Job of the Week: Repetiteur at Covent Garden
Opera£57,735.56 per annum
33 hours per week
We are currently recruiting for a permanent member of our Music Staff team to work as a repetiteur and to coach ROH Principals and Guest Principals to work with the Royal Opera to the highest artistic standards.
What you`ll bring:
The ideal candidate will be able to demonstrate these qualities:
Comprehensive knowledge of the opera repertoire
Significant experience as a repetiteur for a major opera company (please outline)
A high-profile coach/assistant conductor and equivalent experience as a recitalist with singers of an international standard
A detailed knowledge of the working processes of an opera company, with experience of scheduling
Working knowledge of German, French and Italian
A team player, with a natural rapport with singers, conductors and directors, who gets involved in the creative process and takes an interest across all productions
Please note: We also encourage candidates with a less prominent interest in conducting and strong keyboard skills to apply.
Full particulars here.
Any takers among the usual commentators here?
Don’t need to.
Perhaps another highlight (lowlight?) is the University of Cambridge’s Assistant Teaching Professor in Performance for a princely sum of £13k-17k pro rata:
https://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/47414/
“…..coach ROH Principals and Guest Principals to work with the Royal Opera to the highest artistic standards.” You won’t find anyone worth a grain of salt who can live up to those standards and live in London. These are often the folks who also get holed up in prompter boxes and leave late at night. They want quality, they better sharpen their pencil.
Are you sure you got the right photo? I spent my working life as a répétiteur/kapellmeister, but I never had to cut somebody’s hair…
Maybe it’s a publicity still for Barber of Seville…or Sweeny Todd.
Maybe it’s because a répétiteur also performs a necessary function others need but are incapable of doing themselves.
Maybe it’s a bit early in the morning, but I’m struggling to see the link between an ad for a repetiteur and a photo of somebody having their hair cut?
Does this require lateral thinking?
My suggestions are either (i) if you get this job you’ll take a haircut financially or (ii) you’ll be paid much the same as a London barber.
That’s £57k for 33 hours in the theatre per week to which you need to add the hundreds of hours of personal preparation at the piano; not everyone can keep Lulu, Siegfried, Oedipe etc in their fingers ad infinitum.
What’s more, you need to be able to conduct at least stage music, identify musical areas to be improved then schedule rehearsals (Studienleiter, a full-time job in itself where many do not even actually have time to coach), possess advanced psychological and diplomatic skills as permanent mediator between conductors, management and singers PLUS have the chops to accompany international soloists in recital.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on this site, répétiteurs are appallingly underpaid the world over. The equivalent of about £1000 p.w. in London is a laughable salary when you consider the skills needed to do the job properly.
In other words: no wannabe conductors…
It’s interesting that Big Dave from Classics Today believes that aspiring conductor’s should work as repetiteurs in provincial opera houses before even thinking of applying for a post at a major orchestra. See his earliest video on Klaus Makela.
Of course Big Dave made his money as a realtor …
I think they should too, but should work their way up through progressively larger houses and not be just catapulted into plum positions based on their hairstyle (ah, maybe that’s the reference). It’s called the Ochsentour and even Karajan and Kleiber did it.
If a répétiteur does become a conductor it should be via a long apprenticeship in the nuts and bolts of opera production. The post should never be used as a quick springboard to the podium.
I think Big Dave was talking about an Ochsentour of about thirty years. But who, in this day and age is going to spend that amount of time on that kind of salary?
That’s probably a bit long, agreed. If we look at +/-
3-4 years as a rep with conducting duties in a smallish house, then same or 2. Kapellmeister in a bigger house (are there any 2. Kapellmeister positions left?), going on to 1. Kapellmeister in a biggish house or GMD in a smaller one, we’d be looking at landing an important post with about 10-12 years of valuable experience where you’ll probably have encountered every possible type of situation and had to find rapid solutions for them all. This kind of experience is invaluable.
Still, that’s far too much to expect for our oh-so-talented entitled prodigies, barely out of nappies but destined to teach us how the world works despite zero experience of their own.
They’re right to emphasise that. Too many wannabes try to use the position as a fast track to the podium. Being a répétiteur is a profession in its own right, one without which no opera house could function and needs people who are dedicated to the job description.
Wow! So much required experience and the pay is ridiculously low.
I’ve grown disgusted with a bass,
I dread the days when he comes in;
Whether he’s Escamilio, or Don Basilio,
Or this, or that, he’s sharp, he’s flat –
I’ve grown disgusted with his face,
I cannot stand his cheap cologne,
He’s the latest product of the casting couch you bet,
Hence that sad Otello that we’d all rather forget –
I’ve grown disgusted with a bass, disgusted with a bass,
Disgusted with a bass …
>>We also encourage candidates with a less prominent interest in conducting and strong keyboard skills to apply.
Good to see this. The current head of music at the Royal Ballet can’t play Chopin without hitting unpleasant wrong notes, something of a problem as he books himself to do just that in front of paying audiences (the company have a wonderful ballet in its repertoire which is performed to a demanding Chopin programme). Maybe recruiting some new “strong keyboard skills” will help.
Why would the ROH reach out to candidates who are neither considering a conducting career nor interested in cultivating their keyboard skills?
Made me laugh. Yes, they really should rephrase the last part of that sentence.
How can the ROH afford to spend this when they are already millions in the red and in mega debt?!
It’s a tiny fraction of the budget and the reps are, basically, the most important musical people in the house. Without them, literally nothing gets done.
Ideally, the salary should provoke your comment, as it really ought to be at least three times what it is.
Though my memory is not 100% certain on this, the salary seems to have more or less kept pace with inflation since I was a ROH répétiteur there in the 80s. It certainly wasn’t enough then to live comfortably within striking distance of Covent Garden, and I suspect London housing costs have outpaced inflation in that time.
So it wasn’t enough then and it’s even less so today. It’s a disgrace, really. As a matter of interest, why did you leave?
Sorry, just found out.
Gareth, I lived in Harlow once … but it would seem that this kind of salary is in fact the market price for repetiteurs. There is simply no need for the ROB to offer more than that, and perhaps the notion that being arepetiteur at Covent Garden is a rung on the ladder that eventually gets you into the podium at Carnegie Hall is why it continues to be a seller’s market?
I’ve been doing some research recently and have found out that salaries for the same post at similar-level houses in the same country can be as much as double.
The problem is that reps don’t have agents. They’re not interested. Unions consider them soloists. No-one stands up for them so they are basically on their own in front of management. These people waste no time in saying ‘take it or leave it’, often adding ‘if you don’t want it, there’s a hundred queuing outside the theatre who are just as good, if not better, than you’, for good measure, just so the rep knows his place in the operatic ecosystem.
As there are comparatively few posts, the overwhelming majority take what’s on offer, but it doesn’t mean to say it’s right.
I play the old Joanna pretty well on a good day & likewise conducting. But in the audition requirements- candidates are expected to sing & play Die Walkure at the same time- wow- I personally don’t know many virtuoso pianists who are also blessed with Wagnerian type voices? Expecting too much maybe?! (even of professional repetiteurs with specialist keyboard skills)- I think I’ll pass on the application to the ROH this time- leaving it to all you Vladimir Horowitz’s & Hans Hotter’s rolled into one out there!
Some reps actually have very good voices and this can be extremely beneficial to the rehearsal process in the absence of one or more singers. Some, however, do not, but the ability to sing in missing parts is invaluable for those on stage. It also helps the conductor learn the piece…
It is difficult, but it is very much expected for repetiteurs to have to do this. All auditions for such positions require simultaneous singing and playing, and quite rightly because it is an almost daily part of the job, especially when coaching. Obviously the expectation is not that you can sing it to the same standard as a soloist, we all redistribute the vocal lines into a comfortable (ish) octave, it just needs to be accurate and clear, but beauty is not expected. ‘Voce di repetiteur’ if you will…