Dear Readers,
I am excited to write to you from my hotel room in Bethesda, Maryland. We had our first rehearsal today for the double-bill Il Tabarro and Cavalleria Rusitcana. I am singing the role of Tinca, as I explained in the previous post. As I am in Maryland, I am on a hiatus from Berlin till the 17th. Readers, it is going to be a great show. There is so much rich talent in these casts you need to be there: 14th and 15th of September.
It has been several months since I've been in a rehearsal, and a full year since a professional operatic production. That is hard to admit. It's hard to write. Feeling the throes of this business, while often weighing depressingly on unlucky artists, also reminds the fortunate few working to feel and express gratitude for the jobs that they (and on occasion we) have. Speaking from personal experience, it is such a relief to be in a room with great singers, a strong leader, and an encouraging management. Those elements, I am not shy to state the accusation, are often in short supply. A platitude: Yes, this is not an easy life or business, being a musician/artist never has been - and I certainly don't face the severe hardship that many others do, nevertheless the abject plight of the many debt ridden, degree carrying, talented artists is often afflicted by sexism, racism, gender-bias, and the pageantry emblematic of a severe sickness in the opera world.
I struggle with the continued decision to be in this business. It's a challenging topic to write about. The rather obvious struggle is the financial. Between platitudes and criticism there is the challenge of dealing with dry spells... dry months... dry years in a business, whose functional landscape has and continues to shift dramatically. Opera companies, the opera business, the opera economy, and the audience do not share much in common with the bulk of the previous century's (or centuries') model. I can't bring myself to say it's dying or shrinking, but it's changing - as are (have) all of the arts.
I was reinvigorated today by Maestro Salemno and my colleagues.
The other struggle is the ethical. I can't argue with the person who challenges me on the ethics of being a classical musician, and the replete sexism, racism, gender-bias, and the very tangible problems we as humans face in the increasingly globalized industrial society. Deficits, fallout, inequality, war, paucity, hunger, climate change, inflation...
I can't continue this post, because I am boiling. As so many people have said, like Barbara Ehrenreich, "It is expensive to be poor." I just received an e-mail telling me that I was charged $30 dollars for transferring $25 from my checking account, to my pay my minimum balance (I would of course prefer to pay in total - I would prefer not to have a credit card at all - but the dry spell of no work has both necessitated using a credit system as well as minimizing my ability to cover the full cost - and unlike when I lived in the United States, I am not legally allowed to work in Germany because they continue to refuse my application for a freelance visa) on my credit card from the same company, but did not have $25 to cover the transfer. Now I owe them an arbitrary $30, and I am charged the monthly fee for not having a direct deposit, and I am charged a percentage for the credit balance. This is obviously their policy, yet... here I am, at the mercy of an electronic system. I made an electronic transfer on Friday to cover the cost of future payments such as the one I am now being fined for, that was delayed by the observance of Labor day (because apparently even computers get labor day off) and because the funds have been delayed the amount I transferred is now $30 less than it would have been going strait to the bank. If a singer/artist could obligate the companies that we work for to pay a fine in the case of delayed payment this would be a wildly different world.
From the debtor's hole,
Joe
