Opera Singer Career
Opera Singer Career
The Real Poop
Shmooparo Shmooparo Shmooooooparoooooo...
...Sorry, what? Oh, we didn't hear you come in. We were too busy setting the name of Shmoop to the glorious music of Gioachino Rossini's timeless opera, The Barber of Seville. We thought it would make us sound more cultured if we could turn our study guides into arias. After all, opera is one of the most Renaissancey of all the great Renaissance art forms.
Plus, even though it was invented a long time ago, the style didn't get stuck in the past. You can actually do this for a living in the 21st century. So, if you'll excuse us...SHMOOPAROOOOOO
The opera profession is, like most performance careers, a high-risk/high-reward kind of lifestyle. It's (sorta) possible to become rich, and it's (kinda) possible to become rich and famous...but it's far more likely that you're going to make the average $40,000 a year instead (source).
When you start out, you'll probably need an extra job or two to pay the bills; but with training and experience, you can actually make a pretty penny by singing in a highly stylized manner. As you continue your career and build a solid reputation, more money should follow. Add some luck and a good publicist to the mix, and maybe you'll hit those higher notes of wealth.
If you think you're suited for a career mastering arias and doing Wagner justice, then you must already be a pretty good singer; otherwise, it's going to be a difficult road ahead. Here's the hard truth: you can learn everything an operatic education can teach you, from reading sheet music to speaking classic Italian (pasta fazool to you too). If you're tone deaf or can't carry a tune, your career is already over. If you don't believe us, take a listen to the incredible voice of Florence Foster Jenkins.
Thankfully, there are other artistic careers you can choose that will frighten your parents just as much.
Besides that molto bene voice of yours, two other things determine how you stack up in the opera world. The first is what you know. The training and experience under your garter belt will dictate where you get to perform and how much you get paid to perform it. Don't expect to play Carmen if the breadth of your singing life is the glee club at your high school.
The second is who you know, and how they know you. For most of your career, and especially in the beginning, you're going to have to convince people to hire you. Getting hired doesn't just mean you're right for the part―it means the director and producers want to work with you, the person. So when you're in the big city for audition season (October to December), be yourself (source).
Unless, of course, "yourself" is a jerk. Forget what you've heard about opera stars: no one wants to work with a diva. Be polite, courteous, respectful, and open, and you'll do just fine. Act like the world revolves around you, and your career will end up a tragic farce.
Most importantly, if you plan on pursuing a career in opera, that means you have to pursue it. Chase it down, tackle it, and tell it you won't let it go until it makes you a star. This is not something where you can go off mezzo-legato. If this is really, truly what you want out of life, then you have to put everything into it. It will try to take as much out of you as it possibly can. Opera's kind of mean like that.
In the new Millennium, opera is taking on new forms to stay relevant. While it will always have a place in the grand halls of big cities, opera is breaking out into the streets in ways never thought possible by scientists. Digital technology is changing the game. The big question is: how will you push this lovely performance art to heights it hasn't experienced in three hundred years?