Brazilian tenor, Ricardo Tamura, graduated from the University of Sao Paulo with diplomas in geology and physics and worked as a computer science teacher and chess instructor. Although he loved to sing, there was no early indication of a possible operatic career.
Endowed with a natural talent, which he first tapped in his early twenties, Ricardo Tamura abandoned his life in Brazil and traveled to New York, where he came to the attention of the masterful Licia Albanese. Mme. Albanese’s encouragement and guidance strengthened the young geologist/physicist’s then barely formulated resolve to explore his vocal possibilities.
One year at Juilliard followed by studies with Carlo Bergonzi brought Ricardo to the Zurich International Opera Studio and into the hands of agents who immediately threw him on the traditional European career-building path: the German Fest system.
I have known Ricardo since his first days in New York: an optimistic, adventurous spirit radiating a sense of wonder, joy and surprise at the sudden turn of fate from geology to opera. I have also experienced a desolate Ricardo in trans-Atlantic phone calls, as he came dangerously close to giving up singing, trapped in unfortunate situations in a German opera house.
It was a difficult journey from Sao Paolo to Osnabrück, but this “survivor” of the German Fest system has now developed into a happy, confident singer. He agreed to share his thoughts and hard-earned experience for the benefit of all singers who are considering following the path to Germany.
The Zurich Opera studio was the doorway to Europe for you. Tell me a little bit about this program.
It was mostly an audition preparation program. You had three months to prepare repertoire for auditions according to your type of voice. After those first three months of audition preparation, we auditioned for agents from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria.
About four agents took me; the one that worked with me the most was Inge Tennigkeit. She sent me to my first auditions in Germany, in Kassel and Lübeck. Both houses gave me an offer. In Germany, they have A, B, C, and D houses, and Kassel was an A house.
What is this rating based on?
It’s based on the size and salary of the orchestra. So, theoretically speaking, the A houses have the best orchestras, and the D houses have very bad orchestras normally.
In the A houses, you’d expect to find the best singers, in B, the second best, and so on. That’s not always the case. So since Kassel was an A house, and Lübeck was a B house, I decided to go to Kassel, as a beginner with a Fest contract.
For how many years was the contract?
It was for two years. The first two years you work in Germany, you are considered a beginner, unless you come as a guest, but you can only do that if you have a name already.
As a beginner, you don’t do much. You learn the language, you coach a lot and you do some small roles. You get paid per month.
What happened to me was that I was put to work right away, to do the main role in an operetta-Maske in Blau-in German with a lot of dialogue.
Then I had to do the Rossini Stabat Mater. My second production was Zar und Zimmerman where I had a main part again, and I was supposed to do Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni right after that. I got completely overwhelmed!
I couldn’t speak German, so I had to memorize the dialogue for the operetta, but you have to interpret, not just say the text!
So, it was a lot of work. It was all choreographed, so I had to dance, learn the music, struggle with German…just everything at once! I had never had dance lessons before, so I couldn’t handle it!
Because of that, rumors started that, “Yeah, he has a nice voice, but he cannot move onstage!” I did the operetta anyway, but because of this rumor, all the new stage directors that came already said, “You cannot move, so we have to do something else with you.” I started becoming angry about that.
I also had some problems with colleagues who were not nice to me in the beginning, and I had a coach there who didn’t like me and never really taught me any role. I was scheduled to work with him many hours, and everyone expected I would learn the parts, but he never taught me these roles musically.
But what happened during these coachings?
We repeated the same bar for the whole hour! So I had, like, 40 coachings with him, and we just did the first page of an aria! I came unprepared for the next productions.
Then the rumor was as well, “Not only can he not move, he is also not musical, because he is slow in learning his music!”
But there was nobody to help you besides that coach?
They have three other coaches, but nobody knew-including myself-that what was going on was wrong.
You thought the way he worked with you was normal?
Yeah. I thought he was really precise and wanted everything to be right, and we had plenty of time, but we really didn’t have that much time.
Why do you think he held you back? Was it that subjective?
I cannot exactly say what happened; it was probably a chemistry thing, but it never worked. When he was in a good mood, we would do two bars, but never more than two pages of any role in all the sessions I had with him.
So, there you were in the middle of Germany with no knowledge of the language, no idea of how a coach in an opera house should work with you, and creating an undeserved reputation for yourself! Tough beginning…but a good warning for other singers who follow the same path, not to get stuck like that.
Oh, yeah! And also, when you are a beginner in Germany, you have to learn-and I am still learning, although I am not a beginner anymore-to set your territory.
Once you get there, you have to make your own space. That means you cannot let people walk over you. Say you make a mistake and you apologize, and that happens several times, then at some point, you become the idiot who only makes mistakes. Other people, even when they make mistakes, always have a reason to shout back and say, “Yeah, I made a mistake, so what?” When they do that, people somehow respect them.
Then you can’t be too nice and apologetic.
Not at all! If you are nice and apologetic, people start thinking they can do anything with you because you are not going to shout back. You have to fight back! At some point, you have to learn to put your foot down and say, “No, that’s not the way it is! It is this way!”
You don’t have to be mean, but you have to be strong and say, “What is my right is my right, and I’m not going to let anybody take my rights away!” There was a colleague there who was not very nice to anybody, but when I came, new and inexperienced, I was the perfect target for him to torture.
Every time he said something bad to me, I always laughed, but I never shouted back at him. The same with some stage directors-they shouted at me, and I said, “OK, sorry, it’s my problem!” but I didn’t react. I had learned that even if it is not your fault, you just assume it is; it is a rule of good education in Brazil. But in Germany, you don’t do that!
The stage directors are also part of the theater ensemble?
Not necessarily. Some, yes, but most are guests.
And they can be so aggressive?
You have all kinds. Some are the nicest and most supportive people. I learned a lot from one stage director, and I am grateful for the work he did with me.
But you also have lunatics. Sometimes their psychological problems make them good stage directors, so you have to put up with the fact that they are not stable, but if they are not stable and they are also not good stage directors, it’s a nightmare. Then, especially, you have to fight back!
So, I actually got to the point in Kassel where I couldn’t sing anymore. It wasn’t a technical problem; I just didn’t have the nerves. I felt that every time I moved, everybody was watching me, and even if I did it right, they were going to blame me anyway. I couldn’t learn my music anymore. I was at a dead end!
How did you manage to go on?
Well, there was one person there who said, “I’ve got to work with you!” He was the first Kapellmeister, Bernhard Lang.
In Germany you have the general music director, and his assistant is the first Kapellmeister. Our general music director was never there, so the first Kapellmeister filled that position as well. I started working with Bernhard at a time when I couldn’t do anything in the theater, just very small roles, because I had been hired for two years and they had to put up with me.
Although Bernhard is a conductor, he has a lot of ideas about vocal technique, and he has worked with singers all his life. So, he did some vocal work with me and preparation of arias plus the musical preparation of the roles, which I wasn’t getting from the coach I mentioned before.
Was he charging you for this work?
No, because we had a deal. I didn’t have to pay anything until I got a good job. He does that with some people. When I start being paid more for singing, then I should give him 10 percent of the first 10 performances of each role that is really well-paid.
Moreover, he went to the office and got himself assigned to me as my coach, so most of the hours we did were through the theater. At the beginning of the second season, I was doing small roles. But gradually, I started getting more confident, and they decided to risk giving me bigger parts.
So, I did a couple of main roles again. Then, all of a sudden, I could move and I could sing, and it was a shame I had to leave, because at the end of the first year, they had decided they would not renew my contract after the second year.
The problem was that when you start as a beginner in an A house, you cannot then go directly to a better house. If I had had huge success in Kassel, and done all of the main roles, maybe someone from a bigger house would have heard me and taken me.
But the rule is, after those beginning two years, you should continue in the same level house, then later on try for a bigger house.
So, is there no rating anymore above the A houses?
No. Above are the top international houses. But you could say, there are the A, the A plus, and the A minus houses. Kassel was an A minus.
So from there, I had to go to a smaller house. And that was also what I wanted. When you go to a big house and don’t have a lot of experience, you don’t learn that much, because there are three or four people who sing exactly the same roles you sing.
So, being triple cast, you get very little rehearsal and very few performances. If you go to a smaller house, you are the only person in your Fach, so you are the lyric tenor of the house, for example. You have no double cast; you have to do all the roles, all the rehearsals, all the performances.
It’s the best school you can get, especially if you have not performed a lot in your life. So, I went to a smaller house, to Osnabrück, which was officially a B-C house. But of all the smaller houses, it has possibly the best standards; they really want to have a good quality ensemble and productions. In many C houses, they don’t care. They just want to put something onstage.
But in Osnabrück, I would say they have standards as good as or better than some A houses. I didn’t know that at first; it was an accident that I went there. I auditioned in many houses, and Osnabrück took me.
First, I went there as a guest for Butterfly, then I became part of the ensemble.
And your status changed.
Yes, because when you don’t go as a beginner, it doesn’t matter what happened to you in the past, you’re immediately seen as a professional singer.
So, you have to go through those first two years no matter what happens, and how hard they are…
Yes. That is normal for Germany.
What was the difference in treatment, when you achieved the status of “Profi,” or professional singer?
As a beginner, you are expected not to be good. As a professional, you are expected to be good, and if you are not good, if you have any problems, it’s, “What can we do to help you?” If you are a beginner, it’s more like, “Why the hell do you have these problems? You shouldn’t have problems!”
Of course, your behavior has to be different too. As a professional, you really can’t give anyone a chance to step on you; otherwise you will be treated as a beginner again! You have to say, “No, I am a professional now, and I am doing my thing, so you take care of your own things, and let me take care of mine! And if I sang the wrong note there, it was not because of me.
It was because the light wasn’t right or the costume was too tight.” Of course, you can’t do that if you keep making the same mistake; then it is obvious it’s your fault. But do not apologize if you happen to make a little mistake that you won’t make again! So, in Osnabrück I did main roles in many operas, as well as small roles. When you are Fest, you also have to do small roles, because you are the only tenor in that Fach.
What is your Fach?
Lyric to spinto. That means roles from Don Ottavio up to Tosca. But in Osnabrück I also did roles that were beyond my Fach, like Ernani, which is considered a dramatic tenor role in Germany.
They gave me the chance to do that because they thought it was a good role for me.
Are they somewhat flexible with Fachs, and cater to your individuality?
In Osnabrück, yes, as in all the good houses. But there are many houses in which you are just put in a drawer with a label and you have to do everything.
There are theaters that even do it in an evil way! They write in your contract “tenor” or “soprano,” and they don’t put down any Fach. And if you are hired as a tenor, it means every opera that has a tenor role is for you-Rossini to Wagner!
I have heard of a soprano who had to sing everything from Zerbinetta to Butterfly in one season, because it says in the contract that she is a soprano.
What a dangerous trap! Then you’d better examine these contracts very carefully.
You have to have a good agent. If you don’t have one, there is always in the theater one singer or actor who represents the union, and he can help you not only read the contract but find the tricks written there. It is a very tricky situation; there are many sentences you read and think, “Well, there’s no problem there,” and it turns out, that in a particular situation that can be a very strong weapon against you.
Don’t get enthusiastic, don’t sign; get someone to help you read it!
But why would the theaters do that? Is it not in their best interest as sellers of art, that this art is high quality, and therefore that you sing your best in the roles most suitable for you? Why would a theater make you sing Tosca if you are a coloratura?
There are two problems. One problem is that there are many houses in Germany that don’t have enough money.
So, if they have to do a production, it doesn’t matter how the production comes out. They cannot do any better, because they cannot afford to hire different people, and they have to deal with what they have. So, “It’s your problem how you are going to sing that, but you are in, because we are doing that production, and we don’t have anybody else!”
The other problem is that in many cases the production decisions are controlled by the stage directors. It doesn’t matter for most of them what singers they have. It’s just, “I want to stage Otello next season. If we have the singers or not, it’s not my problem! We have a tenor, a soprano, a baritone, so we can do it!”
So, it’s between the Intendant who wants to stage certain operas, the Operndirektor who is also a stage director and wants to stage other operas, and the guest directors for the operas the audience wants to see. Sometimes the GMD [general music director] wants to conduct his preferred operas. So, they put all of these in a season.
If they don’t have the singers, they just get a guest. But it might turn out later that there is nobody to guest, so they either have to drop the project or force the house singers to do it anyway.
If your Fach is specified in the contract, you can turn down a part that is not in that Fach, but if it is not specified, they might force you to do it.
What if you refuse?
You can get fired, because you are breaking your contract. It’s not that they do it on purpose; it is mostly money related. There are many situations.
Sometimes they already have a guest who is a friend of the house and will do it for less money. But if that guest cancels, to get a new guest would be more expensive, so they get the person in the house who doesn’t have a specified Fach.
But in houses like Osnabrück this doesn’t happen a lot. That is why I stayed there for so long, because I like the way they work. But I have heard many nightmare stories from other colleagues, just because they didn’t watch what was put down in their contracts.
So the houses don’t have every Fach filled?
They normally don’t. Not even the big houses. For example, a coloratura soprano is a Fach that doesn’t appear in most operas. You can do a whole season without needing a coloratura; that’s why in most cases coloraturas are guests, and there are very few houses that have a Fest coloratura.
Every opera house has to do two or three German operas, one Verdi or Puccini, sometimes a Wagner opera, as well as a modern piece.
Who dictates what repertoire they have to do?
Well, they have to keep a certain balance to serve all the tastes. That’s why it is harder for coloraturas to be Fest. But they can make a living just singing Queen of the Night in all of the houses, because they do Zauberflote everywhere. Same thing with basses.
I actually heard that basses are badly needed.
They are. You have three different Fachs there: the high basses-let’s say, the Mozart bass-baritone-the low basses, and the comic basses-the buffos. But in the small houses, you are never going to find all three.
They have one, maybe two, and one of them covers the third Fach. There are some bass-baritones who can do buffo parts; if not, they get a guest. Then they have a light and a heavy mezzo.
They have a light, a heavy and a buffo tenor, and two baritones-lighter and heavier. In the soprano category, they have a bunch of them, for all possible Fachs, except coloratura. The lightest is called a soubrette.
Would the soubrette Fach cover coloratura as well?
Sometimes. If you have a soubrette who sings coloratura, it’s great! But most of them can’t sing coloratura. The soubrette appears very often in German operas before Wagner. They always have stuff to do-that is why there are always Fest soubrettes. Then they have a lyric soprano who can do Mozart as well as some Italian operas.
Like Bohéme?
Well, Mimi is considered a little heavier than a lyric. The whole concept of Fachs in Germany is a bit different from Italy and America. They have a book called Kloiber Handbuch der Oper. It’s an opera guide like any other, but Kloiber writes for each opera what Fach should sing each role.
This book was adopted as the Bible in Germany. That means what is in the book is the law. It can be problematic. In Italy, for example, in the tenor Fach, you have the leggiero, the lyric, the spinto, and the dramatic-you could even add the Heldentenor. But Kloiber divided the tenors into lyric, jugendlich [youthful] Heldentenor, and Heldentenor.
So, because you have only these three categories, that means a lyric tenor in Germany has to go from the leggiero-which includes coloratura-up to Butterfly and Bohème.
So, when I was a lyric tenor, I was supposed to do coloratura roles as well-that’s why I also had some problems in Kassel. I was never a leggiero; I am a lyric, but according to Kloiber, if I am a lyric I have to sing Almaviva in Barbiere and other Rossini parts.
They tend to follow that guide blindly?
Yes. In my case, I have arranged to change. They do that sometimes; you can create a new word-and get them to write that in your contract-that describes your Fach.
A sort of sub-Fach?
Right. In my new contract I have something like “Italian spinto.” This is not in the Kloiber guide, so they cannot force me to do anything because there is no definition of “spinto” there.
So you can beat them at their own game. If they can trick you by writing just “tenor” in your contract, you can trick them right back with undefined terminology!
Yes! You have to, to protect yourself! So, this new Fach would mean I can sing roles belonging to the spinto Fach in Italy, like Cavaradossi, Andrea Chenier, Ernani, Turiddu, Hoffmann-well, Hoffmann is more spinto dramatic, but I’ve done it before.
According to Kloiber, the Heldentenor sings all the Wagner roles, some other German operas, and the really heavy Italian stuff like Otello, Calaf, and Radames-although Radames I wouldn’t consider a Heldentenor. The Fach I did in Osnabrück more or less was the jugendliche Heldentenor-from Bohéme to Andrea Chenier-although the contract was for lyric. The Kloiber guide was out of print for many years; now it has come back out again. Any singer who wants to come to Germany should take a look at this book.
[Editor’s note: CS has ordered a copy of the book from Germany and hopes to be able to offer it to singers in North America soon.]
So, for example, if you are a lyric soprano and audition in Germany, don’t do an aria that you think is for you, if it is not referred to in the Kloiber as a lyric soprano aria. If they want to, they can create problems for you if you don’t stick to one Fach.
They don’t like to have people do more Fachs, at least in the beginning. (When you are famous you can do whatever you want!) You might think that singers covering more than one Fach is a good thing for the theaters; some theaters even like that!
But most directors think that if you are doing two Fachs, you don’t do any one of them well.
When you audition as a beginner, does it count if you list roles you’ve simply studied?
No. Of course, if you have a good résumé, that’s better, but it’s actually not that important. And it’s not good to lie!
Many people like to show off. They are not going to believe that if you have done so many big parts, you are now auditioning to be a beginner in Germany. Even if you have a résumé that doesn’t show much, the audition is the most important.
What counts most is when you walk on the stage, when you introduce yourself, and the first three bars, unless they wait for a high C or something.
But they don’t stop you after the first three bars…
No, but they have already made up their minds. That’s why the arias that have a long introduction are not advisable. Or an aria like “Che gelida manina,” for example, where the first bars are not that interesting, so they need to wait for the high C. The problem is that once they get bored, they don’t hear you anymore.
Your image plays a huge role as well.
Image is very important, which doesn’t mean that you should dress up. You cannot give the impression that you desperately need the job. For example, I started doing auditions in a suit with a tie, like a schoolboy!
They looked at me and said, “Yeah, he’s a good boy, but that’s not what we need. We need an animal!” Normally, the spinto tenor roles are very passionate. So they want to see the lover in you! You have to show the animal, you know, chest hair, and open shirt…just kidding, maybe not that extreme, but along those lines. I’ve seen some baritones audition in T-shirts and jeans, and Wagnerian tenors in leather!
Of course, everyone has to dress as they like, and it should be comfortable, and not look like you are begging for the job, or dressed especially for that occasion. You are there, and if they don’t hire you, that’s their problem. You have to be-what’s the word?
Cool.
Right! You dress like you normally would, maybe a little finer. I see a lot of sopranos come in evening gowns with the make-up and the hair.
The Intendant and opera director are sitting there in jeans and T-shirt, thinking, “What is she going to look like as Georgetta in Il Tabarro?” for example. It’s just like being a model. They are going to pick you as a top model if they can change your look in any way they want.
So, as a singer, if you come natural, and they can see everything they can do with you, the chances are better they will take you than if you already present an image.
There are some people who have a way of walking on the stage so the directors think, “He is going to play verismo-I need somebody who walks like a peasant!”
So acting during your audition is not recommended?
Well, everything I am telling you is not universal. There are some stage directors who appreciate it when you move, and for some Fachs it is even desired.
A buffo tenor has to show he can move without being a clown, because in every opera he’ll be doing, he’ll be dancing and jumping. But in most auditions, for most types of voices, you should not move or act. Just stand and feel everything that you sing; they should see in your face that you experience what you are saying.
In Germany, whenever they do a new production, it is usually what they call a modern staging, not a traditional staging with old costumes and old movements. So, you can do La Traviata in jeans, and you are not going to be a courtesan, but a biker or a mermaid. If in the audition you show that you can only do Violetta as a courtesan, they will think, “But our production is not like that, so I am going to have a lot of work changing her image, so I don’t want her.”
Then you have to get rid of set gestures or movements and be sort of tabula rasa, so the directors can then draw their own concept on your slate, so to speak?
Yes. You just have to be you, so they can see if they could imagine you doing that part.
You mean, their vision of that part.
Yes. I’ve seen people used to singing an aria sitting on a chair, so when they go to an audition, they ask for a chair. So, the stage director thinks, “But in our production, he is not going to be sitting on a chair, he’s going to be hanging from the ceiling, and if he can only sing that aria sitting, I don’t want him!”
Mark Belfort always said: “When you sing, if you have an urge to do a movement or a gesture that it comes from inside of you, and you are going to die if you don’t do it, then you do it. But never do a movement because you think it is right, or someone has told you to.”
Who listens to these auditions in the theaters?
It’s different. Normally, the Intendant, the GMD [general music director], the Operndirektor, and the stage director who is going to do the production.
What is the difference between the Intendant and the Operndirektor?
Every opera house in Germany has three departments: opera, theater and ballet. That is called a drei Sparten Haus.
The Intendant is the boss of all departments. Below him, you have a director for each department, so the singers’ direct boss is the Operndirektor. Parallel to him is also the GMD, who is a conductor.
In some theaters, the GMD has the same status as the Operndirektor; in others, he is above and can have almost the same status as the Intendant. If the GMD has the power to make the decisions in a particular house, they are going to listen to your voice and your musicality, and not care so much about your looks.
But in general, the Operndirektor makes the decisions, and in most cases, he is a stage director, so he is going to base his decisions on your looks. Of course he will hear if you are really bad. But if you look good, and are not extremely bad, he will take you. This then becomes a problem, because if he has an image of the person he wants, that means everybody else who walks in and doesn’t fit that image is already out.
But what about the Intendant and the GMD? Can’t they overrule decisions?
Yes, they can. If they like someone very much, they can persuade the Operndirektor maybe to try them out for one year. But the Intendant is also a stage director, normally, so he has the same views as the Operndirektor in most cases.
Then it is up to the GMD, who can veto decisions. If the GMD says “no,” then most of the time the person will not be taken. But if he says “yes,” then it is between the Operndirektor and the Intendant.
Do they make decisions based on age?
Well, of course they prefer younger people, because they are less experienced, they require less money, and they are easier to persuade to do things they don’t want to do. Older people are harder to bend.
When you say “older,” what age are you referring to?
In Germany, it is very hard to find singers below 25. So, 25 to 30 would be young, 30 to 35, even 37 would be medium young to mature, after 37, it’s already older. Over 45 is old.
Would they hire somebody over forty?
Yes. If they are good enough, even at fifty they can be taken. But unfortunately that mostly applies to basses.
I would think the agents would be the first problem for mature singers.
Many agents don’t want to work with older inexperienced singers because they need to know that these singers will be engaged so they can make money.
It costs the agents money to represent someone, so they like to feel they have a guarantee that the singer can be hired.
So, the solution for a mature singer with little experience would be to audition at the opera houses on his/her own.
Yes. The problem is that you never know who is looking for what; the agents have control of that. Unless you have some money put aside and you just go and audition in as many theaters as you can.
What about being overweight; does that play a huge part in auditioning?
If you are overweight and can move, it’s OK, but if being overweight causes you problems moving, you are going to have a hard time, because most of the productions in Germany have a lot of movement. The stage directors will want you to jump or do other things. But there are exceptions.
In Osnabrück, we have had people who are overweight because our Operndirektor does not have a problem with that. But it will be tougher with the agents because they know what most directors are looking for. The rule is, if you are extremely good, it doesn’t matter what you look like, you will be taken.
If you are good, but the agents don’t want you because you are overweight or mature, the best thing to do is to try the opera houses directly, and keep auditioning until someone takes you. There is always going to be some opera house among the hundred-something theaters in Germany looking for your type.
You can call the theaters directly and send your materials. Some theaters prefer you to have an agent, but most are open to direct contact.
What is the normal percentage that you pay the agent once he gets you a contract?
Well, first of all you have to know that no agent in Germany is going to ask you for money or an exclusive contract in the beginning. They might ask you to sign a paper where you agree to give them a percentage when they get you a job. If you get a Fest contract, the agent gets 10 percent of your salary for the first one or two years.
If the theater renews your contract after that, then the agent doesn’t get paid anything. I stayed over that period of time in Osnabrück, so I don’t have to pay my agent anymore. He would have to move you to another theater to get more money. Of course, the agents will also watch how you are doing, and if it is not going well, they are going to try to push you somewhere else. If they get you a guest job, they take about 12 to 15 percent from your guest contract pay…it varies.
Sometimes the theaters pay for your hotel and trip, but you have to have that in your guest contract, otherwise you will have to cover the travel costs yourself. What happens sometimes is that they pay for a certain hotel which might be very bad, so if you go to a better one, you pay the difference.
Is it true that as a guest you get paid in one or two evenings what you would normally make in a month as Fest?
Yeah. As a Fest you get paid every month plus vacation-13 months in a year.
Thirteen months?
Every theater closes for about 45 days in the year. So during that time, you get two salaries: the normal monthly salary and another extra holiday salary, so technically you get 13 salaries in a year.
Now they have changed that; you get two-thirds of your extra salary for vacation and one-third at Christmas. You get medical insurance, paid partially by you, partially by the theater, retirement funds, as well as other insurances you share half and half with the theater.
So, when you have a Fest contract, you don’t make too much money, but you don’t have anything to worry about.
What would be the average monthly salary for a beginner?
According to the law, the least you could get as a beginner used to be 2,400 marks; that’s about 1,200 dollars per month. But since the Euro came, things have changed, and I think it went up a little bit.
Can you get by in Germany on $1,200 a month?
Well… When you get the minimum wage, taxes are smaller. But if you get a little bit over that and you are single, after all the insurances and retirement costs are deducted plus the taxes, you are left with half of your income.
So that means if you are making $1,500 a month, you are going to get $750 at the end of the month. And you have to pay your rent, transportation, food, clothes. It is very little money.
Everybody who goes to Germany has to take that into consideration. You have to have some money saved.
I would also imagine it is hard for a beginner to get a guest contract right away.
Right. A beginner can count on a guest contract only if it is in a very small theater or if they have done a certain role many times.
Nobody is going to hire you as a guest for a role you have never done in your life, unless you have already been singing in Germany for a while, and they have heard you and really want you. The exceptions are, in most cases, singers who come from the States and have a great agent there, so they come directly as a guest in a big house, although they have no experience. Sometimes that can be overwhelming-but once you do a guest production in a big house, then you can be a guest in any other big house.
However, most beginners start with a Fest contract…Now, if you are married and your spouse is with you and doesn’t work, then you get about 65 percent of your income after taxes. But if your spouse stays in America, it doesn’t matter if they work or not, you are considered single in Germany so you pay the higher taxes.
If your spouse is with you and works, then one of you pays less taxes and the other much more than if he/she were single. If you don’t have a Fest job, and you work as a guest, then you are going to be taxed normally, as single or married.
But if you already have a Fest job and you get a second job as a guest, when they deduct the taxes, you will be left with about a third of what the guest contract promised you. So, it is true that as a guest, you are offered for a performance what you would normally get in a month as Fest. But from that you lose two-thirds to taxes-either they deduct it immediately or you pay at the end of the year.
So, that’s why you are paid so much! It doesn’t matter if you are married or not. If you have two jobs, the first job is taxed normally, and the second job falls into the worst tax category! So you have to be a really well-paid guest to make money. Or, just guest!
But the only possibility for that to be profitable is, in most cases, to spend a number of years as Fest, to get well known so that more and more theaters call you for guest jobs, then after five, six years, you could go off as a freelancer.
So, those initial two years would not be enough?
I would not risk going completely freelance after only two years, because that can go well for a while, but you never know. You have to give yourself a number of years as Fest to make contacts and guest all over Germany.
Please don’t quit your Fest job too soon to become a freelancer, because you’re going to starve! And this is very important too, unless you are really well-known-when you are a freelancer, you will not be listed in the book of singers from Germany.
They have a book with the names of all the singers who are working, so if you are not there, how are people going to call you?
I suppose, also, you can’t get too enthusiastic if one month you get a lot of calls.
Right. That happened to a lot of people I know. They started getting a lot of calls to guest while they were still fresh in their Fest job, and they quit. In a year, they made a lot of money, but that was it. Then there were no more calls, or not enough.
Does your income increase with your years at the theater?
The first contract you get at an opera house, whether as a beginner or not, is going to be limited for a certain number of years.
So, in those years-usually two-the contract says how much you are going to make. My first contract didn’t have the amount written for the second year. That’s a mistake, because then they can pay you less in the second year. According to the law, it has to say how much you will make each year, and normally it is already a couple of Euros more for the second year.
Then, the theater has up to October from the previous season to fire you. So, if I have a contract that goes to 2004, if the theater hasn’t fired me by October 31, 2003, my contract extends automatically for another year. So, in 2004 to 2005, the income I will receive will be the same as the last year of my contract. And so on.
When you are there a certain number of years, your salary goes up a certain percent. If you move to another theater, you keep the income from the last year of your contract at the previous theater, and you have to negotiate with the new theater to get more.
Let’s talk about these modern stagings. How difficult is it to deal with them?
Very. The less you know about the opera you are doing, the easier it is. But if you are somebody like me, who really cares about the background of the opera and what you are saying, and why the composers wrote it that way, then you get angry most of the time. There are many stage directors who do modern productions totally different from the libretto, but they still make sense and are very logical. It is still very hard to work with that, because you expect La Bohème to happen in Paris with a girl who has tuberculosis and a guy who doesn’t have a job, right?
But when they do a production where suddenly you are an astronaut and Mimi comes from another planet, or if it is wartime and you are some SS officer and Mimi is a war prisoner, how do you deal with that? Most of the time it is a logical new take on the libretto, but there are always those productions where the director doesn’t really care if [his concept] fits the libretto. So, you have to play dumb and work exactly with what is in front of you-unfortunately. That is the only disadvantage of working in Germany.
There are many stage directors who are just beginning to stage operas, and they don’t really understand what the spirit of a modern production is, so they might ask you to do something totally inappropriate to the story.
Do the stage directors explain their concepts to the singers?
The ones who know why they are doing that production are going to tell you their reasons. But if somebody doesn’t have a reason at all, but just wants it like that, they won’t explain. Then you have to find a reason for yourself so you can decide how you are going to act.
For example, if the director sets Bohème as a TV show where all the characters live together and know each other, that doesn’t make sense. You know at the start of the opera that Rodolfo doesn’t know Mimi, so how would you play that? They give you some stupid reason, that you are drunk or on drugs, or something, and that’s why you act as if you just met Mimi. But try to sing your text and give some emotion to it and act as if you are drunk!
What does the audience think?
The audience normally doesn’t like that. Normally, they love the traditional productions, or at least those productions where nothing extreme happens. But then there is a group of audience members who classify themselves as “intellectual” and want to see something modern.
However, it has to make sense. But because in Germany the state finances art and culture, then you can do with art and culture whatever you want. The more extreme you get, the more art you are doing! A traditional thing is considered kitsch; it’s not art because it’s old-fashioned!
If you do a Wagner opera following the pages of descriptions and indications he wrote, that’s not art! To make it art, they have to modernize it and give it their own interpretation. If it is a good interpretation, the audience might like it, and the singers might have fun doing it. But if it’s a bad one, it’s your problem as a singer-you have to do it.
Is it true that a lot of directors come mostly from theater, and they don’t have an understanding of vocal production?
Yeah. Most stage directors come from theater, but normally, they are not beginners. They already have experience with what the singers need. It might happen that you get somebody who is doing his first opera.
But unless he is a real jerk, he will ask for your help. If you say you cannot do it, he will usually understand and try something else. This problem of understanding the singer is also true in the sense that directors don’t want to make the singer the star of the show.
It is very rare that a director will put the singer downstage center and let him/her sing from there. Usually, whenever a singer has to sing an aria, he is all the way in the back. It can get physical too; you have to jump or dance or move. Or they do stupid things-they don’t make you move, but all the time while you are standing there singing, there’s some clown doing crazy things on the stage.
That must be annoying.
It’s very annoying, but it happens sometimes. But no stage director is going to force you to sing to the back, or in a position in which you cannot sing. It is not going to be a problem that will damage your voice. As a singer in Germany you have the right to protect your voice and your body. You might have a problem with heights, for example, and then you can refuse to sing five meters high.
Tell me about the rehearsal process-the day-to-day work as a Fest singer.
Working in a small house in Germany is very hard, but it is a good school. Before coming here, I had a lot of problems with things I could not eat before a performance, and the care I had to take three days before.
Once I arrived here, I had to get rid of all of that. When you are the only singer for your Fach, you have to do all the big and small roles for that Fach. In a season, the small houses usually do about eight new productions, so you might be in about five or six of them.
At the end of a season, you start rehearsing musically for the first role you’ll perform in the next season, after the summer break. If you are new in the theater, you are responsible for already knowing that role when you come. The first six weeks of the season, the theater is closed and you rehearse the staging of the first production. They want the production to develop as you work, so they try different things and repeat a lot-that’s why they need six weeks.
So you are part of the production from the onset?
Right. Sometimes what comes out is different from what the director started out with. In the big houses, you work six hours a day for those six weeks. That means from 10 to 1, and from 6 to 9 in the evening.
In the small houses, where you are a single cast, you rehearse eight hours a day, during the day from 10 to 2, and from 6 to 10 in the evening. In the four-hour break, you have to do your banking, shopping, eating, resting, and everything. So, you eat whatever is available, because you have to fit everything in. Then you get over the notion that you cannot eat or drink this or that.
Self-imposed restrictions?
Oh, yeah. You don’t have time for them. You have to learn to sleep immediately when you lie down, especially before a performance, because on a performance day, you have rehearsal until 1 or 2. It’s not like, “Oh, I have a Don Carlo in three days, so I need to rest.” No way!
You will be rehearsing up to and including the performance day. And during the stage rehearsals for that first production, whenever you have free time, you get musical calls to prepare the music for the second production. Then, once the first production has the premiere and the performances start, you also begin the stage rehearsals for the second production, and again, whenever you have a moment, the musical rehearsals for the third production, and so on.
You are constantly busy.
Yes. Especially those Fachs that exist in every opera, like a soubrette or a buffo tenor- they have to be in every production.
So, it’s normal for a buffo tenor to have up to a hundred and twenty performances a year! There are three hundred and twenty days in a season altogether, so that means practically a performance every three days, and eight-hour stage rehearsals and musical calls in between.
When do you take a break?
In the summer and on Dec. 24. On Christmas Day and New Year’s Day you usually have to perform, in La Bohéme or a New Year’s concert. The summer breaks change sometimes. This season is four weeks longer than last, and everyone is already dying in the house; we cannot keep going anymore! But that’s when you push your limits, and you lose all restrictions such as, “Oh, I cannot sing because I need my rest and my special diet.”
Oh, please! When you are in a situation like that where you have performed the whole year, you have four weeks longer to go than normal, and still many performances, you manage to do it. Or you don’t. If you don’t, at least you know that you are not fit for this business.
That is why I like the system in Germany, because it tests you. Either you die-but you die soon enough to realize that you are not made for this type of work-or you survive. And if you survive, you know you can do whatever you want. You can sing Monday in Sydney and Tuesday in New York, because nothing can disturb you anymore.
What are your plans now?
Well, I’m going into my sixth year in Osnabrück. I’ve been doing more and more guesting. Last year I did a whole production in Düsseldorf, which is one of the big houses.
So, you weren’t “guesting” just for one performance, but for a whole production?
Yes, that can happen too. It was a Wiederaufnahme-a revival of an old production-so I rehearsed with them for two weeks. Once you start guesting in the bigger houses, you start getting more possibilities.
My career is now at a point where I could probably survive from guesting. But because I like Osnabrück so much, I am staying longer as a Fest. I have a new contract now, with reduced activity and many opportunities to guest. I had actually quit for next season to be a freelancer, but then I got a bit scared, and Osnabrück made me a good offer to stay. But I hope that in a year or two at most; I will become a freelancer or get a Fest contract in a really big opera house where they have five tenors that do my Fach.
Then, when you get a contract for only 20 performances a year, it is great to be Fest! You have your monthly income and financial security, but you have more time to guest or simply to enjoy life!
