Okay guys, get ready...Sassy Sick Day Statement about NYCO:
I am 25-years young and by May 2014 I will have two degrees in Music for voice and voice performance. Based on sheer probability, I will most likely have no real, taxable income from music after graduating, but what I will have is an ungodly amount of student debt that I'll have to start chipping away at. So here is my proposal: I will get New York City Opera back on its feet. I will be the Artistic Director, the Mommy and the Daddy. I'll breast feed that baby all the way back to Lincoln Center and I'll toss a football with it outside on a Sunday...and here is why:
In 2006 (that's right) I saw my first opera at NYCO in Lincoln Center. My boyfriend at the time got cheap tickets through NYU and we were able to sit right in the middle of the orchestra next to the bejeweled elite of New York City. I had never been more moved by anything the night that I fell in love with opera. We saw La Bohème and I knew what to do with my life, which was more than I could say for most 17-year olds....hell, most 25-year olds.
When NYCO left Lincoln Center my heart broke. I cried as I imagined all of the people who had worked there for decades losing their home, and I cried because I could no longer aspire to it being my home. Since that first night, I had dreamt of sitting in my own dressing room in the New York State Theater, thinking about the 17-year old girl in the audience that I was going to make fall in love with the centuries-old craft as I got ready to sing gorgeous music. I have worked tirelessly to attain that dream for seven years, and I will keep working.
But looking forward financially, I need a job and NYCO needs someone who can balance a check book and flirt with old Jews who have bigger check books. Yes, this is kind of a silly rant, but when I seriously think about it, I would work tirelessly for ONE FIFTH of what Steel's salary was, and I would get the job done. I would stay in my tiny apartment in Harlem and I would eat sardines and lentils and I would make it happen. And you know, I would be willing to bet that many of the people graduating with me in May would do the same thing. Because even though making less than six figures is unacceptable for some people who claim to be in service to the arts, it isn't to me and it isn't to most of my passionate, immensely talented young colleagues.
I am not saying I know anything, or that I know better than anyone, because frankly I don't. And right now I am taking classes from some of the people who worked on that Bohème from 2006, and I'm sure they have a few better ideas than I do about how things in an opera company should and shouldn't work. What I am saying is what I would and wouldn't do. What I am saying is that people who NEED to make more than $300,000 salaries should go work on Wall Street or be corporate litigators. Leave the cultivation of the arts to those of us who WOULDN'T ACCEPT SUCH A SALARY WHEN THE TICKET SALES OF THEIR COMPANY HAD DROPPED 80%, even if we are only 25-years old.
(::drops the mic::)
I am 25-years young and by May 2014 I will have two degrees in Music for voice and voice performance. Based on sheer probability, I will most likely have no real, taxable income from music after graduating, but what I will have is an ungodly amount of student debt that I'll have to start chipping away at. So here is my proposal: I will get New York City Opera back on its feet. I will be the Artistic Director, the Mommy and the Daddy. I'll breast feed that baby all the way back to Lincoln Center and I'll toss a football with it outside on a Sunday...and here is why:
In 2006 (that's right) I saw my first opera at NYCO in Lincoln Center. My boyfriend at the time got cheap tickets through NYU and we were able to sit right in the middle of the orchestra next to the bejeweled elite of New York City. I had never been more moved by anything the night that I fell in love with opera. We saw La Bohème and I knew what to do with my life, which was more than I could say for most 17-year olds....hell, most 25-year olds.
When NYCO left Lincoln Center my heart broke. I cried as I imagined all of the people who had worked there for decades losing their home, and I cried because I could no longer aspire to it being my home. Since that first night, I had dreamt of sitting in my own dressing room in the New York State Theater, thinking about the 17-year old girl in the audience that I was going to make fall in love with the centuries-old craft as I got ready to sing gorgeous music. I have worked tirelessly to attain that dream for seven years, and I will keep working.
But looking forward financially, I need a job and NYCO needs someone who can balance a check book and flirt with old Jews who have bigger check books. Yes, this is kind of a silly rant, but when I seriously think about it, I would work tirelessly for ONE FIFTH of what Steel's salary was, and I would get the job done. I would stay in my tiny apartment in Harlem and I would eat sardines and lentils and I would make it happen. And you know, I would be willing to bet that many of the people graduating with me in May would do the same thing. Because even though making less than six figures is unacceptable for some people who claim to be in service to the arts, it isn't to me and it isn't to most of my passionate, immensely talented young colleagues.
I am not saying I know anything, or that I know better than anyone, because frankly I don't. And right now I am taking classes from some of the people who worked on that Bohème from 2006, and I'm sure they have a few better ideas than I do about how things in an opera company should and shouldn't work. What I am saying is what I would and wouldn't do. What I am saying is that people who NEED to make more than $300,000 salaries should go work on Wall Street or be corporate litigators. Leave the cultivation of the arts to those of us who WOULDN'T ACCEPT SUCH A SALARY WHEN THE TICKET SALES OF THEIR COMPANY HAD DROPPED 80%, even if we are only 25-years old.
(::drops the mic::)
