While waiting for my brother outside a subway station in St. Petersburg, Russia, I sat down on a slab of concrete to rest my tired feet, and it wasn’t long before I was garnering strange looks from passersby. I looked around and noticed something else—I was the only one sitting on the concrete.
When my brother arrived, I related my experience, hoping his two years of living in the country might offer some insight. He listened, laughed, and then told me that Russians would never sit on concrete because they believe sitting on cold surfaces is bad for your health and can even result in sterility.
This was just the beginning of my education on unscientific Russian beliefs. Russians have many superstitions. For example, if you whistle indoors, you are whistling your money away. If a knife falls on the ground, you can expect a male guest. If a fork falls on the ground, expect a female guest. If you are unmarried and sit on the corner of a table, you will never marry, or at least not for seven years.
We might be tempted to laugh at these seemingly bizarre superstitions, but as singers we should ask whether we have our own set of superstitions. Is it possible our own beliefs about cause and effect—ideas we have heard again and again—while reasonable, share something in common with the superstitions I learned in St. Petersburg?
“If you don’t get into a Young Artist Program, you’ll never make the transition from student to professional.”
“If you don’t have a career by the time you’re 30, it’s too late. Change professions.”
“If you sing in the chorus, you’ll never move on to sing main-stage roles. Once a chorus singer, always a chorus singer.”
“Those things are true!” you may be thinking. Indeed, trends in our industry appear to support them. We might consider, however, whether these widely-believed maxims enjoy any causal support. Is it possible these trends in our business exist because our maxims are prophetically self-fulfilling? Singers who were never chosen for a YAP, for example, or who don’t have a career by age 30 may throw in the towel and change careers when a little perseverance might have yielded quite different results.
Luana DeVol, featured in this month’s cover story, started out singing in the chorus and was well past the age of 30 when she decided to attempt the gutsy move from arts administration to a professional singing career. The road wasn’t easy, and she almost gave up. Now, 20 years later, she sits down with Gil Carbajal and reflects on her major European singing career.
Matthew Surapine and Christopher Jackson both joined the chorus of New York City Opera. They wondered if they were “settling” in choosing this path, but couldn’t pass up the opportunity for steady work and financial security while still making music, if a little left of center stage. Proving that you can get here from there, both recently took center stage in their NYCO debuts in two leading roles in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.
Making it after the fateful age of 30 or transitioning from chorus to main-stage work have their challenges, challenges that probably generated many of our classic maxims. Many singers, however, have surmounted the challenges and defied these supposedly unalterable axioms.
As you read about Surapine, Jackson, and DeVol in this issue, you may find many reasons you can’t defy the odds as these three did: “She was a dramatic soprano.” “He was a tenor.” “She had the guts.” “He had the family support.” Only you can evaluate your own skills and abilities and determine your odds for success. Make sure those evaluations are based on fact, however, not on fabled traditions.
