If you want to sing professionally, you need to embrace one idea here and now: Diplomas don’t matter. After many years of schooling, artists are often surprised to learn that most opera companies and agents have no interest in their educational diplomas and do not want them listed on their résumés.
Is attending school a waste of time? It certainly doesn’t have to be. Education is vital to your career. What many singers do not understand, however, is that schools are generally not set up to serve the professional singer. They are set up to serve two things: the majority of the students, and those planning on staying within the educational bubble and becoming educators themselves. The majority of students at a university will not become full-time professional performers—and since that majority pays the institution’s bills, the curriculum must serve those people, not the aspiring professional opera singer.
This is not the institution’s fault. Schools are a business and must be treated as such. They are there to support themselves, otherwise they could not survive.
You need to understand that these institutions usually don’t favor professional musicians. Universities, for example, have quotas for hiring a certain number of people with doctorates. This means that you can go through school without ever dipping so much as a big toe in the professional pool, and go right back into an educational setting as a professor. Universities will hire someone with a doctorate more readily than they will hire a professional who has sung at the Lincoln Center for 20 years. That is how their internal accreditation system is set up.
Does this serve the aspiring opera singer? Generally, no. For this and other reasons, a great deal is just missing from these institutions and much of their required curriculum doesn’t serve the emerging professional.
If you go to school to get a diploma, you will be spending time, money, and resources supporting the institution rather than your career. With the cost of schooling these days, you better be sure you get your money’s worth. You need to see the school as a place that is there to serve you and your goals, not the other way around. Use educational institutions to teach you what you need to know to become an opera singer. Don’t jump through hoops that will not serve you and your career.
In addition, don’t create something to “fall back on.” If you do, you will fall back upon that thing. Many fear mongers will try to entice you with this kind of occupational insurance. If you can be happy doing anything else, do it. You will not be able to compete with those who know in their hearts that they must sing for a living. Professional opera singing takes a kind of obsessive behavior and single-mindedness that few other professions require. If you don’t have those qualities, you won’t be ready to compete against those who do.
If you are not sure, go ahead and get your diploma, frame it, and put it on your wall. If, on the other hand, you eat, sleep and drink opera, you need to get educated properly and not waste your time and money in supporting curricula those who chose not to pursue full-time opera careers create. Don’t misunderstand—these institutions provide valuable scholarship, research, and information. Most singers find, however, that they learn more in one year of singing professionally than they did in eight years of college. If you use schools, you ought to use them to get needed experience and information. It’s important, therefore, that you develop your own curriculum, one that matches your goals both in and out of school.
So what, exactly, do you need to learn? What classes should you take? You can find an extended list and explanations in my book, Singing for your Supper, but for now, understand that you need to know the basics.
Study voice, above all else. Your time in the practice room is more important than getting good grades. When you audition, your singing is what people will care about (if they even look at your résumé).
Study piano intensively. Good musicians make good singers. Study theory, ear training, history, conducting, diction, opera literature (rarely offered), performance practice (usually offered only to graduate students, unfortunately) and languages.
When you study languages, don’t take just the required one semester at your school. Study Italian, French, and German until you are fluent. You need to speak these languages. With today’s competition, you also need extensive acting classes, which are rarely required for voice majors. Grab every stage performing experience you can, including opera, oratorio, recitals, and plays. The more you are on the stage, the better you will be.
What should you avoid? Again, you need to be careful not to waste your time and precious money. Ask yourself if you really need a particular class. Yes, it may make you a better scholar, but will it get you jobs as a singer? Consider dumping classes on bibliography techniques, orchestration, form and analysis, 20th century theory, and even art song, literature, and solfeggio.
Arguments in favor of these things abound, and your choices depend on your personal goals. How many general education classes do you need? That depends on what the institution requires and how well-rounded you want to be. You need to be able to function in society, but you cannot be all things to all people. Yes, you could stay in college forever, studying wonderful things and becoming the smartest musician in the world—but that won’t get you on stage, and it won’t get you a paid job.
Stay away from choirs. Most institutions of higher learning are centered on choral programs rather than opera programs. Many try to require your participation in their choirs. Again, the institution does this to serve the most people. Remember, it is a business. Most, however, neglect the fact that choral singing and classical singing have different goals and use different vocal techniques. The main goal of choirs is to “instrumentalize” the voice. Violins, for example, add vibrato and portamento to their playing to imitate the human voice; choirs are trying to take out these two things to create better pitch and harmonic definition. They don’t support the true legato (portamento and singing in-between the notes), or the vibrato (the natural fluctuation in pitch), all of which promote vocal health. Don’t misunderstand. Choirs are great, as is their music. As an opera singer, they just don’t serve you, your time, or your money.
Can you find alternatives to colleges, universities, and conservatories? You bet. In view of the cost of these institutions nowadays, sit down with a piece of paper and write down what it would cost to pay a professional for private tutoring in all of your needed subjects. You may be surprised to find you can pay for a private teacher, a private acting coach, a private theory teacher, and private language tutors for a lot less money than you would pay for a college education—and this one-on-one time is usually better than a classroom experience. Sometimes, a single person can teach you many of these things. You might even find a professional opera singer who will take you under his or her wing, for the right price. Get out your paper and do the math. It’s your money.
Once you are finished with college, then what? Is your education over? It should never be over. The minute you stop educating yourself your career will end, even if you sing at the big opera houses. You must continue to grow or you will simply get worse. People are usually going either up or down the ladder of the profession. Always strive to keep going up.
What do you do after college but before you start getting hired? Hire yourself. Ask yourself what you would be doing and how you would be living your life if you were living the kind of life you desire. Live that life. Don’t ever say to yourself, “If they hire me at the big opera house, I’ll start behaving like someone who sings there.” People get hired because they are already living that way.
Don’t ask for a break. Make it obvious you deserve to be hired in the big houses. If you are out of work, hire yourself to sing the opera you really want to be hired to sing. Learn it like a pro. Stage it. Keep learning languages, studying, and coaching on your own time. Make yourself so valuable that companies cannot help but desire to hire you.
Many of the ideas I describe here are radical and go against the flow—but the singers who have made it in the profession are known for having gone against the flow. They make their own decisions. They don’t study because a curriculum requires it or to get a grade. They study because they want to be the best at what they do. Now go hire yourself to become the best opera singer you can become.
