Making opera accessible to a wider audience has been a primary focus for Peter Gelb since he became general manager of the Metropolitan Opera. He initiated The Met: Live in HD to transmit select Saturday matinée performances each season to movie theaters around the world, as well as Great Performances at the Met to broadcast these transmissions on PBS. Open house dress rehearsals have become an annual part of the Met’s outreach activities in addition to live broadcasts of Opening Night on screens in Times Square and “Metropolitan Opera Radio” on Sirius XM Radio, to name a few more.
Now, one of his most recent ventures is taking the public behind the scenes of the Met’s National Council Auditions, one of the most grueling annual competitions for young singers. As most singers are aware, the National Council Auditions are intended to discover talent—singers vie for the chance to sing on the Met stage, and cash prizes are awarded to nurture the development of their careers. The Audition, a feature-length documentary produced and directed by award-winning filmmaker Susan Froemke, was filmed during the 2007 National Council Auditions.
This was Froemke’s second project for the Met. In 2006, she and Gelb collaborated on the half-hour documentary In Rehearsal: A New “Butterfly” for the Met, about the making of Anthony Minghella’s production of Madama Butterfly that inaugurated Gelb’s tenure as the Met’s general manager. During her career, she and Gelb have also co-produced award-winning documentaries about Seiji Ozawa, Vladimir Horowitz, and Mstislav Rostropovich, among others.
Gelb proposed The Audition as a way to show the public—especially younger singers who are in the midst of their academic studies—how singers pursue an operatic career, how hard the process is, and what is at stake. “The film offers a look at the hard work, determination, and skill level it takes to pursue this career,” says Gayletha Nichols, executive director of the National Council Auditions. “Vocal talent and an artistic aptitude are a requirement, but that’s just the beginning.”
The main event at the beginning of the film is the Semi-Finals, when 22 singers who have won district and regional competitions perform with piano accompaniment for a panel of judges seated in the Met’s auditorium. About 300 invited guests include opera administrators, coaches, and voice teachers. After the judges narrow the competition to 11 finalists, the documentary traces the finalists’ week of preparation that culminates in the Grand Finals Concert with the Met Orchestra, a concert attended by the public.
Along the way, we witness the judges’ deliberations. We sense the singers’ excitement, nervousness, and awe as they experience the auditorium’s acoustics by singing their first notes on the Met stage. We watch how the finalists collaborate with conductor Marco Armiliato and other members of the Met’s music staff to select and rehearse their two arias for the Grand Finals. Numerous on-camera interviews with the singers are among the most revealing moments of the documentary, when they share their thoughts and concerns.
Comments from Gelb, Nichols, and Met artistic administrator Jonathan Friend, among others, provide further insight into the process when they speak to the singers or directly to the camera. For example, Gelb, while addressing the finalists, underlines the fact that they need to imbue their performances with vibrancy to ensure that opera remains relevant to today’s audiences. Nichols talks about prize money, but also the prize of being identified as someone to watch in the future. Friend summarizes that the judges are looking for singers who not only sing but also communicate the composer’s message.
The Audition uses a method known as cinéma-vérité, meaning that life is filmed as it naturally happens, without a script. “This competition is the perfect subject to film in a cinéma-vérité manner because we knew that a lot of drama was going to unfold before the camera,” Froemke says. “When you watch this film, some of the mystique that surrounds opera disappears and you realize that these singers are normal people.”
The film crew shot singers from a distance while they were rehearsing and tried to capture their mental preparation. “Even though it’s considered a competition, the real competition is each singer struggling with their own inner demons,” Froemke continues. “The film tries to get into the singers’ minds before and after they appear onstage.”
Tenor and 2007 National Council Auditions winner Michael Fabiano, who made his Met debut on January 11, 2010, as Raffaele in Stiffelio, agrees that those moments were almost always the most stressful. “Before the performance, one is mentally preparing for entering the stage,” he says. “Just after the performance, most singers usually hyper-analyze what they have just done and either exult or self-criticize.”
Candid shots, as far as mezzo-soprano and 2007 National Council Auditions winner Jamie Barton is concerned, are the most important for helping the public understand the challenges that singers are facing. “[The most revealing moments happen when] the camera crew catches people talking with each other, not while they are conscious of being filmed,” she says, “ . . . catching people talking about what worries them, what makes them happy, what they are experiencing.”
Generally, the singers were aware of the cameras while they were rehearsing and when the cameras were filming them in the wings during the finals, but not at other times.
“I didn’t pay much attention to them since they’d already been following us around for two weeks and, some of us, for longer than that,” says soprano and 2007 National Council Auditions winner Angela Meade who, along with Fabiano, had been filmed prior to the Semi-Finals. “They filmed us at the regional auditions, but also made a trip down to Philadelphia to the Academy of Vocal Arts to film a typical day for us. I guess they found it interesting that, out of a school of only 28 people, AVA had three students in the Semi-Finals that year. So, by the time [Fabiano] and I arrived in New York, we were already used to the cameras being around.”
However, Meade also acknowledges that the filming added another level of pressure. “I knew that how I and the rest of my colleagues performed was going to be documented as the example of what the Met’s National Council Auditions are all about,” she says. “Even though I would have tried to perform my best without the cameras present, having them there made it essential.”
When Froemke and her staff were selecting the scenes to be used in the film, certain footage seemed naturally strong, partially because some unexpected storylines emerged during filming. One of those was the decision by 25-year-old tenor Alek Shrader to sing “Ah! mes amis” in the finals. “When we met Alek Shrader in the Semi-Finals, he was very shy and kept to himself, to some degree,” she recalls. “But then, out of nowhere, he decided to sing ‘Ah! mes amis,’ so I was definitely going to follow that story.”
With the film having been shown in U.S. and Canadian movie theaters in the spring of 2009, at the 22nd International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in November 2009, and on public television in January 2010, the reactions and results seem to demonstrate that The Audition has made a successful impact on its audiences. “I’ve had only positive comments from everyone—singers, teachers, opera professionals, and opera patrons,” Nichols says. “There is clearly a great interest in the next generation of opera singers.”
Sixteen-year-old Zoe Soumkine has sung in the Met’s Children’s Chorus for nine years. “I liked The Audition because it [explained] what people are looking for when they hire singers, like acting skills and weight,” she says. “Now I know that I have to involve myself in acting classes even more.”
Emphasizing Froemke’s point about singers’ personal struggles, Meade thinks the film has debunked the myth that opera is an easy career. “I think most people just don’t realize the amount of time, energy, and money it takes to produce a world-class career,” she says, “and I think The Audition did that for the general public.”
Fabiano believes the film is ideal for people who might not understand what younger singers have to accomplish at the beginning of their careers. “I’m not convinced that, before this movie, the public at large knew what young singers have to go through and the amount of mental preparation that’s necessary,” he says.
From Barton’s perspective, the impact of The Audition goes even further. “A film like this could do a lot to humanize opera,” she says. “Most people who don’t go to opera on a regular basis view it as very antiquated art, something that doesn’t extend to their everyday life or entertainment needs. This film shows that not only is it not antiquated, but it also has an impact on young singers’ lives and is a very exciting art to be a part of.”
Aside from the impact of the film and what the audience sees on screen, the finalists themselves can offer practical advice to rising singers about how to approach the National Council Auditions. When trying to decide where they can rise above the competition, for example, Meade urges singers to evaluate the playing field before applying because locations such as New York and Boston attract several hundred applicants, while places like Arkansas and Nebraska attract only a handful. Certain districts also offer more prize money.
“I always do as much research as possible about competition conditions, including what the acoustics are like. I try, although not always successfully, to find out who the judges will be and who the pianist is, and I ask around to find out if, perhaps, I should hire my own pianist,” Meade says.
Singers can enter the National Council Auditions as many times as they want in any district they want, yet Meade cautions singers not to enter the auditions just because they can. “I would also advise participating in other competitions before attempting the Met National Council Auditions. Start small and build up to these bigger competitions.”
Meade had participated in 17 competitions before entering the Met’s in 2005, and she competed in another nine before trying the Met again in 2007, when she won the Grand finals. A year later, she made her last-minute Met debut on March 21, 2008, as Elvira in Ernani.
What about repertoire? “Sing repertory that you can be hired for right now, and sing repertory from operas you prepared for or performed in the past,” advises Fabiano. “Be mentally and vocally prepared, because the process is long and it is not fun and games.”
Meade’s advice is to choose repertoire as a cohesive unit and choose pieces that showcase strengths and talents, not weaknesses. “Pick a piece to start with that is easy for you and doesn’t make you nervous . . . something you can roll out of bed and sing at 2 a.m.” Her strongest piece of repertoire advice: “Do not put pieces that you don’t know well on your list in the hope that you’ll have time to learn them before the competition.”
In Barton’s opinion, patience is the key. “Wait until you know you’re ready for it and take the necessary time to prepare a package that shows off your potential. The Met competition is about the potential that a young singer shows.”
The Audition is available for sale at the Met Opera Shop and at www.metoperashop.org.
