My second professional audition

Having been recommended by Opera North (who had never heard me play) to The Crucible Theatre (see previous blog Chutzpah and my first professional audition), I finally got the call for an audition with Opera North.

I was staying with friends in London and got a message on my pager (remember those?). Again, I swear this is what was paged to me: "Opera North - we want you to audition for us on Thursday morning at 10am, you'll be working for us at 10.30."

Hey, looks like I can't go wrong with this, although you must admit it's a little bizarre.

Now at the time I didn't know this, but an opera audition usually requires the pianist to play some arias or ensembles and to sightread an opera score (the piano reduction, not the orchestral score). Anyway, I didn't have a piano to practise on, and I was much too shy (yes really) to find a studio or hire a piano.

I researched what the company was working on that season, and decided to play Batti, Batti from Mozart's Don Giovanni. I don't know if you know it, but there's a slightly tricky left hand which represents the cello solo. I had played it several times before when I was at college and thought I could manage it quite well.

I was living in Leeds at the time in an unheated garret (no, I'm not kidding, I've done the poor musician in a garret bit. In fact I'm wondering when it's going to end...). So I got the Don Giovanni score out of the local library. Unfortunately for me, with no piano (and not thinking to look through the piece) I had got not the easy to play Schirmer piano reduction but the impossibly difficult Barenreiter piano reduction, that just puts virtually every note the orchestra plays onto a piano stave.

So come the morning of the audition, and Clive Timms is waiting to hear me play. So I launch into Batti Batti and stop playing. 15 times in the first three pages. The 15th time I actually say out loud, "Oh for heaven's sake, Fisher, pull yourself together!" This audition was fast going down the toilet.

Clive very gently said, "yes, it is a little tricky, isn't it. Let's do some sightreading." So he put the score of Gounod's Faust in front of me and started conducting. Now there's one thing I can do, and that's sightread. Particularly 19th century romantic stuff. So I didn't bat an eyelid (or make a mistake, as I remember) and we sightread through the whole of Act 1 of Faust.

I got the job.

Not that it got any less scary, as one of the first things I did was to play in the pit in front of the entire company for the first stage and piano rehearsal. I think Clive saw my face (terrified) when I realised I would be playing The Jewel Song (a favourite piece) for Valerie Masterson (a favourite singer) and rescued me.

Just goes to show that making errors in an audition situation can still get you the job - but only if you recover fast!


Jeremy is the co-author of Successful Singing Auditions

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