Nullifidian
New member
I'm coming to an self-created impasse with respect to pursuing a singing career. The reason that it's self-created is because everybody else I know says I'm good enough to pursue a professional career, and I would just like to pull back and say "Is this really what I want to do?"
So I figured I'd dump my plea for career advice here, where people might actually know.
I started out rather late (in college) because I was a lifelong atheist and didn't do things like church choirs. I liked it, but never considered it as a career. Eventually I discovered what I took for a bass-baritone's "top" was actually the high range of my chest voice, meaning that my passagio starts around the F#/G region, a rather freakishly high passagio associated with heldentenors like Vickers, and it looks like my own voice will be following the same path at a time when authentic heldentenors are rather rare.
Along the way, I had a crisis of confidence in music (as a composer) and started on biology, but kept up my singing, since I didn't think there was a career in it for me. I was offered solos in choral works, then started soloing for money, joined the San Diego Opera chorus, and started taking leads in operas performed that the university, and doing roles with semi-professional companies in San Diego. It was only after all that that I started reconsidering whether or not I should pursue performance.
So now I'm doing music and biology as a double major, and I've started to grow a little burned out. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that I haven't slept at all in the last three nights, have developed gastric problems, and have had an attack of pleurisy, all related to doing too much at once. I'm working, doing my double major, trying to organize support for a parallel opera company of KU students, writing my own opera, organizing and curating a two-day film festival, and volunteering at an infoshop here (which will be screening the film festival). So all this might just be due to doing too much near the end of the semester.
However, I do think that I'm working way too hard at presenting works which are not in the common repertoire, and that when I do pursue a career as singer professionally most of what I do will be the operas I'm already burned out on, and I'll be working way too hard for a transient reward of a few decent evenings a year.
Would it be better if I tried to start a career in Europe, where there are more chances of doing non-repertoire works? I've been there a few times, and would be inclined to say so.
Or does the very fact that I'm feeling "iffy" about pursuing this as a career mean I shouldn't try?
Any thoughts will be appreciated. :grin:
So I figured I'd dump my plea for career advice here, where people might actually know.
I started out rather late (in college) because I was a lifelong atheist and didn't do things like church choirs. I liked it, but never considered it as a career. Eventually I discovered what I took for a bass-baritone's "top" was actually the high range of my chest voice, meaning that my passagio starts around the F#/G region, a rather freakishly high passagio associated with heldentenors like Vickers, and it looks like my own voice will be following the same path at a time when authentic heldentenors are rather rare.
Along the way, I had a crisis of confidence in music (as a composer) and started on biology, but kept up my singing, since I didn't think there was a career in it for me. I was offered solos in choral works, then started soloing for money, joined the San Diego Opera chorus, and started taking leads in operas performed that the university, and doing roles with semi-professional companies in San Diego. It was only after all that that I started reconsidering whether or not I should pursue performance.
So now I'm doing music and biology as a double major, and I've started to grow a little burned out. A lot of this probably has to do with the fact that I haven't slept at all in the last three nights, have developed gastric problems, and have had an attack of pleurisy, all related to doing too much at once. I'm working, doing my double major, trying to organize support for a parallel opera company of KU students, writing my own opera, organizing and curating a two-day film festival, and volunteering at an infoshop here (which will be screening the film festival). So all this might just be due to doing too much near the end of the semester.
However, I do think that I'm working way too hard at presenting works which are not in the common repertoire, and that when I do pursue a career as singer professionally most of what I do will be the operas I'm already burned out on, and I'll be working way too hard for a transient reward of a few decent evenings a year.
Would it be better if I tried to start a career in Europe, where there are more chances of doing non-repertoire works? I've been there a few times, and would be inclined to say so.
Or does the very fact that I'm feeling "iffy" about pursuing this as a career mean I shouldn't try?
Any thoughts will be appreciated. :grin:
