Can we call opera a "career path" anymore?

As the old adage says: I didn't find opera. Opera found me.

I was a Music Education major in college, and my original goal was to be a high school band director. I majored in voice because I was better and it, and I was also far too lazy to learn a Mozart Sonata for a French Horn audition.

For those of you reading this from New York, it probably seems insane, but I could not get a teaching job in Pennsylvania after I graduated. I applied for literally hundreds of jobs across the state. Pennsylvania is a state where K-12 education is well funded, and school teachers are well compensated when you adjust for cost of living. All of this makes K-12 teaching jobs in Pennsylvania extremely competitive. (I know this was very different when I got out of school compared to now. I graduated in 2010, right after the 2008 crash.)

After college I started to audition for local opera companies. I knew nothing about how the business worked. My teachers in college said I had the talent, and I was just naive enough to throw myself headfirst into the business. I didn't know how to format my resume. I had no idea I wasn't supposed to wear a loud paisley floor length skirt to an audition. I remember I got a $75 headshot from one of those little kiosks with photographers paid an hourly rate at Westmoreland Mall in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. I started, I made a mess, and I iterated, and I started working in opera.

The opera world in Pittsburgh was full of interesting, quirky people, but none of us made our full income from opera. We all had other jobs that made us money so we could perform. Even so, opera was a small source of income for me.

I worked multiple jobs while building my opera career. I conducted church and community choirs, taught little kids piano lessons, prepped voice students for high school musical auditions, and substitute taught music in local districts. My 20's were a blur of 60 hour work weeks, tears, and many long solo car drives to New York for Young Artist Program auditions.

I understood what I needed to do. I knew I had to be scrappy, and I knew I had to power through. I am a hard worker and was born to a family of hard workers. Hard work has never been something I've run from. I'm consistent and disciplined by nature. I knew I could overcome and make this crazy career happen.

After six years and graduate school, I decided to move to NYC. I was sick of driving across three states multiple times a year, and I had pretty much sung for everyone who was in a position of power in the opera business in Western Pennsylvania.

New York's opera world was shocking, but not in the way I expected.

The issues I ran into in New York were shockingly similar to what I dealt with in Pittsburgh. I always thought kids who grew up in New York had a unique leg up in the industry. Kids in New York got to go to high schools like Frank Sinatra and LaGuardia. They had access to the best teaching and coaching in the world at Julliard and Mannes School of Music.

And yet, everyone in New York still had a day job. Everyone in New York was sitting in the same auditions praying to be chosen. There was no leg up. Luck, subjectivity, and networking were massive factors in the hiring process.

Once I moved to NYC, I realized how much opera chews people up and spits them out.

In my first year here I met so many older opera singers who were working day jobs well into their twilight years. They had never made enough money to save and invest for retirement when they were younger due to the rat race of their opera careers.

I saw older singers with SERIOUS depression issues, believing that they had never "made it" even though they had done objectively great things.

After seeing what happened to so many of my friends and colleagues in New York, I had a realization: I'd rather be sane and have a small career than be depressed, angry, and resentful, and have a huge career.

I've been teaching voice to musical theater students as my primary source of income for almost a decade. Unlike a lot of voice teachers who treat it as a "backup" I believe teaching voice is fully part of my career. In fact, I proudly say teaching voice is the main thing I do.

I have heard some shocking things from people in power in opera:

"The only way to have a career is to go big."

"You need to get comfortable living with an empty fridge."

"If you really want it you'll make the money work."

This past week, Andrew Potter, a very well known and respected bass shook the opera world when he announced his retirement from the business at 43. He's in his vocal prime, and he simply admitted there is no way to make the math, or his family, work in the grander scheme of the business.

If you haven't had a chance to read his article, here's a link.

I remember feeling like everything was a pay-to-sing in my 20's. Even my paid gigs seemed to need subsidy for something...

...but when that's happening at the Metropolitan Opera? That's a serious problem.

At a certain point during the pandemic, I realized that opera wasn't a career. It's a hobby, (or even a deep meaningful exploration of human capability like going for Olympic Gold or climbing Mount Everest). Sometimes you get paid a little, but it's really about you funding your own career and doing it out of sheer will and love. When you want a family, or have any basic financial sense, the math simply doesn't work to make it into an actual career that turns profit.

My first year out of undergrad, I got an offer to come to New York and audition for a pretty big opera company's young artist program. However, they didn't provide an accompanist for the audition, and I couldn't afford the audition fee. Ever the pragmatist I decided to cancel my audition slot.

I remember telling my voice teacher at the time, and her response has always stayed with me:

"Candice, opera is not a money making venture."

I remember thinking at the time it was true, but I never expected it to be as extreme as it is.

I think is one of the worst aspects of this industry is this lie that's sold to young people:

"Yes it's hard to make it, but you can have a REAL career if you work hard enough."

A real career where you have to subsidize your own housing in the most expensive city in America to sing at it's arguably most well paid and prestigious house?

A real career where there is basically no retirement unless you set one up yourself (or move to Germany)?

A real career where you probably have to pay your own health insurance, while your body is literally the thing you are being hired for?

A real career where you can go months or even years without decent paid work in the field you have an undergrad and possibly multiple graduate degrees in?

The fundamentals have fallen through and no longer make sense. We can't call this a career anymore. It's simply not a career. It's not something people can build through a lifetime to have financial security, and therefore it is not a career.

I feel like opera is in a very dark period right now. The San Francisco Opera orchestra is on strike as we speak.

I love the art. It is, to me, the thrill of a lifetime to have built my voice to withstand singing with orchestra. I love how it's embraced me in all my power and intensity, but I hate that I can't do it at a high level unless I make pretty extreme sacrifices. It's that way for all of us, and it feels like no one will do anything to fix or change the business in a meaningful way.

My resume is a veritable graveyard of small companies who really wanted to be something, but were mismanaged, never had backing, or never had decent funding.

Musical theater, on the other hand, is thriving.

Musical theater has it's issues, but my students get work. Meaningful, paid work right out of school. Even most smaller companies pay a functional wage. The union is not perfect, but does its job. Musical theater doesn't charge people to audition. Musical theater artists never have to pay for their own accompanist. They don't have to pay to send a prescreen tape. Hell, they don't even have prescreen tapes. The tape is the audition. They have OPEN calls where ANYONE can come and sing.

It's not a perfect system, but it's a better system. It's a far more equitable system.

I really don't know my main point in writing an article like this. The inequity in the business and it's obvious classism has bothered me for many, many years. When I was actively performing more, I was afraid to say anything about it. Now, I really have nothing to lose.

I just hope that someday, opera can really figure itself out. I hope someday it can be a real career for people again, and gets back to supporting the artists who make it what it is.