The first time Youngok Shin sang Gilda at the Metropolitan Opera or anywhere else for that matter she didn’t have to sing “Caro nome.” It was in January, 1991 and the Korean soprano, who had made her debut the previous year as Azema in Semiramide, was covering performances of Rigoletto. She was in the audience enjoying the singing of her countrywoman Hei-Kyung Hong when an emissary from the Met came to fetch her in the company box at intermission. “Just follow me,” he said.
“What’s going on?” Shin inquired, immediately fearful that she had done something wrong.
“Just come down,” the Met representative insisted, “I need to talk to you.” That did it; certain that she had committed some major infraction, with a rapidly beating heart Shin followed her tormentor. Soon, all was made clear. “You have to go on, my dear,” she was told. “Would you like to make a call right now? Calm down and just tell me what do you need?”
“The score! The score!” was Shin’s desperate request. Although she had not sung the opera in performance, she had rehearsed for a day and a half a total of six hours and had even spent ten minutes walking over the set. “I was a little nervous,” she admits. “Hei-Kyung asked me, ‘Are you OK?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ She said, ‘Thank God,’ and I kept looking around and saying, ‘score, score, score…’” One was brought, of course, but it was a useless precaution; Youngok Shin had long ago committed Verdi’s music and Piave’s words to memory. She was ready to sing Rigoletto and now she had her chance. All she needed was makeup, a costume, and a few slow, deep breaths.
“I knew the role very well and I didn’t make any mistakes,” Shin says. She went on in the second act in the Duke’s palace beginning with Gilda’s wrenching duet with her father and her aria, “Tutte la feste.” “I got a little scared when I opened the door and looked out onto the set,” she says, “but after that I completely forgot. I was so excited. I did the whole performance the next time, and the third performance was the radio broadcast. It was a major learning experience, and since then I have been both covering and doing my own performances. In 1994, I shared performances, doing eight performances and eight covers. If a singer covers, it is important also to get some guaranteed performances.”
A deeply conscientious artist, Shin is too busy preparing her performances to be much concerned with perceived slights and the spurious value judgements of outsiders, but she is aware of the second-class status that is sometimes conferred upon artists who are willing to cover. “Covering is actually very difficult,” she explains, “because of the pressure to be good. People are apt to think, ‘Oh, covers! You know they are not so good. That’s why they are covering.’ You don’t get to rehearse as much as the first cast and you don’t get to rehearse on the stage, only in the rehearsal rooms with markings on the floor instead of sets. But if anything happens, you have to go out and act like a professional. You have to give a performance worthy of the house, a performance that will prove to the audience that they are not getting second best.”
Shin is surprised at the prejudice that exists in some of her colleagues where covering is concerned. “Once the wife of a tenor friend declared to me that her husband had been offered a contract to cover at a good house. ‘But he didn’t take it,’ the wife said rather proudly. I told her, ‘Oh, he should take it because he never had a debut in this house, and he’s not singing anywhere else, either!’ I don’t think she took my suggestion in the right spirit,” Shin said disingenuously. “If you think you are a great singer, then why are you not singing anywhere? Covering is a great way to get to sing and a great way to learn. You get to study the roles and you get to hear everyone else. Every singer has a specialty. And when you watch carefully you see that this one is good with a certain part of the voice, or that one has a certain kind of acting talent, the brightness, the mannerism and so on. So when they say, ‘Oh, covering is stupid,’ I just don’t believe that.”
On performance days, days when she is scheduled to cover, Shin prepares as if she is definitely going on. “I start late in the morning and vocalize little by little in short periods. I drink good teas and I don’t talk. Sometimes I even get all my makeup done, complete with eyelashes, just in case.”
Even though she is covering roles with which she is very familiar, roles she has often performed all over the world, the preparation doesn’t stop. “I never assume that I already know it. I always practice, because it is not only a matter of story or acting, it’s everything together. Every little detail has to be in place. I have to review and refresh the pronunciation before the performance. You have to review it to make it special. You have to prepare more than the first cast; you have more responsibility. I do sing with my heart; sometimes, it’s very hard to adjust the vocal part if I put too much emotion. But, being a professional, you have to adjust very well.”
A cover must also find a way to adjust to the suspense of not knowing whether she will have/get to sing on a given day. Sometimes Shin knows well in advance that the announced singer is indisposed; other times it is a mystery right up to curtain time…and beyond. “No matter what, you can’t ask them if they feel like singing. You just have to be prepared. If I am prepared, no matter what happens I will be ready. I get more nervous if I am wondering whether she will sing.” As Shin lives within easy walking distance from the Met, she doesn’t have to be in the house to cover. She can be on call from her apartment. Aside from that first time when she had to go into a Rigoletto performance that was already in progress, she has always had plenty of advance notice. But she has to continue her vigil throughout the evening, even after the curtain has risen. “If she starts Act Three, usually I am safe,” Shin says with a twinkle. “Once, when I was covering Kathleen Battle in L’Elisir d’ Amore, they called and said, ‘You’ve got to come in because she is not here.’ So I went in and she arrived very, very late. It does happen.”
What doesn’t seem to happen is the need for a cover to cover Youngok Shin. Aside from a Puritani in Nice that she canceled because of a stomach upset, Shin has never missed a scheduled performance. “Not even once,” she states flatly, sounding more surprised than boastful. “Sometimes, of course, I catch a cold, too. But I think it is a mentality. When you’re too cautious, or if you’re nervous about it, you really feel any little thing twice as much. I often don’t feel 100% comfortable but I go on anyway and it works out just fine. Very few days are going to be perfect, and if you wait for that you would never sing! I am usually willing to try.”
Youngok Shin is also willing to try something that many singers find uncomfortable: stage movement. “On stage we should be able to do a lot of things, especially the young singers. I don’t care about doing acrobatics, but if you have to be graceful for a certain role, if you have to do some kind of special movement, why not be able to?
Now there are many singers in the world who have beautiful voices,” she insists. “It’s not enough just to stand around and sing. I think it is ridiculous when I hear another singer say, ‘No, I can not move this chair!”
Clearly, this can-do attitude makes Shin a valuable player on the operatic scene. It is an attitude she recommends to those starting careers. She is inclined to tell younger singers, “just do it! Singers should take every opportunity to sing, to actually go out there and do it. You can’t just keep going to school forever! For me, competitions are important, a kind of try-out. And if you don’t win, it is not a big deal. Some singers who never won a competition sing in major opera houses. You can prepare and prepare, but if you actually perform, even once, you’ll find you will learn so much more. Competitions can give you a little bit of buzz. It is a way to kick yourself, to keep from becoming too comfortable. We all need that. It is hard to convince a singer not to worry, but it will come. One day it will be yours. Make your own opportunity. Just open Musical America; there are so many managers you wouldn’t believe. You send out a letter to ten or twenty managers. They will answer. Not all, but maybe three out of 20. Sometimes the letter will open the door to a competition or audition. If you are aiming for your goal, never, never give up, unless you are incredibly bad.’”
That is easy for her to say, you might be thinking. She is singing at the Met and all over the world. But Youngok Shin is human. She had to start from scratch and she had to suffer much discouragement. “Before the Met audition in 1990, I was doing competitions in 1988. The first time I made third place, but I couldn’t get to second. Then I made second place and finally first. But I couldn’t win the Met regional auditions; I was always a regional finalist, never the winner. I was sick and tired and decided to give up. My mother kept telling me to come back to Korea and get married and get a job teaching in the schools. That made me think of doing suicide. My mom got so nervous. She kept telling me to come home, ‘Why do you struggle in America?’ So I put all my strength on it and really practiced. And, at last, I won. The Met made offers, I got jobs in Nice and in Chile. I called home and said, “Mommy, I think I am going to stay.”
Youngok Shin’s most valuable piece of advice is this: “Get into the habit of being optimistic. It is a habit, just like drinking coffee in the morning, so develop the habit. If you are miserable inside, then you are finished before you even start. If you believe in yourself, there will be a time for you. Don’t be in a hurry. If you bloom too fast, it’s quite dangerous. Where else can you go?”
