American baritone Bryan Rothfuss and Austrian soprano Maria Rosendorfsky are full-time students at the two main music schools in Vienna, Austria: the University of Music and Performing Arts, and the Konservatorium, respectively. They also perform together in the famous Viennese tourist concerts. Orchestral accompaniment, popular repertoire, historical locations and an enthusiastic international audience provide a rewarding job and performance opportunity for voice students.
It was after one of these concerts that I met Bryan and Maria. Side by side, they presented an American and a European student perspective on the topic of education for singers, as well as on the advantages and disadvantages of studying in Vienna
How long have you been studying in Vienna?
Bryan Rothfuss: One year privately, and two years at the University of Music and Performing Arts.
Why did you decide to come here?
B.R. In my junior year, I attended the Institute of European Studies, an American study-abroad program here. I loved Vienna so much that I decided to come back and work as a student assistant at this same institute, organizing trips and answering phones. I met a good voice teacher, Sebastian Vittucci, and studied one year privately with him. He was then offered a position in the university’s voice department. My plans had been to return to the U.S. and audition for graduate schools, but then I decided to follow my teacher, so I auditioned and they took me.
Did you do a lot of singing before coming here?
B.R. No. I came here right after my undergraduate studies. I studied voice at a small liberal arts school in Pennsylvania, Susquehanna University.
What was the experience like for you, entering the school system here?
B.R. The first advantage was that it was cheaper for me to officially take voice lessons from my teacher at the university, because I only paid tuition, which is about 700 dollars per semester! Then there were theory classes, movement, diction, and so on. I immediately got interested in the opera classes. My first year there, I was picked by one student director to do ‘The Telephone.’ I also did Papageno. The students starting here come right out of high school. I had already finished my Bachelor’s, so I had the advantage of being a little older and more advanced.
So this is for you a Master’s program?
B.R. Yes. Actually, they don’t even have a Bachelor’s. They go even years straight to their Master’s.
How did you find it different from the American system of education?
B.R. The interesting thing here is that the voice department is completely separated from everything else. We have courses designed especially for the voice students, focused on what is important for a singer to learn in theory, sight-reading, and music history. It’s different from what the instrumentalists are taught.What I don’t like so much is their theory that you should not perform until you are technically ready. So, officially people don’t perform until their fourth year. However, the nice thing is that it is not a rigid system. If you are ready, you move up faster, if not you continue your studies until they actually have to get rid of you, so they force you to take the diploma exam. There are a couple of our colleagues who, while they were still in school, auditioned all over until they got a contract at an opera house. Then they got their diploma and moved from the secure system of the university to the relatively secure Fest contract, with a job guaranteed for the next two to three years.
Do you get to pick your own teacher?
B.R. At your audition the teacher will pick you.
Maria Rosendorfsky:Unless you take care of that before the audition. You can visit the voice teachers’ studios in advance and observe their methods. Then you pick who you think is best for you and ask them if they would take you. That’s definitely what you should do. You shouldn’t let yourself be picked by someone you don’t know.
B.R. Yes, of course you can state your preference. The auditions are based on some kind of point system. They go down the point scale, and as soon as they come to the first person no one would take, the list closes. In other words, some years they accept twenty people, other years only ten.
How many audition usually?
B.R. About two hundred.
Bryan, how was the culture clash for you when you came here?
B.R. Not that bad, because I actually grew up in Germany. My parents are both opera singers. They came to Europe in the 70s and had careers there in Kiel and then in Osnabrück. I did meet with the stereotypical view some Europeans have of Americans, so at first I tried really hard to fit in. After I knew how to behave in this environment, I didn’t care about the stereotypes, so it became all right to be an American and to speak English.
Let’s hear it from the Austrian perspective. Maria, what is the general opinion of American students here?
M.R. You can definitely say they got a great education. I don’t know a lot of American students who come here to start their voice studies. They mostly come to Vienna for postgraduate work. They are disciplined and know what they want. Most have a solid, practical approach to singing and a good technique. Actually, there are not that many American voice students here. The Asians are in much greater number.
Have you given any thought to searching for possibilities in the U.S.?
M.R. I am interested in spending one or two years there for postgraduate studies. Of course, it all depends on the money. We are not used to paying so much for studying singing as you do in the States. But I would like to take advantage of the very well developed education system in the U.S. and then come back here, because as far as I know, the work situation over there is not really that great.
B.R. You know, I find it interesting that there are a lot of American voice teachers and coaches here, like Carolyn Hague and Walter Moore.They came here for work and then decided to stay.
Does studying here help you make important contacts?
B.R. Definitely. That’s one of the big reasons why I chose to stay. The student performances at the little theater in Schönbrunn Castle are reviewed by the papers. Even smaller productions get reviews. For instance, we did a student production of La Boheme , and during a rehearsal, an agent heard the girl who sang Mimi, and now she is engaged by the Krakow Opera in Poland. You get heard here—all the auditions are close by—here and in Germany. Even Vienna alone has more than the State Opera. There’s the Volksoper, the Kammeroper, the Neue Oper, and there are many performance opportunities for people that are just a step below going on to a full professional career.
Tell me about this singing job you have now, performing for tourists.
B.R. It’s a wonderful experience. I sing about two or three times a week. With this job, you can test out new concepts that you might not trust yourself to try in front of a more demanding audience. Also, it doesn’t matter if you’re sick, if you’re having a good day, a bad day, you just have to go out and do your best, and so you find out about yourself, how much can you do.
M.R. I definitely agree with Bryan. It’s very good practice for students. It will not be criticized by papers, and you cannot ruin your career. It’s an everyday training. You can bring new repertoire and test the reactions of the audience to your acting, so you know if you are doing too much or too little.
B.R. And we constantly change partners, so we play off of each other and have to adapt quickly, something that happens a lot in a professional career.
Maria, you are enrolled in both the Konservatorium and the university. What is the difference between the two, and why are you in both?
M.R. I am just finishing up my studies in the Konservatorium. I started there at 16, and now I am 23. I had some difficulties in finishing the Nebenfächer—the subjects besides singing. I couldn’t attend those classes because I was performing in concerts. I started singing around and searching for performance opportunities very early. Just studying was not enough for me. This is something I would criticize in institutions; they are so picky about the required side subjects. I think that providing performance opportunities for students is definitely more important than sitting in school and learning about harmony. In the States, students get much more performing done in school, I hear. I don’t want to say that the Nebenfächer are not important, but.
B.R. You’re just telling it like it is! Now they actually want to change the system a little bit, to make it closer to an American system, in terms of being more rigid. But it was so nice precisely because of its flexibility. In singing, in art in general, there are different levels. Some people need five years, and others do the same work in three.
M.R. The reason they are changing is that a lot of people also abused the system. They spent a lot of time in school, didn’t do anything, and sometimes they even got a diploma. You wouldn’t believe what kind of people actually got a diploma! It’s really embarrassing!
B.R. Well, sometimes they just wanted certain singers out and said, ‘OK, we’ll give you a diploma, but promise never to come back!’ But that could have resulted in a bad reputation for the conservatory or the university, so now there are all these reforms.
M.R. My opinion is that an ideal voice program should be adjusted to every person. If I say, ‘So, I haven’t been fulfilling my requirements besides singing, but see what is in my résumé; I did all of these performances!’ Real experiences should count for something! You learn so much more from them. So, they should allow me to finish these requirements later, or even not at all! But they don’t make compromises anymore. You have to do them, or you get kicked out. Are those subjects going to help me on the stage much more than my actual performing experience? The purpose of this education should be to give you a useful preparation for your future job. The reason that I am in both institutions is that I want the best from each.
B.R. There are many people that start at one and decide to do a Lieder class at the other.
How do you spend your summers here?
B.R. Last year we went with Carolyn Hague to the Fairbanks Summer Arts festival in Alaska.
So, again this was a connection made by studying at the university.
B.R. Exactly. This summer I am singing in an operetta outside of Graz. Again, a connection. It was the wife of the… this is so funny.
Typical Vienna, isn’t it?
B.R . Very typical… the wife of the director of an opera class heard me and suggested me for this job. It’s almost always by word of mouth, the wife of the cousin of the friend of the director, or something along those lines.
Are all these summer jobs paid?
B.R. Yes. There are so many festivals in Austria, besides Salzburg. There are also the spring and fall festivals; it’s incredible how many opportunities you can find.
Can you live off of the money earned in these jobs?
B.R. I try to. But I am also relatively new, so I haven’t gone to that many auditions.
M.R. I was able to since I was 19.Well, it also depends on how much money you need to live. If you are willing to sing in choirs too, then you can live out of it pretty easily.
B.R. I just auditioned for the State Opera extra choir and got in. That’s the nice thing about Vienna, about Europe! You can be a student at 19 or 20, and yet you can perform and make money. My sisters, who are also singers, have trouble living from their singing in the States.
How do you find out about auditions here? Is there any publication that lists them?
B.R. I wish we had something like Classical Singer in Europe!
M.R. I think the market here in Austria is simply not big enough to have a magazine like that. Most European auditions are not published anywhere. You can be happy if your agent knows about it, or if you know someone who works at an opera house. But if you don’t know people, you really have to run around to find out about these things.
B.R. It’s by word of mouth, by chance—and some people keep it quiet to limit the competition.
Maria, what is the next step for you?
M.R. To finish my musical theater program. Then I have another year to finish my Lieder and opera programs, and that is the point when I want to get out of here for a certain time. I am currently looking around for a good opera program.
Are there any Young Artists programs here?
B.R. Very few. A famous one in Zurich, one in Strasbourg, one in Cologne. That’s the nice thing about the States, the Young Artists programs.
Bryan, what about your future plans?
B.R. I am going to continue studying here and audition for the little things. Then in two or three years, when I feel more solid, I’d like to audition for agents and theaters.It’s interesting to hear my parents mention agents. When they came here in the 70s, they say that agents had a vision for a singer, like, ‘How would your voice develop in the next five to ten years?’ Now, they say that people are basically interested in the potential for business and money-making, so there is less of this vision. It’s more like, ‘You are a product, you sing this now, and I get this much money from you. I don’t care what or how you will sing in ten years as long as you make money for me now!’
Instant gratification.
B.R. Like fast food, but in singing! In our audition classes, they teach us to be very precise on our resumes, to tell them exactly: ‘I am a lyric baritone, and these are the ten roles I can perform!’ whereas in former times, they were able to listen to your voice and understand where that voice was going, without needing a specific category! In auditions now, they see you, and you fall into a category. They listen to maybe ten seconds of your singing, they wait for the high note, and then they make their final judgment. If it is not clear on your resume what category you fit in, or it they can’t label you from your appearance, they can’t hire you, because they don’t know what to do with you.
Do you want to stay in Europe?
B.R. I think so. But I would love to do a Young Artists program in the States, or a summer program.I think young singers dream of being an amazing opera star at a big house and so on, but it doesn’t need to be that way. I would be very happy at a medium-sized house doing big roles. That’s what my parents did, and they were happy, and they could raise a family, between their Fest and Gast contracts.
