Studying in Vienna in 2007, I managed to catch Garanca's Charlotte in Werther. All of the straight boys with me were obsessed with her looks, but she delivered more than just a model figure- she truly captured the heart of Charlotte... not even the gigantic set could overshadow her acting and the beautiful, dark quality to her voice. So, when I heard this summer that she was taking over from Gheorghiu in the Met's Carmen, I marked the date of the broadcast in my calendar. With that date fast approaching, I thought I'd try to take a sneak peak at her past triumphs... and they are stunning.

Posted via email from OperaTV

I am an undergraduate vocal performance major looking to make it in the big wide world of classical singing. Through the course of my studies, I have found YouTube an invaluable guide for researching the vast amount of vocal repertoire out there. Every day, some incredible piece of operatic or choral music is posted- either some incredible new singer or an older, hard to find recording. I will try to post three to four videos a week. 

Posted via email from OperaTV

I have a confession to make: Up until this summer, I knew very little about the nitty gritty of arts policy. I knew vaguely that some theaters got these mysterious things called 'grants' that meant that people like me were required to do education shows at various churches, elementary schools, and (on one particularly hot day in Arkansas) a Farmer's Market. I also knew that arts funding had been dramatically cut sometime in the nineties, which was why my former elementary school had only one general arts teacher two years after I left. I knew that the US's support of the arts was dramatically lower than that of European countries, where opera, my artistic field of choice, is often times completely subsidized by the state. I also had experienced the disdain of many 'hardworking' Americans to my profession of choice- I can't count the number of times I've been asked what I wanted my 'real job' to be. As an artist, you don't ask where the money for a production comes from: you show up, you do your job, and you pray that you'll be paid something for it. As a classical musician in particular, you don't go into the industry because you want to make money, because the odds are that won't happen. You hope that you make enough to survive.

In the current economy, even that is dubitable. In the past year alone, the Baltimore Opera Company, Santa Clarita Symphony, Opera Pacific, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art have all either closed or come close to closing. The New York City Opera has drawn out $23.1 million from it's endowment (two-thirds in total) to cover losses from this past season. Though ticket sales are at a historic high (not uncommon in a down economy), most modern arts organizations do not get their money from ticket sales. At the Washington National Opera, where I intern, only 36 percent of the total budget is made through ticket sales. The remaining 64 percent is made up of contributions: 40 percent from individual donors, 22 percent from corporations, and a mere 2 percent from government funding. As the stock market sinks further, donors find themselves unable to support "superfluous" organizations- almost inevitably, these are artistic organizations.

In the most recent $8.9 billion stimulus bill, $50 million was set aside for arts organizations- this amounts to .0056 percent. It's hard to speak of this without seeming ungrateful... after all, if many in Congress had their choice no percentage would have gone to bailing out artists who "don't give anything to the economy." However, I am ungrateful. President Obama gave his commitment to the arts in a significant way during his campaign. It is early on in his term as president and I don't expect him to do everything. However, the arts are experiencing a complete collapse in their infrastructure- a collapse that, unlike the financial industry, was completely outside of their control. $50 million is much like putting a band-aid on a gaping head wound.

Only this July, a letter was sent to the NEA, written by Florida Representative Cliff Stearns and signed by 50 others, including minority leader John Boehner of Ohio, criticizing the use of the stimulus money "to fund art projects that many Americans find offensive." He goes on to cite three works that they find offensive and then politely asks the NEA to give back the money it received from the stimulus bill. He explains that they don't feel that productions that "taxpayers have refused to support in the open market place" should be given public funding. Ignoring the irony of such a statement from a man who supported the auto industry bailout, this letter is both petty and offensive. Taxpayers have supported the arts to their full ability. It is their money that has kept the industry running at all- not what amounts to a rather paltry bailout that only emphasizes the petty nature of Congress as a whole. To use the NEA as a prop to reassert your own moral superiority when the entire artistic community is falling apart at the seams is both pathetic and childish.

The arts are an industry. Being an artist is a real job. Moreover, it's a real job that affects every American. Choirs and orchestras develop early team building skills. Art and music lessons instill discipline at an early age. Theater is the breeding ground for nearly every public speaker. Creativity is the foundation of American thought. Literally the least we can do is what we have done and it's not nearly enough.


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I'd actually really like to get comments/opinions on this. You guys got anything? All two of you?

It's been quite a while since I've done this... but I've been feeling particularly melancholy this afternoon. I just feel the need to let it out somewhere. I don't particularly care if anyone reads. Actually, I'd rather they didn't. Because, honestly, my life is good. I have parents who love me. I have friends I trust implicitly. I feel the need to repeat that statement, because sometimes I wonder if they realize how much that means. I have a career I love and enough of a stage presence that I can make people laugh.

That being said, sometimes I just really hate living. I hate the feeling like I'm living my life inside of some constant game with no end in sight. Fill out this application and do this career. Kiss this person and find a future husband. Stay in this town and please your parents. Go to this program, meet the right person, and launch a career that will fulfill a musical need that will render holes in every other aspect of your life. It's like every life has no more possibilities than a sim... filled with possibilities that narrow and narrow with every step. I was driving in my car today and I thought to myself- I should just drive off, go somewhere - anywhere. And I could. But I couldn't without preparing myself. I keep avoiding doing applications for internships in DC. Not because I don't want to go. I do. But I don't want to plan out my life. Playing the same suck-up games to the same well-meaning, arrogant, ultimately ignorant pricks who think that by listening to the most feral, heart-wrenching, inspirational music out there that they can somehow place themselves higher into an entirely ridiculous sense of class. I'm tired of how money makes us all, including myself, into baseless simpletons and how I crave it and yet am unwilling to take any steps to earn it, because it feels so slimy to be so obsessed with material things.

So I wile away my time in sleep, or reading books set in fantastical worlds where at least something different happens. Where the heroines find their matches... not perfect people, but well-suited. Because ultimately we are a species that likes to partner off and I'm not certain I'm a strong enough women to make it through life without companionship. And I fear that one day, not today, not even next year, I won't have my trusted friends to fall back on. That I'll go to call a Lyndsay, or a Catie, or an Erin, or a Shie, or a Shani- or even a Matt or an Adam or a Tim- and there will be no answer. That I'll come home to an empty house with nothing and noone to care for. And go to sleep to wake up in the same pointless existence over and over again.

So, four years into undergrad, I realize that I don't want to be a poli sci major. It's interesting, yes. Maybe a minor would have been worth it. Along with a comp sci minor. Not a major.

I care about a select number of political issues. Few of them are immediately relevant in American political campaigns. Don't get me wrong: I love Obama. But I don't know- my liberal friends are all 'OMG He's like the best thing since sliced bread.' And I'm like, so far, yes, he's cool. I'm still no Republican. But I'm certain he'll make his share of mistakes... give him a bit of time. Nobody's a god.

But seriously, the issues we debate on in this country? They're fairly stupid in the long run, with little room for debate. And we keep arguing on loop. But in the meantime, we've had the same security policies for the past century. Has anyone watched the news? It's stupid and boring and leaves out half of the world events that are actually important.

Then I sing in a concert and it makes me genuinely happy- and I just want to go 'fuck it' and do nothing else. Because politics are like an eternal ourosbouros. I care too much. I just want to sit outside and enjoy the day. Maybe start a quintet of friends and rehearse together. It was a gorgeous day outside today, and what did I do? I spent four hours reading about nuclear weaponry. And that's the least depressing thing I can research. Seriously. There's actually a bit of beauty to a nuke- there is nothing beautiful in the other major world issues we ignore. People are starving all over the world. Moreover, my time studying poli sci has essentially convinced me that ultimately we can do fuck all about it. At least nukes haven't been used more than once.

Is it sad that nuclear weapons are one of the few things that give me hope about humanity as a whole?

I don't want to do this any more. I don't want to be in this school or these eternal classes. I don't want to be pitting myself against the same competitors. I sure as hell don't want to be writing a twenty page paper that I'm certain my teacher will find lacking. I want someone to hold onto when I'm feeling like this, as rare as it is for me to feel this bad, and I don't want that someone to be my computer. I'm stuck and I hate it.

I look forward to this summer. Maybe it will help.

There are times in life when I hate being female.

My ovaries are going out of their way to give me pain and I have a four-hour car ride tomorrow.

This is one of those times.

I'm finding the lyrics to 'You Must Meet My Wife' particularly entertaining at the moment. Sondheim always manages to capture speech in his melodies in such a fluid way...

AHHHHH!!!! I have too much to do before Friday and I don't have the ability within me to pull anymore all-nighters!

Why can't I be back in Vienna? Things were so much more laidback there.

-Cat

P.S. Lily Pons is one crazy motherf*cker. As is Steve Reich... who I would like better were he not taking up five hours of my time tomorrow.

So, as per usual, my journal went to crap after a few committed entries. It's the story of my life- quite literally. I'm approaching the end of my time in Austria (something I'm not so happy about) and all I can say is that I will be seriously pissed if this streak of nice weather continues and I don't get a White Christmas. I visited the International Atomic Energy Agency today, but I'm not writing about that- so there!

I find myself musing tonight that as I get older that my patience for doing things that I don't want to do is becoming increasingly less. This is also coinciding with a drop in my grades, which I doubt is mere coincidence. Tonight is a clear case in point- I was told this morning to write an essay in German comparing Austrian and American advent traditions. Meanwhile, I have recently bought a journal by Schlesinger that is absolutely riveting. Now, I will admit that I'm a lazy ass who doesn't like to do work, however, I think this is something more. I honestly think that reading the Schlesinger book exponentially more important than the silly German essay and have a hard justifying to myself that my grades are all that important. Rationally I know they are, but I honestly don't see why. Grrr. Maybe things will be better when I get back to Greencastle and have nothing really interesting around to distract me from the pursuit of tons of busy-work. I doubt it though. I thought I was finished with this crap in high school. I really wish that I could be a mid 19th century noble- enough money to not have to worry and the time to pursue whatever the hell I wanted to.

Good God I'm a whiny bitch, but if I can't be whiny in my journal, where can I?

It's so frustrating- I'm just getting settled here in Vienna and I feel liked I'm being ripped away to go back home. I love my friends at Depauw (and I miss them terribly... seeing the facebook feed is really depressing sometimes), but Greencastle is so boring in comparison. I've never lived in a city and I'm quickly discovering that I adore it. I hate driving and I adore the U-Bahn. I love the museums. I love my district- Otto Wagner's apartment building is a block over, Cafe Sperl is three blocks over, the Naschmarkt is a street away, and the Secession building and the Theater an der Wien just as close. Meanwhile, I'm nervous about coming back to Depauw where I'll be shoving myself into a group of singers that have been working together for a semester. I'm learning music that they've been working on for a month now. Would I give it up? Never. But it's going to be hard nonetheless... I only get a few days at home before I leave for school.

</complaint>

Yet again, I have a backpost. I still have one left to finish up the Mariazell trip, then I'll try to write a new post covering most of intensive... of course, by that time I'll be starting different classes, so I'll yet again be way behind. However, whoever is reading this will deal. And it would be slightly creepy to have something about my day up on the web the night after it happened.

I wrote this appoximately 2 weeks ago. I was really tired when I wrote this, so please forgive it's brevity.

( Mariazell Orientation, Pt. 1 )

Current Music: My roommates Kathleen Battle