The Opera Blogger

Professional nostalgia

When I look back on the last two decades of my life, one theme that becomes clear is this: even though I’ve never been a Writer with a capital W, I’ve always found ways to write, and it’s always brought good things into my life. Perhaps the best example is this one. Back in Toronto in 2009-2010ish, then in my late 20’s, I rage-quit a respectable tech job and decided to devote myself to the humanities instead. I had enough money saved up to support myself modestly for a year, and I enrolled as an after-degree student at the U of T so that I could take english literature courses for credit. My original plan was to bolster my transcript enough to apply to graduate programs in English Literature. But ultimately it wasn’t my papers about Middlemarch and Baudrillard that changed the course of my life: it was an opera blog called “All Time Coloratura,” in which I wrote reviews of everything I was going to see in Toronto.

In a way, my timing was perfect. It was the tail end of the golden age of blogging, and the beginning of the smartphone era. Staid institutions like opera companies were getting the vague idea that they should try to be more Online, but no one really knew what that meant. The idea that the professional critics of the mainstream media were losing ground to various online amateurs was gaining currency, and one of the online amateurs was me. After I wrote a particularly flattering post about Opera Atelier, a small company specializing in stylized productions of baroque repertoire, someone who worked at the company saw it and invited me to a special event. Through her I met the company’s artistic director, along with a number of other Toronto opera types, and I was thrilled to have been noticed at all. She and I became close friends, and I kept blogging.

Shortly after, a job opening came up at the Canadian Opera Company, Canada’s largest, which was then helmed by Alexander Neef (who has recently taken the Paris Opera’s top job). They wanted someone to be their new social media co-ordinator, then a brand-new position. The job interview was probably the most fun I’ve ever had applying for a job: over the course of several hours we mostly talked about opera. I had no experience in marketing, PR, social media, or professional communications of any kind, but I could point to my blog and say, I’m basically already doing this job, I’m already on the scene. And that was a compelling enough pitch to get me hired.

I stayed at the company for only two and a half years before leaving to work on a different passion project, but it occupies an outsized place in the story of my life. Besides being the most fun I’ve ever had at work, it also was the source of the greater part of my closest friendships, and more than any other job, it shaped the way I understood myself and my relationship to art. Here are a few memories from that time.

Institutional Uneasiness

One of my first tasks at the COC was to start up a blog, and the first post was meant to introduce me as the primary blogger. My manager suggested a setting for an accompanying photo: in a dusty hallway sat a throne, clearly a stage prop but lately out of use, painted gold and upholstered in purple velvet. I had a new-ish pixie cut and a jaunty red stewardess scarf, and when I sat in the throne to have my picture taken I was excited beyond words to be a professional opera blogger.

Within an hour of the post going live, I received a sternly-worded email from the props department that the photo was unauthorized, that I could have caused harm to the prop, and that I was never to touch or photograph any item without first being given explicit permission. I was deflated.

This turned out to be a regular occurrence, and I’m not even sure if it’s much different now. The seamstresses were anxious about costumes-in-progress being photographed, for the most part I wasn’t wanted in rehearsals, a lot of people didn’t want their photos posted online. A big part of my job was taking “behind the scenes” photos, but I don’t remember ever being a welcome sight. A conductor said hello to me at an event, gestured at the DSLR around my neck, and commented, “you’re never without your weapon” before declining to be photographed. If I’d had journalism training perhaps I would have learned how to get good social-friendly stories anyway, but by nature I’m someone who hates bothering people, especially if they feel I’m invading their privacy, and it stressed me out to no end.

Mantello dell'equipaggio

There was another Canadian opera blogger on the scene, whose pseudonym I won’t put here in case he’s still googling himself (but hey fellow opera blogger, if you found this anyway, I hope you’re doing well now). My very first week on the job he called me on the phone to tell me he knew who I was, that he was a very important person in the community, and that he was accustomed to getting invited to opening night (comp tickets, of course). Shortly after the phone call he emailed to let me know that he thought my blog was bad.

He had constructed an imposing, but faintly ridiculous, persona for himself. A man of mystery, he insisted on wearing elaborate Venetian masks to every performance, and when he was able to persuade a singer to meet him or do an interview, he wore masks for that too. He claimed to have a readership of thousands all over the globe constantly clamoring for his opinion, although the evidence did not bear this out. Any opera companies who accommodated him with free tickets and backstage access would get glowing reviews in his blog; any who denied him would get nasty screeds expressing disgust with their backwardness, their unprofessionalism, and their general immorality. He was definitely someone who kept a list of enemies.

Sometimes I find myself thinking about him now, although all trace of him and his blog seems to have vanished from the internet. He had a very particular writing style, immediately recognizable, full of bombast and malapropisms and a theatrical formality. I’ve almost come to admire it now that so much online writing has become medium-dot-com-ified. A true style is a rare and precious thing.

I <3 COC

We were all aware that the acronym for the Canadian Opera Company could be a bit suggestive, and I’m glad that I was working with a group of people who decided to lean into it rather than ignore it. The “I <3 COC” buttons predated me, but “The COC Blog” and “The Big COC Podcast” did not (I remember that last one being my idea).

Occasionally someone would post pictures of the I <3 COC buttons on twitter, with captions reading “uh… do they know how this looks?”

The answer is yes. Yes, we knew.

Montages

The morning after every dress rehearsal, part of my job was to help make “the Montage.” The montage was a promotional video cobbled together by me and the head of PR from footage shot at the dress rehearsal by two brothers with big cameras. They were distantly related to a legendary filmmaker and were very patient while we picked through the video of the performance the morning after, looking for moments that might play well on YouTube.

It was one of my favorite parts of the job. The dress rehearsal was usually on a Thursday night, and Friday morning we’d sit in the basement in front of an enormous computer screen, watching the whole thing again, opining at length on the performances, the direction, whether so-and-so could credibly act or not, and whether the directorial eccentricities made any sense. The relative of the legendary filmmaker didn’t talk much, probably because we were always talking over him, yelling “cut HERE! No, here! Show us the death scene again!” and so on. It’s quite likely he was annoyed that we, who had no film editing expertise, dictated pretty much all the editing choices, but we usually knew exactly what we wanted, for better or for worse. Watching them now, well, they don’t exactly look like a pro filmmaker cut them. But they were so much fun.

This Die Fledermaus was one of my favorite productions from my time at the COC.

This Rigoletto was good too.

This one for Nixon in China I did myself, from archival news footage that was part of the production (shown on tv screens on stage). I was pretty proud of that one.

The ORCAs

Being on the administrative side of the company, sometimes I’m surprised by the realization that I still know very little about how the theatrical side worked. I visited the costume shop and the prop-makers, went to the directorial concept discussions, and did interviews with singers, but typically wasn’t permitted to attend rehearsals.

One of the exceptions was the ORCA. I don’t know quite what the acronym stands for, but I know what kind of rehearsal it is: it’s a final chance for the conductor to find out how the show will work musically, with full sets, costumes, lighting, blocking, and so on (during my tenure the technical director kindly wrote a blog post about it). In a lot of ways it looks like a dress rehearsal, but instead of running the show straight through, it’s worked through slowly, scene by scene, with the conductor choosing when to move forward and when to run something through again, giving notes throughout. The director cedes control at this stage, and is meant to be only an observer — although in one tense rehearsal I certainly saw one try to intercede.

There were typically three ORCA rehearsals for any given production, each rehearsal focusing on a different section of the opera, and I always tried to attend at least one, coming in through the stage door and slipping into the dark auditorium alone. Much more than at a dress rehearsal, I felt like I was getting an inside view of the production taking shape. The only people present were insiders of some stripe, and it felt exciting to watch them confer in hushed tones. Plus, I could sit wherever I wanted in the house (one evening, the GM saw me sitting far back at the orchestra level, and sat down next to me to advise: don’t sit there, the sound is so bad).

It was the only time in my life I’ve willingly spent evenings at “work”. When I think about loving opera, I often think about those few evenings spent watching part of Rigoletto or Ariadne auf Naxos, feeling closer to it because I was watching it while it was in something like a state of undress. It was probably the closest I came to finding deep meaning in a job, and I doubt I’ll have anything quite like it again.