A New York State of Mind

After leaving college, I had to have a tonsillectomy, every vocalist's nightmare. But during the year afterward, when my voice was healing and I was not allowed to sing, I attended paralegal school as sort of a Plan B in case my voice never did return and fame and fortune eluded me.

Certainly I wasn't about to merely teach piano! I was, after all, an aspiring operatic soprano with star quality!

In the afternoons, after paralegal classes were over, my vast talent and I waited tables at a nearby restaurant. My father referred to it as "a lesson in humility," adding, "...something you could sorely use." Hmpf!

Finally, though, my voice healed, I resumed lessons with the same beloved voice teacher I'd had since eighth grade. She was a well-known NYC opera diva, herself, who eventually got me the contact I needed to land an audition for the chorus of a big opera company in Manhattan. I was out of my skin with excitement when I received word that I'd been hired for the gig. Off I went to live the dream!

Before much time passed, however,  red flags began waving in abundance. First, the pay was not great, so I had to subsidize my paltry wages by becoming a rehearsal pianist for various off-off-off Broadway (think "New Jersey"...) shows.

At one particular audition for such a gig, the show's musical director, a greasy-haired, blubbery-lipped man with coke bottle glasses and a shirt mottled with remnants of his lunch, placed his doughy hand upon my thigh and commented on what a great rehearsal "team" we could make. The way I described the encounter that evening on the phone with my father was, "He may have been talking pianos, but he was thinking organs."

"That's it; you're coming home!" my father said at once.

"I am not coming home," I insisted. "I haven't even been here a month yet. I am going to become a famous opera star. That has always been the goal, and I'm going to make it happen. I'm a big girl. I can handle myself."

But, as the months went on, my struggling-artist lifestyle began to take its toll. Money was tight, so luxuries were few, and the perpetual honking and wheezing of the city traffic wreaked havoc with my countrified sleeping patterns and musician's ears. Plus my two paying gigs each day left me feeling frustrated and unfulfilled.

At opera chorus rehearsals, my assignment was to be the human equivalent of a packing peanut: soften the impact of a precious commodity (the principal) against the harshness of his or her surroundings (the gargantuan stage). Limited movement, limited singing, understated everything. Always think as a group. Refrain from standing out. Less is not just more; it's all you're hired to give.

At rehearsals where I accompanied for off-Broadway shows, Job One was to follow the vocalists. When they lost pitch, it was incumbent upon me to help them find it again, or, occasionally, when that was simply not going to happen, to play in the key toward which they were skittering closest. If they wanted to slow the tempo through a measure or two (or six) and then, without warning, catapult through the next dozen, I was the musical equivalent of Mama Bunny to their recalcitrant Runaway Bunny of children's literature fame, saying, in essence with my instrument, "If you run away, I will run after you, for you are my little bunny!"

Somehow, covering for sub-par vocalists didn't seem like what an aspiring operatic soprano should be doing as her ongoing daily gig.

Finally, one Friday night, half a year later, after a particularly ego-deflating week, I called home, beleaguered, and asked my father, "Why would I be given a talent like this if I weren't going to also be given the personality I needed to accommodate it?"

"That," said my father wisely, "is what you'll have to figure out with your life. That's the path to your happiness."

So very soon afterward, I returned to my town of origin to begin the discovery process.

Lesson: If you try on a dream for size and discover it doesn't fit the way it should, you get to exchange it for Wisdom and something substantially more to your liking.

Next: The teaching part begins!