Opera Singing in Germany and other adventures....

This past Tuesday I had my first German Opera House audition!  I was asked at the last minute by a colleague who worked there to audition for a role they're looking to cast next season and which I sing, and have sung for this colleague in an audition before.  (Sorry, I can't be any more specific with names because I don't want to jinx it.)  Honestly, I was really lucky to have been asked to audition since normally these sorts of things don't happen unless you have an agent who knows about the vacancy which the theater is looking to fill, and then sends you there, and actually, all of the other singers who were there to audition had agencies.  So, I was quite overjoyed to have been invited, to say the least. However, sticking to the point- I'd like to relate what the experience was like. I heard of the audition on a Friday and the audition itself was taking place on Tuesday of the following week, so in four days.  That really didn't give me a whole lot of tim...

I had an audition in Berlin on the 28th of September for the ZAV there and I will now dutifully report to you, Dear Readers, on what occurred during my time there, and the results of my audition.  (Possibly, not in that order.) DAY 1: I arrived in Berlin on Sunday around 12:15pm and did not have my audition scheduled until Tuesday at 1pm, therefore, I was able to fit some other touristy things into my trip, prior to my audition.  So after leaving Dortmund that morning at 8am and arriving in Berlin that Sunday afternoon with my boyfriend aboard the ICE, we decided to stash our luggage in the lockers at the 'Zoologischer Garten' S-Bahn stop, (an S-Bahn is a regional train system that interconnects with the subway station system in Berlin- much like the New Jersey Transit system connects with the Subway at New York Penn Station, for those Readers from New York, or at least familiar with its transit systems) and then we hastily made our way to the Berlin Zoo, which happens to b...

(This post was written on October 13th, 2010) I am on the train this morning heading to Leipzig. Thus far I've woken up at 7:30am after getting to sleep around midnight (packing and getting organized takes a lot longer than one might think) and I'm on the train somehow fully awake now (even after less sleep than I would normally prefer). Thankfully the train is only an “IC” (Intercity) and not an “ICE” (Intercity Express) though this train goes no less fast. The problem it seems normally with ICE's is that there are a TON of passengers on it who are noisy and loud (people on vacation or school kids on class trips) and therefore they're not the most restful traveling experience for multiple-hour trips. However, this “IC”, the first one I've been on actually, seems to be very sparsely populated, and filled with business travelers (thank God!) of the very quiet sort. So, I might actually get some rest on the 5 hour trip after all. Regarding today's...

My very first audition experience in Germany was in Cologne at the Bundesagentur fuer Kuenstlerisches Betriebsbuero (which is basically a government run office that has an outpost in every larger city that helps opera companies find opera singers for roles that they still need to cast). (Note: This office also does auditions for dancers and actors- for straight theater as well as TV and Film, for those of you who aren't Opera singers but still want to make a go at working in Germany!) Thinking that I was well prepared for this first experience after reading every book that was published on Opera singing in Germany (those books being the following: “What the Fach”; “Auditioning in the 21 st Century”; “So You Wanna Sing in Germany?”; “Nail Your Next Audition”; and “Singing Opera in Germany”) I was in for a big surprise! The building itself looked like any other office building, and the audition was being held on the top floor (6 th ), with practice rooms on the 5 th ...