Skills to learn: downtime on the job

Editorial

You're busier during your final years of school than in the first years of your career; without classes and school-produced concerts to keep you motivated (I'll admit, I took much of my school's resources for granted for too long), the early stages of a professional life can feel like you're twiddling your thumbs.

Schmopera is three!

Editorial

It's been three years ago since we started Schmopera from a cozy chalet, on a ski trip near Montréal. At the beginning, there was a distinct feeling of opening a large can of worms inside the small world of opera; now, we're insanely proud of what Schmopera has become, and we're humbled by our readers.

Aria guides: "Schweig! damit dich Niemand warnt"

Editorial

Der Freischütz is an action-packed story about girls, guns, and selling one's soul to the devil. Caspar is a man who owes his soul to the devil, and when he sings "Schweig! damit dich Niemand warnt," he plans to substitute Max's soul instead of his own. Caspar's aria is a schizophrenic rambling of a desperate man, and Weber's score is packed with traps that cost you breath and beauty of sound, and it's an aria that takes patience and time with your teachers and coaches.

From tenor to mezzo: one singer's path through gender transition

Editorial

"I was a very high tenor," she says, even recalling many conversations with her mentors and peers about pursuing a career as a countertenor. On a daily basis, Sinclairé "always had this debate with myself" about how to train her voice; though not an easy decision to make, there was at least one simple truth to the matter: "I never felt comfortable playing tenor roles."

The real value of summer programs

Editorial

Your colleagues are not competition. Along with you, the motivated young artist, the singers and pianists that are learning beside you are the ones who, in a handful of years, will become founders of opera companies and concert series; they'll become assistant conductors and directors, and they may eventually end up in a position to hire someone like you.

Rarities: opera singers on designer shopping sprees

Editorial

Our first reaction to the Times' glamour-soaked glance at one of today's leading opera singers was a bit of lip-curling, to be sure. Most of the singers we know personally are surely not spending their time between rehearsals buying "a mountain of presents, and then I buy the suitcases to carry them in." Netrebko's success is rare and extraordinary among the opera world; most artists who live solely off their performance schedule walk away with modest-to-comfortable profits after all the travel expenses, performance wardrobe, expensive scores, and hours spent with their teachers and coaches.

Being a helpful pianist: which is your page-turning hand?

Editorial

Our theory is that there's more nature than nurture in each pianist's preferred page-turning hand. For us, it's our left, because we find ease in a motion across the body, towards the bottom-right corner of the page; in turning the page, our left hand retracts swiftly back into playing position.

Art is not action

Editorial

If you seek change, do more: engage, vote, donate and work for your political party, protest, write petitions, run for office, do not take money from dubious sources out of alleged necessity and do not support or enlist those artists who do. It is our duty, as artists, and as citizens, the be a part of the process.

Why we must keep on keepin' on

Editorial

What I'm really angry about is the fact that today, the stuff I love seems laughably irrelevant. Today, who cares about opera? Who cares about the struggles of young artists? Who cares about how the audition system can be humbling, or about protesters outside of Los Angeles Opera?

Artists management pages: a PSA for singers

Editorial

So, take 10 minutes today to see if your management page really is a one-stop place for your current biography, your website and social media feeds, and great downloadable photos. You know, all that stuff that you worked hard at and for which you paid dearly.