By Robert Croan
“How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The old joke says, “Practice.”
“How do I get to the Met?” That’s even harder. One route for aspiring singers is the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions. Every year, thousands of young Americans begin at the district level. By the final week there are only 10 or 11, who will compete on the Met stage for the highest honors. Over the years many have come from the Pittsburgh area, which always holds district auditions and intermittently regional ones.
“The Audition,” produced and directed by Susan Froemke, is a fascinating documentary based on the 2007 Met auditions, to be aired 3 p.m. Saturday, April 19, as part of the popular series of high-definition opera telecasts, showing locally in theaters at Pittsburgh Mills and Robinson Town Center.
It begins with 22-year-old tenor Michael Fabiano in his teacher’s studio, firming up a technical point and making final decisions in repertory. Then we go to the Met, where coaching sessions and rehearsals are rigorous in advance of the final concert.
Even more arduous, however, is the psychological strain and interpersonal relationships among the finalists. These 11 singers – variously high-strung, immature, overconfident, and in some cases admirably balanced and sensible – having been thrown together into a tense situation. They are superficially friends, but they are also fierce rivals in pursuit of a prize that can mean do-or-die for their careers. And for the most part it is the ones who want it most who succeed.
They’re all quite good. They have to be to have gone this far in the process, and the total package must include not only a good voice but also intangible communicative abilities. It should be noted that Pittsburgh Opera general director Christopher Hahn may be seen among the judges.
Outstanding among the six winners is soprano Angela Meade, a young dramatic soprano who quickly went on to make an unexpected Met debut replacing Sandra Radvanowsky on short notice in Verdi’s “Ernani.” And it’s quite thrilling to watch Alek Shrader – then 25, beaming with confidence, movie-star handsome and dangerously charming – toss off and “nail” the nine high Cs in the aria from Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment” that brought fame and fortune to older tenors Luciano Pavarotti and Juan Diego Florez. Now only two years later, Shrader has a two-page spread in the May 2009 issue of Opera News.
Posted
Apr 15 2009, 10:26 AM
by
Andrew Druckenbrod