So Many Acting B.A.'s, So Few Paying Gigs

mini
Thu, 08 Dec 2005 11:27:35 +0000

So…I’ve got two stories (let me start with one). The vocal director of our opera company Opera Pacifica grew up three miles from me in New York City. Was an education major at Temple in the late 60s, switched to music education. His draft board made it clear they weren’t going to honor the switch (and the extra now required) and was going to draft him. So he enlisted. As it turns out, he was very good at “schoolboy Latin”, signed up for translation training. In 6 months he was fluent in French, and posted by military intelligence to the “non-existent” U.S. military operation in Laos, where he spent two years. Among other things, he says, he played in a rock band with members of the Viet Cong in Laos. Comes back to the states, and, now having discovered he is a singer (at 19, having sung nothing before except as an altar boy), with a natural high C, enrolls at Temple in their opera program. Takes him 7 years to finish (because, among other reasons, he can’t pass the piano exam.)

During his time there, he meets a famous Spanish tenor Alfredo Kraus. Kraus is one of the best singers of his time, but sings only a limited number of engagements a year. Bob asks him what he does the rest of the time. Kraus tells him he is a high-end real estate broker on the Costa del Sol. Bob takes a hint, gets trained in real estate, and becomes very wealthy. But his opera career goes by the wayside, for the most part.

Moves to Washington State. Meets Claudia (next story), they found an opera company in March 2002 (which is when my daughter and I meet them, and we become charter members of the company), and in August, we perform our first opera - The Magic Flute - with Cyndia Sieden of the Metropolitan Opera singing the Queen of the Night. They purchase an old art-deco movie theatre in Centralia, Washington for a pittance (a $10 million building, for $240,000), and we are refurbing. In the meantime, we’ve done 5 operas since then (including one by my d.), Bob goes to China and with Claudia, rents the Beijing Opera Orchestra and makes a recording. On December 17th, we are singing Beethoven’s 9th (Claudia having been hired to lead a local chamber orchestra), with a new translation commissioned from a local professor and member of the opera board.

Meanwhile, Bob flies to New York every two weeks for coaching at the Metropolitan Opera with Nico Castel, perhaps the biggest male name in operatic coaching in the world.

Interesting twists and turns…(more later).