There are many challenges to making the transition from student to professional. When a music student leaves school, if they don’t go right into some sort of day job, they find themselves for the first time in many, many years in a completely unstructured environment. Being a freelancer means that you must create and manage your own day-to-day structure—and this can be a very bewildering and overwhelming thing for the novice to do. It’s not uncommon for young singers to have to make a mental adjustment from “school attitude” to “pro attitude.” But in order to become a working professional, that adjustment must be made—and the sooner, the better.
There is also a certain student mindset that must be overcome. Many allowances are made for students. Some of these are justified—after all, when you’re learning a craft, you need lots of help, patience, understanding, and encouragement. But at times allowances are made for the convenience of the administration or teachers.
Sometimes if a student is a standout in school, instead of pushing them harder, teachers will cut them some slack. And it’s not just the standouts who receive indulgences. Deadlines are extended. Extra help is given—sometimes even for things a student should be able to find on his or her own. Sometimes subpar work is accepted because there simply isn’t time, money, or resources to seek out a replacement. This type of allowance on an ongoing basis is not in the best interest of the student, especially if the student allows this indulgence to make them a little lazy and it becomes a pattern.
Once a singer is out of school and working as a freelancer, most of that indulgence goes away, and it can be a bitter pill and a hard, expensive lesson to learn. The more talented and accomplished you are, the more will be expected of you once out in the working world—and you’ll be cut less slack, not more.
It’s not enough to be talented and accomplished. Singers are always working and wondering what they can do to gain advantage in our highly competitive field. So, what can you do now, as a student or a transitioning young artist, to ensure that you present yourself in as professional a manner as possible? How can you establish a good reputation that will follow you into your professional life?
1. Realize that Your Career Has Already Begun
Even if you are a brand new college freshman, in some sense your career has already started. People are already forming impressions of your personality, your talent, and your work ethic. As my wise friend and colleague Kristin Roach, music director of Piccola Opera of San Antonio (as well as of my own program Spotlight on Opera), said to our students: the relationships you are forming now will last a lifetime. The people who are now your schoolmates and your colleagues at pay-to-sings and YAPs will one day be the heads of voice departments, opera companies, and agencies. They will be the people who can hire you or put you in touch with someone who will.
Anyone who has ever done a program or been in school can, even 30 years later, tell you who was the one who was always late, who was the one who dropped out after two days because they didn’t want to work that hard and they didn’t care if they inconvenienced their colleagues, who was the one who never knew their music, who was the one who got drunk at parties and sang their roles hung over the next day. To this day I could write you a list—and the names of the people who went on to be the greatest successes would not be included there.
A good reputation is crucial in this business. Before you make a decision that could potentially affect your career, ask yourself these questions:
• Will doing this help me make the kind of impression I want on those who can influence my career?
• If someone called my professor/program director/admin today looking for a singer to do the role I’m singing right now, would they be able to recommend me?
• What does this action say to others about my work ethic, my reliability, and my maturity as a person and an artist?
2. Be Prompt
It’s unfailingly amazing to me that the following needs to be said, and yet it does. It’s essential to be on time to rehearsals, meetings, and all professional engagements. Sure, things happen—and when they do, you text or call the stage manager or whoever else is in charge of the rehearsal to let them know you’re running late—no exceptions, no excuses. This is Professionalism 101. But if you are chronically late, even by just a few minutes, you have a problem that needs to be addressed. Students have called me minutes after car accidents. I have called my stage manager and director from the ER. Don’t tell me you can’t call when you’re jammed up in the Starbucks drive-thru.
A former voice student of mine was chronically 15 minutes late to her lessons. It affected only her—she still had to pay for that time, and I used it to work on my own music, so she was actually paying me to study. But shortly after she landed her first professional job, my friend the stage manager contacted me to say, “Isn’t Trudy Tardy your student? You might want to say something to her—she is always late to rehearsal and it’s been noticed.” I spoke to her and she cleaned up her act, but it was—no pun intended—too late. They never hired her again.
Timeliness doesn’t apply just to rehearsals, however. You must be on top of your business! A very talented young singer I know almost lost his first professional offer because he procrastinated sending back the contract and nearly missed the deadline—again, someone who was looking out for the young’uns alerted me, and I was able to get in touch with him. But this kind of help is the exception, not the rule, in the professional world.
It’s critical—not to mention simply polite—to respond to inquiries in a timely manner. Yet another emerging artist of my acquaintance lost an offer for a leading role because he took too long to respond. By the time he got around to calling the company back, they had hired someone else. If someone offers you a job or a scholarship or makes any kind of professional inquiry of you at all, you must respond quickly, preferably in 48 hours—even if you aren’t interested or available. If you’re not sure yet, just say thank you for the offer and let them know when you will be getting back to them—then make sure you do it!
3. Be Prepared
As a professional singer, I have on several occasions seen colleagues summarily dismissed because they did not know their music on the first day of rehearsal. As the administrator of a summer program, I regularly meet talented singers who don’t know how to prioritize their work and time or how to learn music efficiently. Showing up unprepared to a gig can cost you that job as well as future jobs and seriously damage your reputation.
Often young singers, especially those who have never had to learn a role before, don’t really understand how much time and effort it can take. If you are unsure how long it will take, the answer is always, a whole lot more time than you think it will. And, remember, learning a role does not just mean learning the notes, rhythms, and words. It means researching the source material, reading the entire libretto and knowing what is going on in every scene, understanding on a fundamental level what your scene partner is saying to you, translating, researching style and performance practice, perfecting diction, and “singing it into your voice” so that you have mastered technical issues before you get to that first musical rehearsal.
It’s a lot of work, and if you aren’t sure how to begin or how to do it efficiently, be sure to talk to your teacher, your coach, and more experienced singers. Eventually you’ll evolve a method that works well for you.
4. Keep Your Word
This one’s pretty simple, really. If you commit to doing something, you either carry through with it or you make it right. Even if you don’t like it once you get there. Even if you’re in over your head. Even if you get a better offer.
People put up with a lot from the late, great tenor Luciano Pavarotti because he was, well, Pavarotti. But even Pavarotti’s frequent cancelations were too much for some companies. The late, equally great Ardis Krainik, general director of Lyric Opera of Chicago, made international headlines when, in 1989, she announced that the Lyric would no longer engage the world’s most famous tenor. He had canceled 26 of his last 41 scheduled appearances, and she feared this would damage the Lyric’s famously good relationship with its subscribers.
Most of us aren’t Pavarotti, and even if a singer possesses his talent, skill, and savvy, we are no longer operating in the same opera world which he dominated for much of his career. A great deal of careful consideration goes into casting, and scheduling is quite complicated. A great deal of money is spent on marketing. Canceling an appearance is a big deal, and not one to be undertaken lightly. Like anything else, there’s a right and wrong way to go about it.
Even if you’re in the early stages of your career, proving yourself reliable and honorable is critical. You may not think it’s such a big deal to drop out of a relatively low-profile engagement such as a church job, training program, or wedding gig—but handle it badly, and you’ve essentially soiled your own nest. That church choir director may be the next chorus master for the opera company where you’re hoping to be hired. The mother of the bride may sit on the board of directors. The director of the training program might know everyone in town. Most young singers get their start right in their hometown, with small opportunities. What will you do if those opportunities close to you? Be aware that by canceling, you are making a great deal of work and inconvenience for someone else, and you should do everything you possibly can to ease that burden.
Singers are frequently faced with difficult choices about which gigs to take or which programs to do. If you’re sick or have a personal emergency, that’s a different story—people usually understand and accommodate. If you’re simply unprepared, don’t like the situation, or get a better offer, you’d better ask for help, suck it up and work hard, or do the best you can and potentially take a lump. Often there are unresolvable conflicts and you’re forced to cancel. Other times, arrangements can be made, such as flying in and out to attend rehearsals while performing elsewhere; delaying arrival to rehearsals; or “trading” one role for another in a future season.
Ultimately, you must do what is best for your career, but you also must be careful to avoid burning bridges. If you do have to cancel, give as much lead time as possible, apologize personally and profusely, and help find a qualified and suitable replacement.
5. Be the Colleague You’d Like to Work With
Not too long ago, at the first rehearsal for a show I was doing, the general director stood up in front of the cast and said, “We don’t hire jerks [not the term he actually used] here. We tried it once. It didn’t work out.” If you follow the above suggestions, you’re not only safe from jerkhood but already well on the way to being the singer opera companies like to call and people enjoy working with—both things of great value in today’s climate. But you can do more, and it’s really a no-brainer. It’s really just the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Be nice to everybody—even (or especially!) the people you think might not be important. The designers, the dressers, wig and makeup personnel, the tech crew, the folks in the office, the choristers— they’re the people who get there long before you roll in and stay long after you leave, working to make you look good and stay safe on the stage. They are also the people who stay with the company after you’re gone and talk to the general director about how they liked working with you.
Be helpful to the company. Of course, you don’t want to be taken advantage of or taken for granted, but meeting board members and important patrons after a show or at a cocktail party, singing at the occasional publicity gig, and talking your show up on social media are all part of the job. Be a good sport about it and do your share.
As my friend tenor Chad Johnson is fond of saying, “Want to know how to get a singer to complain? Give him a job.” Be positive. Not happy-clappy, not annoyingly perky—just don’t fall into that gossipy, gripy mode that so many singers seem to automatically adopt. If there is something that you dislike, speak up about it and give the management a chance to respond or fix it. But make sure you’re not nitpicking and choose your battles wisely. Nobody likes a whiner, and the days of high maintenance opera artistes went out sometime in the late ’80s. Besides, you’ll be happier and have a better time if you concentrate on what you’re really there for—making the best music in the world. And getting a paycheck.
There’s a lot you don’t have control over in your career. Don’t sweat those things. Instead, pay attention to what you can control—the quality of your work, your behavior, and your attitude. These are the things that will help you establish your reputation—or, if you want to use a fancier term, your brand. And whether you’re a bright-eyed freshman or a newly minted PhD—it’s never too early to start behaving like the pro you hope to become.
