I can’t believe I’m actually admitting this, but here goes. I finally figured out how much TV I can watch before I can’t take it anymore. You want to guess first, don’t you? OK. Six hours? No. Ten hours? No. Fifteen hours? You’re getting warmer. Twenty-two hours? Bingo. That’s right folks: 22 hours of the hit CBS show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, seasons 9 and 10 in two and a half days. Eek. Please, please, please, don’t judge. I’ve been sick.
Like I’ve said before, there are pros and cons involved with this festing job, and they aren’t always obvious. But this is, by far, one of the best aspects of being a fest singer: when you’re sick and you have to cancel a show, you still get paid. If you have to cancel two shows or three or four shows, you still get paid. I know it sounds crazy. But it’s one of the ways to balance the often-grueling schedule that faces a fest singer.
I’ve written before about how we’re expected to bring it every time we show up to work. A big part of being able to do that, as any singer knows, is staying healthy: no crazy late nights before performances, avoiding alcohol before a show, and generally taking good care of yourself. As my husband says, I’ve got to treat myself like an in-season athlete. But no matter how careful I am, I live in eastern Germany, where the winters are cold and wet and, despite the fact that germs make people sick, people tend to get sick when it’s cold and wet outside.
So what happens when I do get really sick? The first thing I do is call the Künstlerisches Betriebsbüro (KBB) to let them know I won’t be in that day. If I have a show that day or in the next couple of days, I hightail it to the university clinic to be seen by the ENT. It doesn’t always happen that I can be seen the same day I call, but if I do have a show that night, they generally make space. Since health insurance is mandatory in Germany, all I have to do is show them a referral from my general practitioner (which I can get after the fact), and then I head to the waiting room. When it’s my turn, the doctor calls me in to get scoped.
Back in grad school, it was a huge deal when a friend went to have his cords scoped. Our university health insurance didn’t cover it, so he paid for it out of pocket. I’d never seen an ENT for laryngoscopy before I came to Germany, and I certainly wasn’t going to pay for one unless I desperately needed to see what was going on with my cords.
In my first job out of grad school, I had a bout of what must have been bronchitis. I was sick for eight weeks, but I never missed a day of work. I had very few sick days and I didn’t want to use them up for “a little cough.” And there was pressure from my job—I was a relatively new hire and I didn’t want to be the girl who was sick all the time. It took me months to feel completely healthy again. And I was a salaried employee. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a freelancer with bronchitis. How do you deal with no insurance and no income and no way to work?
I don’t want to turn this into some politically oriented column, because I know health care is a hot topic in the States right now, but I have to admit I love the health care system over here. I belong to one of the public health insurance providers, which means I have to pay a €10 co-pay each quarter (not each visit!). After that, approved (and most are) medical expenses are covered. In five years of living in Germany, the only thing I’ve had to pay for full price out of pocket was a mouth guard. Whenever I’m sick here, I just go to the doctor.
So I was at the doctor’s office, in the Phoniatrie department, getting scoped. And the doctor said those few words that make every singer grimace: my cords were swollen, thanks to an upper respiratory infection. It was nothing serious, he said, but I shouldn’t sing on them. I headed home to sleep (and, ahem, watch TV) for the rest of the day. I woke up the next morning, and my speaking voice was about two octaves below where it should have been.
If I weren’t a fest singer, this is where I would start to panic. It’s now Thursday morning, I have no voice whatsoever, and I’ve got a show on Saturday night. It’s not a big role, but at this point, anything above middle C is out of the question. And I’m a soprano, which means everything is above middle C.
Whenever I find myself in this position, I say a prayer of thanks that I’m fest and not a 20-something freelancer. I can cancel the show and not worry about not getting paid (the fact that most freelance singers make more in a night than I make in a month isn’t always comforting, but at least I know I’m going to get paid no matter what).
But this time I did get curious about what it would be like to be that 20-something freelancer. So I contacted Mary Elizabeth Mackenzie, a soprano friend based in New York. Mary and I went to school together, and she’s been making a living as a freelancer for a number of years. She does a lot of modern music and has a pretty packed performance schedule. Since I have no idea what health care in the U.S. is like nowadays, she was happy to fill me in.
“Laryngoscopy typically costs anywhere from $200-400, and that’s just the procedure, and the doctor sets that price. The actual office visit adds more on top of that, and that also varies from doctor to doctor. The cost here in New York City is likely to be more than, say, in the Midwest. So, the total cost for the visit could be anywhere from $400-$1,000. If you have insurance and this procedure was necessary, then it would be covered. But you also have to consider the deductible.” And if you have insurance with a high deductible, you could be looking at a lot of money.
In addition to Mary, I got in touch with Jennifer Rivera, a mezzo I met last year when she was in town to sing Rosina at the Berlin Staatsoper. She also writes a fantastic blog about being a singer on the road (jenniferrivera.squarespace.com). She was in town again recently and was sick in the days leading up to a premiere.
“I’ve never ever canceled a performance for being sick—and that’s not because I haven’t been sick—it’s because I just sing,” says Rivera. “It was interesting coming to Germany and seeing how easily people cancel—especially fest singers—because they don’t have to worry about losing their fee, and they work so ridiculously hard and are in so many operas at once, they don’t want to risk hurting themselves. I don’t know if I feel pressure, I just don’t cancel. For me it’s kind of a mind over matter thing—I just know I’ve never canceled and I’ve sung really sick, so I know I can sing, no matter what, and I do.”
Like Mary, she mentioned AGMA and Health Plan B, but admitted she didn’t have insurance when she’s in Germany. Before she was set up with Plan B, though, she went without insurance for several years, as it was just too expensive. “Last year I had to go to a doctor for some problems I was having and I paid out of pocket,” she adds. “After a couple of visits, it ended up costing close to €400 with everything. The cost differences between when I paid for this doctor out of pocket and when I would have done the same thing in the U.S. actually weren’t that different—but the fact that most people here would have free health insurance makes the cost difference pretty large. And, my insurance plan doesn’t cover everything, so I’m not even including what I may have to pay out of pocket in the U.S.”
Now, before you start packing your bags to come to Germany for health care, you should know that insurance isn’t technically free. Each month, a lot of money comes out of my paycheck to cover various insurances. A LOT. Everyone has to have health insurance, and we do pay for it, but because health isn’t as much of a business, everything is less expensive.
So I called the KBB again, and let them know I wouldn’t be able to sing Saturday’s show. They had already come up with a solution: I’ll walk the role onstage while a colleague sings from the pit. But it was also clear that if I were contagious, I would not be on stage with the rest of the ensemble. It all comes back to insurance: even if I’m not singing, if I go on and infect the rest of my colleagues, they’re going to have to find a lot of singers to jump in on short notice, which gets very expensive very quickly.
There’s no pressure from the opera company at all. At the end of the day, it’s my decision to go on or not. In the same way that they expect me to bring focus to every rehearsal and show, they also expect me to be just as focused on getting better. I’m not of much use to them sick, but I’m of even less use if I never get better. Which means that my job, for the last three days, has been to drink a lot of warm fluids, sleep a lot, and stay in bed.
In fact, the only pressure I feel to get better ASAP is from myself. Because it’s Friday afternoon, and I’ve watched 22 hours of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, plus a bit of Modern Family, Law & Order: SVU, and How I Met Your Mother. And I’m getting really sick of TV.
