Sabbatical

I know I’m supposed to be writing about the craft of coaching. This is a wee bit more personal, but important to frame the next twelve months of content.

2024 is my sabbatical year and I’m excited! I’ve done half-sabbaticals twice and honestly did not enjoy them. Just as I figured out how to unwind from the pressurized and politicized frenetic academic environment, it was time to return. This year will be different.

2024 is starting with a BANG! Attending the NOA (National Association of Opera) conference in sunny, warm, beautiful, Tempe, Arizona hosted by the Music Theatre and Opera program at ASU (run by the too-talented-for-words Brian DeMaris.) I’m looking forward to the meetings, sessions, speakers (Jake Heggie, Mark Campbell, Michael Ching, Kathleen Kelly too name but a few of the remarkable lineup for this three-day convention), topics ranging from the Curricular to Intimacy Direction to Creating Collabs outside of the academic towers are all happening framed by luncheons, social cocktail hours, and performances, scenes competitions and voice competitions. A very busy schedule.

I can’t wait for it to start!

Then… Post conference, some time with family who live here and a decompress from the 2023 year; well, frankly, the past Covid years. Opera McGill, the program I’m artistic director for at McGill University in Montréal, recently finished its 26th production since Covid shut everything down in March of 2020. Yes, 26. Twenty-six operas/musicals performed from the fall of 2020 thru the fall of 2023. That’s just three and a half “seasons”. If one were to include the two more happening this winter to finish the 23-24 season (Cendrillon and Semele), those 4 seasons accomplished 28 TWENTY-EIGHT operas/musicals; including two Canadian premieres and one world premiere. If we include our two dozen plus workshops of new operas by living composers (the majority by women creators) the math comes to 40 FORTY titles, scores, librettos, complete with hundreds and hundreds of singers, pianists, orchestras, and production teams in four years. To my knowledge, no other program did more. Anywhere.

Just writing the above paragraph has me wondering if it was all real…

What in the world happened?

I had pandemic panic.

March 14, 2020 I saw very clearly the end was nigh. Opera couldn’t happen. How could it? Transferring all that air to others so aggressively in small or even large spaces. The next month was an endless set of phone calls and, soon after, zoom calls to friends and colleagues - new and old. While we waited for Quebec and McGill to sort out their responses, I was hard at work with Stephen Hargreaves (Opera McGill’s music director) to figure out how to create content for our opera students.

Instead of relying on one solution, we opted for many solutions in the hopes that one might work. All worked. An audio recording of “The Old Maid and the Thief”, live and recorded mini-operas with astounding sound and video students, fully produced shows like Cinderella and The Turn of the Screw, videotaped and edited post and live; stretching the parameters of what was allowed with a fully staged Handel opera with orchestra and a fully staged Verdi rarity of “Un Giorno di Regno”, directed and conducted by two precocious students, plus an opera in-concert that was also a beautifully reconstructed full orchestration (by Stephen) of “L’Amant anonyme” by the then mostly unknown black composer Joseph Bologna, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Oh, and a bunch of workshops of new opera!

That was just the first year. 64 student singers, 50+ student orchestra players, multiple conductors and directors, all the sound recording students and their supervising faculty, the whole Schulich backstage and front of house and online teams, the voice faculty. Hundreds.

And then, as the world recovered and ‘returned’, we just kept at that crazed pace.

Why?

Perhaps it was because I wanted to provide students with performance experiences during a time when the Met, COC, and most of the professional “big” opera world was offering, um, next to nothing. The Alagna sings at home some arias for an online audience. Perhaps there was a worry no one would come if there was nothing for them to do (the old ‘build it and they will come’ attitude). Or perhaps I was scared opera was dying in front of me.

Now it must be stated that we weren’t the only ones out there. A lot - A LOT - was happening. Oftentimes at the smaller or ”indie” companies (Fargo, Tri-Cities, Opera5, Tapestry, AGT, M3F to name but a few), or between singers and pianists at great distances from each other, and at many of the academic programs throughout North America. Innovation happened in tech, in subject matter, in how collabs were happening, all very exciting stuff. For those of us who worked full blast during those early years, we share a bond.

And maybe a little resentment for those who, how to say this, sat back and waited for the all-clear signal? Or maybe that’s my baggage. Not sure.

But in music, patterns are so strong, so influential, palpably physical even. And for us musicians, the pattern of overworking and striving to achieve experiences for not just ourselves, but others (students, colleagues, audiences, grandparents) is hard to break.

For me, it has been impossible.

And thus a sabbatical.

Sabbatical: from the Hebrew Šabat (i.e. sabbath); a rest or break from work; intentionally spent on something that’s not your job.

I’m lucky to get one, I know this. I feel guilty about it already. But if I can rest and recharge the batteries (physical, artistic, and emotional), then maybe, just maybe, I can be more helpful to others who need their own sabbaticals but aren't lucky enough to get them. Maybe I’ll be a better colleague, teacher, person, artist, and especially: parent. The Covid zoom months given up to focus solely on students while my own sons languished in their abysmal school zooms haunt me to this day.

So family time. Time to reboot. Time to research what’s out there now. Time to write. Time to practice (a return to the Grieg piano concerto after leaving it in 1979). Time to breathe, stretch, read, listen.

And maybe a nap or nine…