The recent New York City Opera production of Madama Butterfly uniquely featured two former City Opera choristers in principal roles: tenors Christopher Jackson as Pinkerton and Matthew Surapine as Goro. I recently interviewed both of them about their transitions from choristers to soloists.
For the site of our interview, Jackson chose the spot where he spent much of his time over the past 10 years: the men’s dressing room. He began by telling me about his experience singing Pinkerton four days earlier.
“After the end of the first act, the first person I saw was the assistant director, Albert Sherman, and he gave me a big hug and started crying. We were both emotional. We had worked so hard together to get it to where we wanted it to be.” Sherman has known Jackson for his whole tenure at City Opera, and as of Saturday April 7, Jackson was a long way from where he began.
Back when Jackson was in school, several colleagues had told him: “You can’t take a chorus job. You’ll never be a soloist if you take a chorus job.” He didn’t take their advice.
“I auditioned for a lot of Young Artist Programs and didn’t get into them,” he said, “and I wanted to sing, and I wanted to make money singing. In the chorus, you’re on stage; you’re working on your craft. It just made perfect sense.” What’s more, he thought, it would be a great way to learn the operatic repertoire and see how the pros manage.
Jackson auditioned for the City Opera associate chorus while still in graduate school. Two months after his audition, NYCO invited him to be a member of the chorus for Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler, the first of more than 25 operas Jackson would sing at City Opera. Ironically, Jackson’s last performance in the chorus was a production of Madama Butterfly that toured Japan in the summer of 2005.
Matthew Surapine told me his story over the phone. It’s entirely different than Jackson’s. In a bright tenor voice, he described what might be the only stock broker-turned-opera-singer story out there.
Surapine studied music all through high school, but when graduation came, he thought to himself, “I can’t make a career in music.” Rather than go to college, he got a job at a stock brokerage, where he stayed for seven years, all the while doing community music theatre whenever he could. After the market crash in 1987 he began to ask, “Is this what I really want to be doing for the next 40 years?” The answer was clear, so he moved to New York City and began coaching regularly.
One day, Surapine’s wife, Elizabeth, was reading Backstage and saw that City Opera was holding auditions for the national company’s production of The Barber of Seville. She urged Surapine to go do the audition.
“I went to the audition and they cast me in the chorus, so for three months I was on the road singing in The Barber of Seville,” he recalls,
When the tour ended, rather than go back to the stock market, Surapine decided to stay around and do a few auditions. “Then City Opera called to tell me that there was an opening in their chorus and would I like to come audition for it?” Surapine wasn’t sure, but Elizabeth said: “Go do the audition. What have you got to lose?”
Surapine went, sang, and was hired for the chorus.
“I was thrilled. When I got into the chorus, I looked at it as this amazing opportunity to see where I fit. I was in the chorus at City Opera for two years, and the whole tenor comprimario thing caught my attention. It really piqued my interest, so I started doing as many auditions as possible.”
After two years, Surapine quit the chorus and decided to make a go of it as a soloist.
Jackson’s transition was much more gradual. “Every year choristers sing small part auditions, so you get to sing an aria for management.”
In the fall of 2002, he heard unofficially that management felt his singing was on a level with their current weekly soloists. (In a weekly contract the artist gets paid a certain amount per week and is hired to do several roles, usually, but not always, secondary, over the course of the season.)
In the meantime, Jackson had not given up on young artist auditions. He was invited, in 2003, to be in the Young American Artist Program at Glimmerglass. At the end of the summer, he sang for City Opera management on the Glimmerglass stage. In November of 2003, on his birthday, no less, City Opera invited him to sing a stage audition. Two months later, NYCO offered him his first weekly contract, to sing Gaston in “Traviata.”
Jackson’s first year as a weekly went well and NYCO offered him a second year, but accepting would mean resigning officially from the chorus. “I wasn’t 100 percent sure, but I said ‘Well, why not?’” he remembered.
It wasn’t an easy decision to make. As a member of the City Opera Chorus, Jackson was part of a family. He had a secure job and medical benefits for his family. He was at the top of the chorus pay scale and was making enough money to live comfortably. Perhaps most importantly of all, he loved it.
“We were such a close-knit family,” he said. “I just loved the camaraderie, the jokes, and hanging out after rehearsal. It’s very lonely being a soloist compared to being a chorister.” He made the choice to try it on his own, however.
Jackson was very candid about the challenges of entering the solo world. “It was rough, it was very rough. For two years I had weekly contracts at City Opera, which was great. This year, I didn’t get one, but they offered me Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, which is a great opportunity–but I had nothing between April of last year and this show now, which is almost a year of no work.”
There were dry spells for Surapine too, but he chalks that up to the nature of the business. He just kept temping and auditioning, and the jobs with small regional companies began to pile up. While he was doing a production of Pagliacci in Clinton, Conn., he found his agent (or rather, his agent found him). That led to work at Opera Theatre of St Louis, Opera Grand Rapids, and three years on the roster of the Met. He has since been back to City Opera three times as a soloist: as the servant in Capriccio, as Giuseppe in The Most Happy Fella, and as Goro in Madama Butterfly.
In January of each year, City Opera usually informs singers of their contract offers for the following year. This January, Jackson heard nothing. “This is it, the dream is over,” he thought. Fortunately, word eventually came: NYCO offered him a secondary role in the opening night cast of next year’s premiere of Margaret Garner. The company also let him know that he was under consideration for more “Butterflies,” but they wanted to see how he performed in the current “Butterfly” production first. I asked Jackson if it was nerve-wracking last Saturday knowing that next year’s engagement was on the line, and he simply said, “Oh, yeah!” (After the performance, NYCO offered him next year’s “Butterflies.”)
Interestingly, Jackson doesn’t attribute his recent successes to any breakthrough, technical or otherwise. Rather, it seems, he just kept plugging away, kept auditioning, kept learning, kept making music.
“I just want to keep getting better and better.”
Surapine also kept working, studying, and auditioning, and let the pieces fall into place. He performs with obvious joy in his work, and says, “There are certainly downsides to this business, but the upside is that I feel very fulfilled.”
When I asked Jackson if he was surprised at where he is now, he said, “Yeah, very much. Three years ago, I had no idea if I would have a solo career. When I got the first weekly contract, I didn’t know what it was going to turn into. As recently as January of this year, I thought my career was over because I didn’t think I was getting re-engaged. So yeah, I’m surprised.”
Surapine went from selling stocks to singing main-stage roles—what could be more surprising than that?
If these two tenors’ journeys have anything to teach us, it’s that sometimes perseverance actually pays off. The path might twist in unexpected ways. Your mailbox might overflow with rejection letters. You might think, “Surely this is it—it’s over,” and then, three months later sing Pinkerton or Goro at New York City Opera, with your chorus family in the wings rooting you on, knowing that you’re ready for whatever comes next.
For Surapine that will include taking his family to Chautauqua this summer, where he will sing Cassio in a concert version of Othello. He has another Goro on the horizon at Opera Theater of Connecticut and the Steersman in The Flying Dutchman with Opera Grand Rapids. In between opera gigs, Surapine also performs concerts of Irish and Italian music with Jim Russell (another tenor who used to be in the chorus at City Opera). Their website is www.I2music.org.
Jackson’s future engagements include more Pinkertons at City Opera as well as the role of George Hancock in the company’s production of Margaret Garner and the Lion in Candide. He’ll also be understudying the roles of Anatol in Vanessa and Don José in Carmen. Find Jackson online at www.myspace/christopherjacksontenor.com.
