A mezzo sings out after working 11-hour day on the NHS
mainThe German artists agent Helmut Fischer tells us:
My fantastic 26 year-old mezzo BETH TAYLOR, instead of singing title and lead roles at Oper Frankfurt & Erl (Bianca e Falliero), Dijon and Nancy (Bradamante), Helsinki and Beaune, has been working as cleaner in a Glasgow hospital since March, 55 hours per week.
I hope she’ll make her Deutsche Oper Berlin debut (La Gioconda) and La Monnaie Brussels (Quickly in Falstaff) this fall.
No doubt “fantastic” will make a better living as hospital cleaner, what with few scraps remaining of opera world.
You have some objection to hospital cleaners who work 55 hours a week making less than singers?
That of course should have read “more than.”
Singers work their entire lives to attempt to perfect their craft. They make great personal and financial sacrifice to follow their dreams and goals. While I in no way, now more than ever, wish to belittle the hard work of hospital workers one must understand that most working opera singers are all too aware of what a 55 hour work week feels like. I’ll not bother going into the financial issues of a singing career. Respect to all for their good and hard work!
Desperate times call for desperate measures. I would be mortified if my agent publicised I was now working and singing in hospitals. Career bloody suicide – one has to look after one’s voice and body not go closer to the pandemic. Hardly news