A little something I prepared earlier (in the key of Urban Dictionary)

Evil Soprano Syndrome, or ESS, is a paranoid behavioural condition that is mostly restricted to classical and operatic sopranos.  Occasional strains have also been witnessed amongst the tenor and counter-tenor communities, where gay members are more at risk.  There is no known cure, although a slap across the face is known to be therapeutic.    

 

Symptoms include:

 

1. Acute self-obsessiveness, megalomania and narcissism

2. Extreme paranoia and inability to trust anyone, even those that the subject is close to

3. Dishonesty, and/or convenience with the truth.  The subject will regularly censor and re-tell history so that she always looks to be utterly faultless and perfect, or the injured party in any less-than-perfect situation  

4. The subject will always find a way to place herself above others in conversation, especially if the topic is music

5. No empathy, discretion or loyalty – any signs of weakness from friends or acquaintances will be taken down and used against them at a later date

6. The subject will never pass on leads for auditions or gigs, not even to other voice-types, as sharing her professional space with contemporaries might compromise her mystique

7. Dreadful social climbing

8. No real friends in the industry beyond those that can get her somewhere (see #7)

9. Resentful and rude about all others’ work, even non-sopranos    

10. Chronically paranoid and defensive when things don’t go their way.  Any attempt to discuss bad news of any kind – even if the intention is to sympathise - will result in sulking, freeze-outs and temper-tantrums from the subject.      

 

“Wow, she’s a real bitch!”

“Yeah, she’s got ESS”.

 

“She’s not misunderstood, she’s a poisonous, evil cow.  A clear case of Evil Soprano Syndrome at work”.

 

“Wow, you’re going out with a soprano?  Watch out for ESS, it can come on without warning”.  

“Say no to Evil Soprano Syndrome”.  

Cantata No. 42 in Heerhugowaard

Right, so lately this blog has been less about love, life, art and cricket, and more A Diary of an Australian Tenor in Holland, but there we are - I'm sure I'll address the others in due course.

Had a rehearsal today for a gig that I'm singing tomorrow. It's in the middle of bloody nowhere - Heerhugowaard, which is an hour and a half by train from The Hague and then another ten minutes by car, so over three hours' travel there and back. I didn't know that it would take that long when I took the gig, and neither did I realise that they wouldn't be re-imbursing my travel expenses, either. Makes the €75 that they're paying me look even more paltry - I'm going to end up about €40 in front, and given the morning rehearsal and morning service, I'm foregoing two badly-needed sleep-ins as well. Hmph. Oh well - such is the life of a newly-arrived-on-the-scene singer: I'm loathe at this stage to turn anything down, particularly if it's a solo gig (which this is), because you never know who you're going to meet, and what sort of fabulous work you'll get from doing it. Today's €75 gig less travel expenses could be tomorrow's large-scale tour, recording deal and snorting crack off super-models' backsides.

Still, I continue to be impressed by what I see in this country, and continue to find very good answers when people ask me, round-eyed, "why did you want to leave Australia to come HERE???" - which happens more than you'd think. Heerhugowaard is NOWHERE, and I'm not kidding. It's a back-of-beyond, uninteresting, sparsely-populated, nothing sort of a place - an agricultural town that was established on account of the local cabbage-growing industry, or so the elderly parisioner that ferried me to and from the church proudly proclaimed. Population: fuck-all. Certainly no more than a couple of thousand, if that. And yet, despite all of this, they're remarkably well-equipped to put on Bach cantatas. The church boasted a very nice little organ, a harpsichord, a perfectly competent parish choir, and a small orchestra, who were probably all being paid but were all still local. And were playing on period instruments, for crying out loud.

This is pretty incredible, really, and more so when you consider that there are probably hundreds of churches just like this throughout the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Can my Australian readers imagine this? No matter how healthy a parish is in a country town in Australia, you'd be lucky to find someone there who even knew what a harpsichord was, let alone for the place to actually have one. Things are better in the UK, but not much, really. This is the equivalent of someone turning up in the equivalent country town in Australia wondering if anyone plays AFL, and finding not only a club but a well-maintained ground, training facilities and a whole bunch of professional and semi-profesional players.

(.... Actually come to think of it, this probably isn't the greatest comparison. There are probably any number of places like that in Australia, and the same with football in the UK, that boast this sort of thing. But maybe it IS a useful comparison anyway, because you can see that the Dutch attachment to classical music is more or less the equal to the Anglo-Saxon attachment to sport.)

Classical music is just part of people's vocabulary here. Not EVERYONE's vocabulary, you understand - the Dutch do white trash just as well as anyone else - but it is very much part of the fabric of the community. That's why when I sang eighteen St Matthew Passions that almost all of them were sold-out, despite the fact that they're mass-produced and badly-directed. THIS IS WHY I CAME HERE. Not for the under-paid gigs that require lots of travelling nor for the bad direction of course, but for a world where classical music is part of everyone's vocabulary. A world where if I tell the man in the pub what I do for a living I don't reveal myself either as a "girl", "poofter", or at the very best, quaint oddity with the unusual taste in vocational activities, who then has to justify his career-choices to everyone. It's almost like presenting art and music actually holds relevance, somehow, as opposed being part of some sort of obscure niche.

I gotta tell you, it's awfully refreshing.

There's one in every crowd

I like singing in choirs. It's not something that I want to do ALL the time, and I'd prefer to avoid being pigeon-holed as a choral singer if I can avoid it, but I've sung in choirs since I was seven years old, it's something I'm familiar with, and something that I enjoy, most of the time.

For awhile I avoided them. I was trying to find my "own" sound, and given that ensemble singing obliges you to blend and fit in with those around you, finding that in a choral situation is difficult. Choral singing also exercises a different part of your brain, too - it's very much a left-brain exercise that requires a lot of problem-solving (count, intonate, watch the conductor, let's see if we can decipher that tricky bit with the syncopation etc) and solo singing is very right-brain - it's almost closer to being an actor than it is being a musican. In solo singing you're communicating, emoting, maybe moving about on stage, and all the nuts and bolts of actually getting the notes right should be so well-learned that it's almost instinctual. Thus, I've found that choral singing, when you're learning how to be a right-brain singer as opposed to a left-brain one, can mess with you a bit. I guess a good analogy is trying to perform a task with your weaker hand. Until you've mastered it you probably don't want to do it with your stronger one, because you can confuse yourself, and next time you try to do it the other way around you've forgotten some of what you've learned.

Clear as mud? Thought so.

Anyway. Lately, I've found another reason why singing in choirs isn't always a good idea. To whit, THERE'S ALWAYS ONE DICKHEAD WHO TALKS TOO MUCH. Always. Without fail, there's some guy who sits there with his thumb up his arse and a self-righteous expression on his face, trying to give the impression that he knows everything. And I say "he" because that's nearly always the case as well. It's nearly always a man, and nearly always a tenor, as well. He asks questions designed to show everyone how clever he is. He second-guesses the conductor. He points out others' mistakes. He makes little self-depracating remarks that are designed to make you notice him. He's like the guy in the meeting who sits there and nods and goes "Mmm!" whenever the boss says anything. Ever wanted to punch that guy? REALLY hard? Oh my God, I have. Just SHUT THE FUCK UP, ALREADY.

I think it's borne out of a need for self-justification. Particularly in an artistic situation like a Conservatoire, people can be desperate to prove to others that they deserve to be there. Or that not only do they deserve to be there, but maybe that they're so Goddamned fantastic that they SHOULDN'T be there, because this is all so elementary to them. I think it's also driven by the fact that the arts are seen to be an "elite" past-time, so you attract people to it that use their singing (or acting or dancing or whatever) as some sort of exercise in self-grandiosement. "Look at me! I'm SINGING. And I know stuff! Aren't I clever?" And you'd think that when things get close to being at a professional level that people would learn to leave that sort of thing at the door a bit more. Unfortunately not. Sometimes it's worse.

I think it was Bill Watterson, of Calvin & Hobbes fame, who said "I like art. But it sure as hell attracts its fair share of pretentious blow-hards".

Hear bloody hear!