Volume 28 Issue 4 | February - March 2023

The high-risk soloist’s life
I ask her if she’s read the Alan Clayton interview in the Times of
London in which he says that life of an opera singer is a life of loneliness
in hotels, not being paid for rehearsals, and not getting a dime
if you get sick and cancel. That interview re-started the conversation
around the issue of singers not being paid for rehearsals. (Directors
get part of their fee from day one of work, for instance.)
“I’m on the board of governors for the American Guild of Musical
Artists, and we’re pushing for principal artists’ rehearsal time to
be respected and paid. We still bear the most financial risk in this
industry and it is not sustainable. Months ahead of rehearsal start
time you’re looking for a place and booking and have airbnbs on
your credit card. Then you arrive in a new city and start working and
work for no money, and it’s only two months later that you get paid.”
Musicians in the pit are paid for every hour that they work in
rehearsals, I remind her. “And in the States, not sure if it’s the same
in Canada, choristers and dancers are paid either weekly or hourly,”
she responds. “We shouldn’t make those working in principal roles
risk so much. Coming out of the pandemic and seeing that there is
still no willingness to change, that is pretty shocking but, at least
in the States, we are making strides in getting companies to pay a
percentage upfront.”
Is she still worried about COVID? “I think that the pandemic
and the long shutdown of performing arts were tragic. For so many
people. And the fact that even now people are having a hard time
coming back out of the crisis and the never-going-out mindset.”
The latest reports out of the UK have it that ticket sales in a lot of
artistic disciplines are not going back to the 2019 levels, I offer. Fons
is not surprised, and wonders if it’s possible to reverse the trend. “I
don’t know what the answer is … The bigger companies are gonna
suffer the most because they have the biggest costs: huge theatres,
office spaces, they’re often downtown and employ a lot of people.
They’re probably the most affected and the least nimble.”
Looking after number one!
Meanwhile Fons has just completed a book specifically geared
towards singers on how to manage money as a freelance artist
(co-authored with finance educator Rebecca Eve Selkowe). “I wish
this book existed when I was starting out,” she says. “As a young
artist you sometimes watch some of your colleagues take off to
superstar status and you watch the same people burn every penny
they earn and complain constantly that they’re broke. Meanwhile
there are people in the trenches piecing it together and making it
work. And you think, how does this happen? I wanted the people
who took off to be able to manage that and to benefit long term from
that boom. Simultaneously, the people who are piecing it together,
I wish that they can enjoy a safe financial life and not always feel on
the brink of collapse.”
The book is written in two parallel tracks: the financial counsellor
providing financial education; and the artist sharing her own experience.
“One of the most challenging things for performers is we get
these massive dumps of money on our accounts and I think it’s a
confusing way to receive money. It leads you to sometimes spend the
money in the way that you receive it. You get a chunk, you spend a
chunk. Whereas people who are getting smaller amounts can’t really
spend in large chunks. What we are saying is, you should spread your
chunks into a nice layer.”
They are currently searching for a publisher, she says, but would
be fine with doing a print-on-demand book which universities and
Young Artist programs could supply to their singers. “When I was in
my YA program in Chicago we were earning around $50,000 a year,
which is pretty decent for a young singer, and you have health insurance!
I would have approached it differently, had I had this book.”
Such as? “I would have paid off my student loans first. In YA
programs you have the impression that you are still in school and
that there’s no urgency to pay off the student debt yet. It was more
fun to spend the money by, I don’t know, shopping at Whole Foods.
“What we’re trying to impress on people with this book is that financial
freedom is really artistic freedom, in a lot of ways. You give yourself
more options when you set yourself up better financially.”
operainconcert.com
MÉDÉE
by Luigi Cherubini
FEB.19.2023
2:30 pm
In the Canadian Opera Company’s 2023 production of
The Marriage of Figaro, (l-r) Lauren Fagan as the Countess,
Emily Fons as Cherubino and Andrea Carroll as Susanna
You can catch Fons’ Cherubino, seven years older and demonstrably
wiser, at the Four Season’s Centre for the Arts until February 18, 2023.
Lydia Perović is a freelance writer in Toronto.
This story is excerpted from a more wide-ranging conversation
that appeared on Perovic’s blog “Long Play” in January.
Original French with
English surtitles
FEATURING
Natalya Gennadi
Amy Moodie
Julie Nesrallah
Scott Rumble
Danlie Rae Acebuque
MUSIC DIRECTOR & PIANIST
Narmina Afandiyeva
Robert Cooper and the OIC Chorus
L’AMANT
ANONYME
by Joseph Bologne,
Chevalier de
Saint-Georges
MAR.19.2023
2:30 pm
A French opera with
English surtitles
FEATURING
Dion Mazerolle
MUSIC DIRECTOR
Stephen Hargreaves
Robert Cooper and
the OIC Chorus
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
TOLIVE.COM 416-366-7723 1-800-708-6754
St Lawrence Centre for the Arts | 27 Front St E, Toronto
TICKETS $50 / $38
MICHAEL COOPER
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