Where do I go from here?
This is a question Beethoven must have asked himself many times after realizing that he was going deaf.
Imagine, one of the greatest inspired composer, pianist or musician that ever lived walked the face of the earth was deaf for the later part of his life.
Where does a musician go if he goes deaf?
I have been asking myself this question for several years now since realizing that my difficulty in singing with the ease necessary to sustain a grueling operatic tenor career has taken my form of art away from me.
Yes, I can teach probably, but I didn’t get into music to teach, I got into music to perform and I am a professional performer and I am not ready to quit, nor will I ever be. So, the question is, what do I do? Where do I go from here?
I like to write, and possibly to speak, but what I am all about is performing. Maybe acting, maybe conducting…I don’t know.
When a singer says they want to conduct people automatically roll their eyes, I know I do. I get it. But I can analyze scores, understand transpositions, can read clefs, know bowings and have studied conducting enough to know what it takes. I went to conservatory too and have memorized countless operas not only from a textual aspect but musically as well. I memorized Strauss’s ”Don Juan” Tondichtung and Dvorak’s ”New World Symphony” during a hiatus early in my career. It isn’t a question of whether I can or not, it is a question of how do I get to do it? Besides, I am a musician first. I didn’t go into music to become an opera singer, I went into music to become musician, it just so happened it turned out that I could sing well enough to perform opera.
And what of acting?
Since when could an opera singer ever do straight acting? What kind of acting anyway?
I have memorized and performed ”acting” roles in multiple languages onstage, live in front of native speakers. I was singing, but there is actually no difference in the two other than the rhythms and melodies are given to you by the composer. Why can’t I do acting? Just because I have never acted a straight play before in my mother tongue? I have performed in everything from Italian, to Hungarian, to Russian and French, not to mention being fluent in German, I think I can handle the english language.
When I take stock of myself in my current situation, I get irritated, because I am a high level professional performer. It aggravates me to think I have to start all over from scratch. But, maybe that is the case.
So, when I listen to Beethoven’s 9th, I hear music written by a deaf man and think, if he can write that without being able to hear, why can I not act and or conduct even if I can no longer sing at the level I was at.
The past years have been torture to be honest trying to figure this out and I guess the only solution is to start opening doors. In the meantime I will continue to write and inspire people to dig up their artistic talents and start working on them. There is no higher pursuit.