Welsh soprano: I’m a carer now because there’s no work
OperaMezzo-soprano Leah Marian Jones described her difficult situation to BBC Radio Cymru at yesterday’s Senedd protest over WNO funding cuts. She said: ‘I’m a carer for old people. I get them up in the morning, take them to the toilet and dress them and feed them.’
The company has been stripped of 35% of ACE money and 11.8% of Welsh AC cash.
Organiser Elizabeth Atherton said: ‘We are literally singing for our future.’
The Senedd is about to add another 36 members to this useless talking shop costing £18m, total cost £67m.
Cardiff airport, government owned, costs £16m for 10 flights a day.
20mph speed limit cost £34m and is being reversed.
Cardiff Arena is being built for pop concerts, unneeded for £150m.
There is plenty of money in Wales to be wasted on useless vanity projects, but no money to support our wonderful Welsh National Opera Company.
We in Wales despair.
Yes, that’s the reality of the profession today unless you are a star or an elite singer with a top agent. Not everyone in all these British schools of music can be stars. They are always very few, but many more in the past could have a really decent career as I had both home and abroad as I got a fine middle-ground agent before I left the RNCM, and sent everywhere and anywhere mainly as a concert singer and recitalist. Now that middle level has gone since the pandemic. It was going long before that, but the bulk of once middle-level choral societies, if living, for oratorio are using students when once they would use fully-fledged professionals through agents all because the societies are strapped for cash. Then committees say why should they pay the professional rate for experience when a student’s voice is just as good or better! Song recitals of worth have all but gone except for celebrity recitals at the Wigmore Hall. Baritones, John Noble and Neil Howlett, and indeed soprano, Heather Harper, went on about this in the 80s and 90s, and how overcrowded the profession then was. As for Opera, we all know what’s going on there, no one moving out of choruses as the mortgage needs paying, and then the ACE cuts to add to it all . Yes, audiences turn out for Covent Garden but they also get well-heeled tourists. But elsewhere and particularly outside London, not totally returning and watching on line when and what they want possibly in bed in their PJs on a cold wet night! As well as earn my living, I must say the audiences were for me at least the sole purpose of my singing and performing music, and doing my best with what I had to communicate the composer’s intentions. God help those starting out today!
That confirms my long-held suspicion that we have at least twice as many conservatoires in this country as we actually need.
I remember Helen Watts in Gerontius in Stoke in the 1980s. Wonderful! No big choral works performed for years.
No shame in being a carer. I’m a doctor and as far as I’m concerned, we’re equal status. And we’re both musicians.
A perfect example of falling on deaf ears.
I don’t think Marian is ashamed of being a carer, the point is, she is a very talented professional singer (who was on contract at the ROH for many years); she shouldn’t have to turn to caring. You may feel that as a doctor you have an equal status, but as you know, carers are paid a fraction of a doctor’s salary.
She can join Renee Fleming’s nonprofit organization to provide arts therapy to old people.
I was at the RNCM with Marian (as she was then known). A huge talent who could and should have had the world at her feet (as was the case with many of the Welsh singers there at the time). Kudos to her for now helping those in need but shame on our arts system.
The music business has always been a challenging career but it has become increasingly difficult to succeed. There are many alternative forms of entertainment that have replaced live performance. As a studio musician, I became aware that technology would put me out of work when PCs came along in the 1970s. Thirty musicians were replaced by a computer and keyboard.
Many of us saw it coming years ago. British Philistinism combined with the collapse of the chapels and their musical tradition, not to mention the death of classical music in schools. These days you are lucky to hear dreadful musicals – and all sung with American accents.
I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea. I’m a Yank who doesn’t go to dreadful musicals either, regardless of what accent they sing with. Give me a revival of “Guys and Dolls” any day.
How ironic. The land of song prevented from singing!