It’s the resonating question uttered by every aspiring singer after emerging from an undergraduate or graduate degree or a Young Artist or Apprenticeship Program.
“Now what?”
Bridging the gap between the academic world and the professional world for young singers can be challenging—especially when you don’t know where to go or how to start.
And, with smart self-marketing and the ability to network becoming an even greater ally for emerging professionals, the pros in the competitive world of performance will tell you that talent opens the door only so far for the masses of would-be singers.
“So much of it is who you know and being in the right place at the right time,” says James Caraher, artistic director of the Indianapolis Opera, who auditions hundreds of hopefuls for coveted positions in the company’s preprofessional Young Artist Program. “But you have to jump into the deep end of the pool sometime and test the waters to see how well you do.”
One Singer’s Story
For mezzo-soprano Claudia Chapa, one of her most difficult transitions as a vocalist was from an academic setting—which she refers to as “the nest”—to the professional world, where Chapa said things get real . . . real fast.
“I understood this during my last year at the University of Texas in Austin and realized the need to set goals and expectations for the following year when I was no longer in school,” Chapa says. “I read an article written by Cindy Sadler in Classical Singer magazine, ‘Ask Erda,’ where she advised singers to do something each day for their career, whether it was updating your CVs, e-mailing people for coachings or recommendation letters, practicing, learning new arias, score study, etc.”
Chapa makes a point of doing just that. From updating her website and branching out to network and make connections to learning new repertoire she can add to her growing résumé, to auditioning and engaging in new opportunities that will help her get heard by the right people and expose her to new possibilities toward becoming an operatic professional, Chapa considers every goal achieved an important opportunity on her path to success.
Chapa began her musical studies later than most singers.
“I constantly felt the need to catch up my vocal and dramatic development,” she says. “The most important challenge for me has been to be patient. It’s a quality I am constantly aware of and live with daily.”
Her patience and persistent dedication to evolving in her craft has slowly and steadily paid off through the years.
After studying at the University of Texas in Austin, where she honed her vocal and dramatic development and appeared in four Butler Opera Center main stage operas, Chapa attended IVAI in Virginia and Tel Aviv. She made her professional debut with the Austin Lyric Opera in 2011 singing the role of the Third Lady in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.
She credits this as her transition to becoming a young artist. Becoming a professional, Chapa said, is more than just monetary.
“Being paid for your performances could be thought of as the time when you are now a professional,” she said. “I would like to think being a professional is a state of being—the realization you are ready to accept the challenges of what the career demands of you. [You have to] believe in your talent, be prepared, be patient and, most of all, love what you do.”
Behind the Audition Panel
Caraher has fashioned a career out of helping groom the next generation of opera singers at Indianapolis Opera. And, while he advocates that proper training should be in place for those eager to fill professional halls, at some point singers have to be willing to ditch academia and get down to singing.
“There comes a certain point where you have to just set it aside,” Caraher says. “Yes, you need to have an understanding of how to handle your instrument. You’ll always need a teacher or a coach to check in with and to help you maintain your voice, and you’ll always be learning. But at some point you have to not only think of doing it correctly, but taking that and applying it to get to the next level. Otherwise, you end up with a collection of degrees and training you take for granted, but no real experience using it. You tread water. You’ve got to jump into the deep end and learn to swim.”
Caraher says it’s common for many singers to fall into a pattern of pursuing degrees while waiting for their careers to take off. But there is only so much academia can offer before experience and a little calculated risk become the singer’s greatest teachers.
“It’s important to gain an understanding of how everything actually works once you start applying it,” he says. “The business of show business is difficult. There are people that make it in and have steady work, and one day the work just stops. There’s no real foundation of knowing when you’re ready. You just have to get out there and try it and continue building on it.”
Caraher recommends that singers audition not only for the sake of auditioning but to watch, listen, and learn.
“See how you fare, but then pay attention to other singers—what do they sound like? Who gets the job? What did they do differently? Who do they work or study with?” he says. “Don’t be timid. Ask questions. Don’t just sing and leave.”
And, while Caraher agrees that an intact vocal technique and pleasant timbre can be good, those aren’t everything when it comes down to who gets the job and who doesn’t.
“When I’m listening to a singer, I don’t just care about whether or not everything is in place and they sing every word in a foreign language correctly,” he says. “I want to see someone different. I look for that singer who is one-in-a-million and brings in a special element, who can act and who has a spark you can ignite and work with. I look at how they approach the text and the music. It’s more than just having a pretty voice of reasonable size and quality.”
Caraher also says he pays attention to how the singer approaches the relationship between the text and the music.
“So many singers learn the notes first and superimpose the text over the music,” he says. “I think it should be the other way around to really get that flow of the language and the cadence of the music. Tell the story. Take risks. Dare to be interesting rather than simply correct and boring. Be realistic about your expectations in terms of how you look, what you sound like, and the roles that would be right for you and your voice. And keep at it.”
