You might wonder how the steps to becoming a professional opera singer are any different from those you might take towards becoming any other kind of professional.  To a certain extent, of course, you’re right.  Hard work, determination, perseverance, and a whole lot of luck certainly play into it, the latter perhaps more so than any of the other attributes mentioned.  However, I speak from the perspective of someone who has moved from being a student to that of being a professional in two very different spheres, and I can tell you from my years of experience in both that becoming an opera singer does not follow any of the procedural rules you might expect to follow in the pursuit of any other career.
     If you’re anything like me, you assumed when you entered college that you would decide on a major after a year or two – that is if you didn’t know this before getting to college – pursue that major, work as hard as you could, and would then be rewarded – if you did work hard enough – with a job in that, or certainly in a related field.  From there the steps are pretty basic.  You might start at the bottom of the ladder, but you’d work hard and move up the ladder. Perhaps you’d move on after a few years into something a little different but pretty much, you’d move up.  You knew where you stood.  You understood that if a professor told you to pay slightly more attention to your reading assignments, to concentrate on the conciseness of your writing, or that your grammar needed some extra work, you could make the changes necessary to better your work and as a result obtain a higher grade.  Likewise if your boss left the brief  you’d written for her on your desk after lunch with some comments and suggestions, you could make these changes, understanding all the way why she had made them, and probably finding the logical reasoning behind it all yourself.  If you couldn’t, you hope that at least your boss wouldn’t mind if you popped your head into her office and asked her please to explain the comment on page 7 that left you a little confused.  She probably would, and you would sit down at your desk having understood why your original interpretation was slightly flawed, and the result would be improved.
    Not so in the singing world, my friends.  If you’re lucky (or not, you decide), you knew from an early age that you wanted to be a singer, musician, artist, etc.  You were good at it, you loved it, people admired you for it and encouraged you in it, and you were determined to give it your all and see where your studies and hard work took you.  You probably entered conservatory, or at least a music school affiliated with a larger university, at age 18 and although you were probably required to take some math courses, maybe Western Civilization or a science requirement, you and everyone else knew that you were there for one main reason: to become a singer.  You were also probably taught – and who can fault the teachers and mentors for their teachings – that hard work would pay off for you and you would see the rewards in the work, rewards, and accolades you would receive as a result.
This is where I begin to see the divide between pursuing a life as, what I will call a “mainstream professional,” and that of an opera singer (or any other classical musician, I am sure).  The divide begins with the hardest lesson I ever learned as a professional singer – and it took me several years to figure out what this lesson was.  What I realized was that no matter how hard I worked, how much advice I sought, and how many opportunities I followed up on, I wasn’t even close to being guaranteed the result I desired.  Of course being lazy and unproductive will lead you where it leads everyone: to failure, unhappiness, and regret.  However, I am and have always been a hard-working student and a hard-working professional, and yet the benefits I have reaped from these personal attributes I feel are much fewer than I have received through pure luck or some other combination of factors I cannot understand.
    Of course you may quite legitimately reply by saying that perhaps I am unaware that the hard work I have put in, combined with innate talent and a bit of luck, must have gotten me as far as I have.  And to a certain extent I am sure you are right for we often underestimate our own potential, our talents and our personal drive in all aspects of life, most of all in our pursuit of our love of singing.  However, never in my pursuits as a student of politics, nor in my professional life working for a government agency in a position with significant international responsibilities did I feel that my hard work did not end up rewarding me.  Conversely I can think of several occasions in my singing career in which I can honestly say I have seldom worked harder and put in more effort.  I practiced, I refined my repertoire, I sought out the best teachers in the cities I was in and poured money into musical and dramatic coachings.  Yet at no point did I see results like those I was used to seeing in my academic pursuits. 
    The frustration at not knowing what else I could do was and remains intense. Of course, there are upswings and downswings in the economy, the public’s interest, and the availability of singers just as there are in any other field or discipline but the inability to know what one can do to promote one’s own development is perhaps the primary difference I see between being a regular professional and a singer. 
 
Photo courtesy of Mark Holford.  Kala Maxym as Cherubino at Les Azuriales Opera Festival.  Also pictured is Catriona Clark as Susanna.