My father was a businessman and, aside from being very supportive of my career, he was not involved in the music business at all. A piece of advice he gave me about interviews, however, has informed a lot of advice I have given over the years about auditioning. A huge disclaimer here is that I never was very good about following this advice when I was a singer!
In any case, his advice to me was, “When you’re in an interview, only worry about your 50 percent of the room. You can’t control the other 50 percent.”
It’s amazing how well this transfers to the world of opera auditions. Singers spend a large amount of time worrying about and trying to impact the opinions of those hearing them in an audition. As a result, they often don’t present the truest portrait of themselves as singers in the audition. As we all know, getting hired through an audition is a real crapshoot. If you stop to think about it, though, this should have a liberating influence on an audition. You can say to yourself: “Well, the odds are stacked against me, so there is no reason not to just do what I want to do!”
Unfortunately, the opposite often happens. In a quest to get hired, the following things may take place:
You sing a “defensive” audition. By this, I mean you sing to not make mistakes. This often results in a very tentative, careful performance, devoid of you and your unique personality.
You forget to express the character dramatically and physically because you’re worried about what the auditioners think of your voice.
You present repertoire that is either not ready or not exactly right for you, because you have heard that the company or director is partial to it or they might be doing a specific work in an upcoming season.
When you see these scenarios written down, it is obvious that they should be avoided. But when you get caught up in the quest to get hired, these psychological traps can lie in wait.
When you can keep your mind focused on the 50 percent of the audition that you can control, you can avoid these traps and show your true self and abilities. This is what I call “owning your audition.” Two other analogies can help you make sure you do indeed own it.
The first has to do with baseball. In baseball, if a hitter consistently bats .300, he is considered a huge success. This means that for every 10 times he goes to the plate, he gets a hit three times. If you can translate this to your auditions, it can give you a whole new approach to what constitutes success. I daresay, in the world of opera auditions, even a .200 batting average is quite good (this is based on cold auditions, when you are still at the stage of establishing yourself). By thinking in these terms, you can take a huge burden off the level of expectation that you give each audition. And let’s face it, when we don’t do this, each successive audition that comes along has an added layer of weight.
My other analogy has to do with the world of business. Think of yourself as a corporation of one. In your corporation, the goal is to produce at least a 20 percent return on investment. In other words, all of your study, coaching, etc., should produce at least two jobs for every 10 attempts. This should have some of the same positive effect as the baseball image. In addition, the business analogy depersonalizes some of the sting of rejection. And this analogy should certainly extend beyond auditioning. As a corporation of one, how you deal with expenses, investments, income, etc., should all be thought of in a very corporate sense. But that’s another article.
So, you are approaching an audition. You need to sing what is right for you, and you can’t feel the weight of the world on your shoulders for this particular audition. Now what?
For me, the “now what?” comes down to truly making the audition a performance. I’m sure you have heard either yourself or someone else say, “I don’t audition well, but boy, I light a fire when I’m on stage! If only General Director Mr. Smith could hear me in that setting.”
Most of the time, Mr. Smith won’t hear you in performance, so you must figure out how to turn that audition into a performance. The points I mentioned earlier should help, but it also goes beyond that. One of the problems with how we think about auditions lies in the fact that we don’t treat them musically and dramatically as standalone events. In other words, most of us view them as a prelude to the real thing. As a result, we aren’t as connected mentally and physically to the music as we are in a staged performance.
Your career is not an end to reach for, but rather a journey to savor. Few will sing at the Met or La Scala, but that doesn’t mean that every performance, for however long you sing, shouldn’t be a treasured event that remains a positive part of your life story. Your auditions are a part of that journey. If you approach them that way, you will feel a positive difference—whether or not you land the job. And, more importantly, so will the people hearing you.
When colleagues and I talk about auditions that have really moved us, it’s amazing how often the first thing that is mentioned is how the singers really shared and communicated in the auditions. In other words, they performed! I have hired singers who mangled words or even cracked a high note because what overcame any of that was the fact that they moved me, communicated with me, and made me forget that I was hearing an audition.
If you can get yourself to think in these terms, you will go a long way toward feeling good about the auditions you do—whether or not you’re hired. Of course, my belief is that you will have a much better chance in getting those jobs if you let yourself perform.
It takes an immense amount of courage to open up and bear your soul through the medium of singing. Remember to give yourself credit for taking that risk!
