pet peeve/rant

It's been a while since I've had a good rant here.

And while I could easily do one about politics, that just seems redundant and a little too obvious.

Recently, at my wife's prodding (God bless that woman - I really wouldn't do things like this without a little kick in the pants), I auditioned for Opera Tampa's Chorus. The audition was a two part - a standard initial audition with prepared arias (very similar to my experiences in the past with Cincinnati Opera), which took place in front of a panel of four people, and then a second round which took place in a group setting - a new experience for me - where we had been given an excerpt from Aida to prepare.

I'll be honest... I was nervous. I haven't performed in an opera in almost a decade and my professional singing has been limited to church gigs (albeit some darn fine church gigs) for the interim. So I practiced. Not as much as I thought I maybe should have, but I worked at it a little. Laura re-scheduled a patient so I could make the second audition.

The flyer stated: "Successful completion of this audition will result in a contract to sing with the Chorus."

At the conclusion of the second audition, they told us that there had been some big recent changes there.... and one of which is that they would not be paying the chorus this year. But don't feel de-valued. They still value us very much.

And the start of the rant: Singers have always suffered as the red-headed-stepchild of the music world. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "the musicians will be doing blablah and the singers will be over here" - or something of the same ilk, you'd be surprised that I'd have a good bit more than I should.

You can damn well bet that Opera Tampa WILL be paying their orchestra this year... and a good bit more than they would have ever even considered paying the singers.

And trust me. You can't sight-read Verdi in more than passable Italian without some pretty decent training. There are years of practice and study that went into that brief audition and the ability to put that on to stage. It doesn't just happen. I have two degrees in the subject and YEARS of practice, thousands of dollars of classes and lessons.

And you don't devalue me?

And you won't even pay me a TOKEN salary?

I recognize arts organizations are strapped for cash, and I recognize they don't have a lot of money. I would work for a token amount. But really?!? Nothing.

Don't disrespect me.

Don't disrespect the art form itself.