to my welfare or finances… another point that came up in the meeting yesterday was that i’d forked out £200 on travel in only 2 weeks, to get to unpaid English Touring Opera rehearsals in august at college’s request. he told me to see it as a ‘career investment’. seriously. no matter that i can’t afford to get into college now. the guy wonders why i’m on edge. er, because you’re scheduling me in for projects that i can’t afford to get to?? tit.

anyhoo. here’s hoping i get into concerto comp final on monday at 1, so’s i can miss the beginning of the teseo dress at 2. HA!

false alarm

alright. so i stand corrected on my last post. it turns out that said baritone actually LEFT, in order to earn some money. i would say that i shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions, but to be fair i wasn’t the only one who did and my particular vocal department is getting pretty good at pulling that kind of crap.

case in point: two weeks ago i got an email from the vocal office telling me i was on the list for glyndebourne auditions – AWESOME, since a) it’s impossible to get an audition in the first place and b) if i got it then that would be my summer sorted. and then, 2 hours later, i got a voicemail telling me, ‘oh, we’re really sorry to have to do this, but… that slot has been filled, and we’ve had to put you at the top of the reserve list.’

yeah. because i ABSOLUTELY didn’t feel, at all, like someone had applied late, and they’d thought, ‘ooh, we’d better fit them in – who shall we boot off the list? who’s the CRAPPEST?’

funnily enough, that wasn’t too far from the truth – apparently they’d had to prioritise opera school students, and i’d been the only person on there who wasn’t one. in a way, that’s kind of a compliment, but for fuck’s sake! that kind of ‘administrative error’ happens WAY too often around here, and the culprit is usually the head of dept, not the admin staff.

another case in point: a friend of mine in my year, whom we shall call Top Santé (oho the codenames), was offered a role in the forthcoming opera via email back in july. a week later, she was sent another email telling her that they had actually changed their minds, and decided to give the role to another student. she would be covering the role instead. seriously.

i’m not going to lie – i’m currently one of the department favourites. i get put forward for most auditions, masterclasses, gigs, etc. however, people don’t understand when i tell them i don’t trust the department, and that i’m auditioning elsewhere for opera school to keep my options open. it doesn’t matter that i’m teacher’s pet right now, because at the end of the day there could be 10 fucking amazing high lyric mezzos auditioning on the same day as me, and i wouldn’t get a look-in. i’ve seen people with a false sense of security based on their reputation within college get bitten on the arse when it comes to audition time. i don’t want to be one of them.

—

in other, more positive news, i had an excellent masterclass the other week with legendary countertenor david daniels (what a sexy, sexy man. RAWR. i am developing a thing for facial hair… noooo i’ve turned into my mother! :p). i sang some badass handel which he seemed to enjoy. he didn’t sing anything tho – apparently was resting up after a big gig the previous weekend. booo.

speaking of masterclasses, i’m signed up for 3 different ones in the space of a week in november – sarah walker at the wigmore hall, ann murray in snape maltings, and della jones somewhere. wooo. unfortunately they also happen to be in the same week as the nadia and lilli boulanger competition in paris, which pisses me off somewhat cos i REALLY wanted to do that this year. oh well. i guess you can’t have everything…

oh, the drama.

term hasn’t even started yet and already there’s drama (…ok, -i’ve- managed to create some drama) surrounding finances and my department’s general policies regarding this. upon returning to college to matriculate i was greeted with the knowledge that a certain baritone in my postgraduate class was, over the summer, granted a place in the Opera School, without audition, on the basis that he couldn’t afford to do another year of postgrad followed by the two years on the opera course. this person is currently on his third holiday abroad of the year, and has spent the summer working for his dad who works in television and earning a good couple thousand pounds over about 8 weeks (a pretty good wage in this recession). this person is also the guy who went and asked for extra scholarship, months after everyone else who did had been told that the funds were all allocated, and got extra.

this person fulfilled absolutely zero of his scholar requirements last year, did not turn up to the donor receptions, and turned up for, on average, one day a week. (the french teacher, as of last may, could not put a face to the name.) in april, another singer in the year above was put on call for this person’s role in our opera scene, because he had been ‘ill’ (pulled a sickie and went to the south of france for a fortnight with his parents during our fortnight of stage time) and could not remember any of his recit.

this person has also made no secret of the fact that he has ‘no need’ to attend the majority of the classes, because he did his degree at another conservatoire and thus has been there, done that, perfected his languages. (he hasn’t. nobody has. and, 80% of the people in our year have had a conservatoire education - the rest were oxbridge choral scholars.)

 

i have a tenor friend at another academy who auditioned for mine this last year, and was initially told he had gained a place, to be shortly followed by an email from the head of vocal studies here that he was going to have to retract the offer because of a lack of places. note: this tenor was going to pay his own fees to the tune of 10 grand.

what i don’t understand is that while there’s not exactly a shortage of baritones in the current opera school, they still managed to find room for one more at the very last minute sans audition (on scholarship, no less). and, in my personal opinion, he’s really not all that. makes a nice sound, looks pretty, but has absolutely no stage presence whatsoever. one of the main offenders of ‘park and bark’ tactics. and he’s LAZY. so, so lazy. he spent most of the last year in bed on facebook chat on his laptop. i know, because he told me.

 

i’m not stupid. i know what’s going on here, and most of the vocal students know too – entrance to the Opera School, known across the world as one of the best centres of its kind for training young artists, is not always based on how talented you are. there’s a certain clique which has developed within the department, a group of students who are, as someone put it, the head of opera’s ‘popularity club’. the head of opera is not the most sociable of people, not like the other departmental heads or vocal professors. he picks and chooses who he will talk to, and usually it’s only these particular students who have the privilege. but it doesn’t stop there – there’s rehearsal banter, evenings in the pub, preference for main roles and course places, that sort of thing.

i guess you wouldn’t be surprised when i tell you that our baritone is one of those people.

 

as part of fresher’s week last week, scholarship students were called to a meeting in the main hall for a discussion as to our responsibilities as scholars. (write to your donors, invite them to your concerts, blah blah.) the director kicked off the meeting, for some bizarre reason, with a stern warning to NOT SLAG OFF THE INSTITUTION. (which i found highly amusing, because that’s what i’d being doing all day up until that point.) he also added that, if we thought we deserved more scholarship (!), or if we had any questions or complaints about the scholarship system or anything else at college, we should go directly to him.

i wonder if he’s aware of the situation in the vocal department right now, and how many students in financial dire straits have been pissed off by it.

 

and now, i’m off to set up a paypal donation website elsewhere online, because i literally have £50 in the bank, owe my mum about £2000, am maxed out on two very illegal overdrafts, and no idea where my next paycheck is going to come from. yet i’m doing another year of postgrad before opera school…

hello world.

as if the intarwebs needed another blog by a frustrated musician… oh well. i’ve done it now (…it wasn’t much fun – ker-CHING! first albert herring reference of the blog. WIN).

in short, i felt as though i should start a blog specifically for talking shop, so that my livejournal flist and other online friends can be selective as to whether they want to read my rantings about issues and people that they have no concern with. but in addition, perhaps i shall market this as one of the few of its kind in the blogosphere. because personally, as a conservatoire student, i’d be interested to read the blog of another conservatoire student (mostly to find out what the goss was, hehe). if you do know of any others, give me a shout.

now then. i’m off to piss about on facebook for a while, but may make a vaguely substantial entry at some point in the very near future. are you excited? you should be. :D