Music vs. Theater

My fellow singing waiter Mark Hernandez notified me (and all his other Facebook friends) of this cutting “dark bio” from regional opera performer Robert Orth:

Robert Orth’s “Dark Biograpy”

While it’s tongue in cheek (and damn funny) it offers an honest glance into the not-so-glamorous life of most working musicians that’s much more common than the still-not-as-glamorous-as-you-might-think lives of the brand name soloists in the classical music world. Consider the countless hours of practice and numbers of auditions Mr Orth had to endure to get to even this level, then realize how many fail to even get this far, and you can see why any father worth his salt would encourage alternative means of getting by.

But we do it anyway. Because, for the most part, it’s a lot of fun. And if we’re really lucky we get to participate in something amazing, perhaps even enduring. And sometimes, even if it’s neither amazing nor enduring, even if it’s getting paid to sing the same Puccini aria you’ve sung dozens of times before, while wearing a name tag and polyester apron and pretending to be a waiter at an annual reward dinner for the regional association of  morticians, the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd, genuinely appreciative of  the talents and skills you’re sharing, will make it all worthwhile.

There comes a time in one’s life (usually around junior year of high school) when you have to answer the question, “What do you want to do with your life?” More often, this question comes in the form of “What colleges are you looking into?” and “Have you picked a major yet?”. But the underlying issue remains “Now that you’re 16, what activity do you plan on pursuing for the next 50 years?”

For me the answer was obvious. I had been studying music intensely since second grade. I had been performing in musicals since third grade (including a professional regional production). My listening habits, which had started with Bernstein and Sondheim in elementary school, had progressed through Gershwin, Stravinsky, and Bartok in high school. Simple. I was going to be a composer of orchestral and musical theater works.

That is, until my piano teacher talked some sense into me.

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