It’s 7:00 a.m., and Michele McBride is already on the go. At a time when many singers are still in bed, McBride is leaving for a day that will include 140 miles of driving and at least two jobs, before coming home again late enough in the evening that sometimes she doesn’t see her children before bedtime.
Boyd Schlaefer faces a similarly long day. After seeing his kids off to school, he will be teaching until 11:00 a.m., when he has to drive down to NYC from Connecticut and rehearse for six hours, and then do a performance. Tonight’s a good night—he’s done by 9:30 p.m., and can make it home by 11:00 p.m. Some nights it’s much later than that.
McBride and Schlaefer know busy. After years of marriage, two children, and varied careers, flexibility is the name of the game.
“On a given week, I work 14- to 16-hour days,” McBride told me. “Not every week, not every single day. But often enough.”
In addition to being a soloist at the New York City Opera, McBride works for the NYCO education department as a teaching artist, doing outreach programs in area schools. A slim, energetic soprano wearing an exuberantly colorful sweater, she gives her schedule some thought before going on. “I’m also teaching two acting classes—one with the voice students from the LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts—kids who want to be voice majors in college. A couple of years ago I went to the heads of the school and my boss here at NYCO, and said, ‘They’re not getting acting classes. The acting workshop is for the actors, the dance studio is for the dancers, and the voice students don’t get any classes. They need to be able to know what will be expected of them.’ We started the program last year, and it has now grown into two schools. I also go out to Brooklyn, to Murrow High School, another magnet program.”
Schlaefer’s schedule is no easier—like his wife, the tall bass-baritone holds down three jobs. “I’m in the regular chorus here, so I’m on call six days a week throughout the season, which lasts 26 weeks.” “On-call” means being available from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., long hours by anyone’s measure. “We get our schedule the Thursday before the next work week, which is Tuesday through Sunday, and they can change the schedule up to 6:00 p.m. the night before any of these days. The schedule does end by 6:00 p.m. on Sundays, and of course Mondays are always dark. It does get confusing, though, if you start factoring in all the contract work rules, such as meal breaks and minimum calls.”
In addition to their singing engagements, the couple both teaches voice and directs the opera theater program at Manhattanville College, with one major production per year. Schlaefer also teaches voice and the opera workshop at Western Connecticut State University—and both singers have church soloist positions.
“I used to do all the pickup gigs when I was an associate chorister,” Schlaefer says, “because I was not on call six days a week, and I had the time. I can’t do that any more because I’m employed a lot more here at NYCO—which is great! I’m also the union rep here, which takes some time.”
The NYCO connection doesn’t stop with McBride and Schlaefer, either. Their two daughters, Bronwyn, age eight, and Mariel, age four, also regularly take part in NYCO productions.
With all these responsibilities, it’s hard to see how the McBride-Schlaefer family can possibly keep track of everything. I spent a breezy late-winter afternoon with them to find out how they manage it all.
Schlaefer shrugs. “We both have our calendars.”
“Nice thick ones,” McBride adds.
The Day-Timer-type calendars keep the family aware of deadlines. It’s also a matter of communication, they say. “We don’t have to have ‘conferences’ every night,” Schlaefer says. “We do talk about whether or not there’s something special coming up, that sort of thing—whether or not we need a babysitter.”
“It’s interesting,” McBride adds, “because now that we have an eight-year-old and a four-year-old, I find [scheduling] harder than when they were babies or pre-schoolers. When we had one baby and I was performing, we’d bring her with us, and I’d have someone, often a singing friend, whom I’d pay to take care of her. Or we’d keep her here at the theater somewhere. We tried to be very sensitive, and not have crying babies around the workplace. But we could keep them with us. Now they have their own lives, too! The past three seasons our kids have been in shows here at NYCO—Bronwyn was in Cunning Little Vixen last season, and before that both Bronwyn and Mariel were in Emmeline and Xerxes.”
Sounds perfect—work in the theater, as a family. “There were some times,” Schlaefer tells me, “when one of us would have to leave New York, go up to Connecticut and get one or the other of the kids, and bring them back—or we’d have to have someone bring them down, and have a sitter here when we went to rehearsal.”
“We are very, very lucky with the dear friends we’ve made in our community,” McBride says. “When I think about our children’s schedules, and the people who help us out—it’s a whole trail of responsibility, and if we didn’t have these people in our lives, we couldn’t do it. And our children keep us organized!”
“If you know that you have to be up and get the kids to the bus at 8:35 every day,” Schlaefer adds, “that gets you pretty organized too, and everything else is organized around that. I can never get out of the house before 9:00, unless I arrange to take them someplace else to catch the bus. So one of us has to be home for that.”
What about time off? When does this let up?
“Well, we talk about this a lot, because sometimes I think the year will never end. We have downtime after Christmas, for a week or two, and we don’t do anything. We used to go out west to visit parents, but we don’t any longer—we made that choice. Once school is out, I don’t have any more education responsibilities, and he doesn’t have any more singing, so we have some of June, all of July and some of August before he has to go back to rehearsals. We just stay home.”
“It’s so intense during the time when we’re working, that downtime is vital—to recharge the batteries. When that downtime is over, we call it ‘getting in the tunnel’—rehearsals start, school starts, church starts, and you just drive, until the tunnel opens up and you come through it.”
McBride laughs. “In our neighborhood, people laugh and say, ‘Well, see you in six months!’”
How long can they keep doing this?
McBride gives me a nod that says she knew this question was coming. “This is something we talk about. And we don’t have an answer yet.”
“I feel fairly content right now. I’ve got my job, and it pays well, with benefits. We have our house. I’m content with that. But we’re still looking at ‘Where do we want to be ten years from now?’” Schlaefer grins. “Ten years, and then maybe a nice tenured teaching job!”
“I’ve had a little more difficulty with it, I think,” McBride says. “I’m looking at it in terms of where my strengths lie, with teaching and performing, and seeing where I want to go with it.”
One of the projects both McBride and Schlaefer care very strongly about is their own “do-it-yourself” company, in Seattle. “It’s an opera education program,” McBride tells me. “Boyd and I started it, driving around ourselves in a van with a couple of other singers, and we’d take the classics, cut them into 40-minute versions, and perform. We started out with a tiny budget, and now it runs itself. Boyd goes out once a year and directs, and we have a musical director there. At times we’ve dreamed of going back out there and expanding it.”
This particular night, there’s time for Schlaefer to have a quick dinner with his wife, but McBride has to head back to Connecticut and can’t do it. In spite of this kind of time crunch, they both remain philosophical and light of heart. “How lucky we are,” McBride says, “that we’re loved by people, and we’re doing something we love. We may have these 16-hour days that go on and on. But I can’t say that there’s anything we’d rather be doing.”
Schlaefer nods. “It’s doing what you love to do. And it’s also working with people who are smart and creative. The community, like the chorus, or the entire artistic staff, is a lot of fun, and challenging at the same time.”
Real singers’ lives. “It’s not as glamorous as some,” Schlaefer admits, “but it’s fun. And it’s creative.”
Soprano Michele McBride, has sung at New York City Opera since 1985 including Frasquita in Carmen, Zerlina in Don Giovanni, Yum-Yum in The Mikado and Papagena in The Magic Flute. This year she sings Berta in Il barbiere di Siviglia. She has also performed with Houston Grand Opera, Minnesota Opera, Central City Opera and Texas Opera. Bass-baritone Boyd Schlaefer is currently in his ninth year as a member of New York City Opera. He was seen this year as the Swedish Lumberjack and First Crony in the PBS Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of Paul Bunyon.
