Opera Singing in Germany and other adventures....

Dear fellow singing friends and professionals, I was awakened a few weeks ago by a few very unsavory experiences to the fact that it might be a good thing for me to talk about the Ethics of being a Professional Opera Singer. Before I start, I would like to say that I welcome all of your thoughts about this topic, so if after you've read my post you feel there's something to add, please do share it in the comments section below! It's certainly possible that these principles of professional ethics apply equally well to other industries, but I'll forge ahead with their relevance to being a singer, specifically. As a professional Opera singer who hasn't yet had her "big break" (a.k.a. a contract singing at an 'A-level' Opera house OR really any job which would allow me to actually earn a living wage from my singing in a year's time), I still feel it of the utmost importance for me to be "ethically professional" because I believe that...

Many times I have heard from friends, family members and colleagues that I shouldn't take my singing so personally.   This comment usually comes right about the time when I am upset about something that someone said or wrote about a performance or audition that I sang. Now, I know that criticism in itself is merely an expression of what a person thinks, which is an extension of that person's tastes and biases, and therefore is not any sort of final decision as to the quality of my singing or my artistry.  However, I find it odd that we, as singers, are asked to do seemingly contradictory things when it comes to our profession. On one hand, we are asked to make our singing such a part of ourselves (in terms of giving the audience pieces of our own personal experiences served up in the form of musical dramatizations of operas and songs) and then, on the other hand, when someone criticizes our singing, we are supposed to be able to brush it off easily without a second thought...