If you’re into opera, you do that charming/annoying thing where you hear someone sing and come up with your own, brilliant list of what else that person should sing. “Her Susanna is so pretty. She’d be an awesome Lulu.” Or, “Ooh, a high C! He should sing Tonio so that I can hear 9 high Cs instead of just one.” You know, educated stuff like that.

So, have you all heard of FachMe.com? It was created by Jordan Eldredge, a San Francisco-based singer and programmer, who also started Waffle Opera (!). Basically, you type in a role you sing, and FachMe.com will give you a list of more roles that would suit you. Find out how right here. I gave it a try: I searched for “Papageno”, and got a list back that includes the Count, Harlekin, Falke and Mercutio. Then I got ballsy and tried “Lulu”, getting generous results like Despina, Komponist, Tatiana, Violetta and Senta (I guess it really is true that if you can sing Lulu, you deserve to sing everything else).

I think a really fun use of FachMe.com would be to whip it out during one of those Summer-Program-“Mock”-Audition sessions, where young(ish) singers come in and have their audition package psycho-analyzed by strangers in the industry. I, as audition pianist, will search for appropriate roles based on the singer’s starting aria, and I will show this web-generated list to the panel of auditioners in order to settle their fach-ing disputes. How fun.

Anyway, I think it’s a neat tool, and a seriously time-sucking game for the Fach-nerd. Go play.