Jana wrote:
> When I was a grad student at Indiana, it seemed like there
> was an tremendous amount of focus put on slapping together those 5 arias
and
> starting the rounds of auditions. ....And at a
> school like that, there was ample evidence to confirm that this method got
> results, because the "finished products" were getting lots of work both
> inside the school of music and outside of it.
I'm afraid I know of a big Canadian music faculty guilty of the same thing
(I'm not going to name names....) A friend of mine approached the head of
the faculty to ask about her chances of getting into the program. His
response surprised us only in that he actually admitted it face to face.
This friend is an intermediate singer, in her 30s, with tremendous musical
and esp. piano skills--great voice, just not all there yet. She was told
she had a zero chance, because their main goal was to have singers out in
time to compete in major international competitions. That was it.
And having watched (and listened to) the products of this school for several
years (afterall, they get all the jobs in the city), I find many of them
leave with WORSE voices than they came in with. Yes, they learn a number of
performance skills and they're full of confidence--and these take them a
long way. But all these people were accepted in the first place because
they sang so naturally well--the school is just a collection of many of the
best voices in the country.
Needless to say, I've done most of my study privately, though I've taken
many good theory courses at said school. I believe private is best--IF you
can motivate yourself (and if you can't, what are you doing?)--but it really
makes things tough for breaking into performance opportunities.
Alleson Aering
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