Oprah, Seneca, Serena, and Springsteen walk into a bar...

Or two stories about talent and luck.

Oprah the great once said, "I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity."

Not to accuse Oprah of plagiarism, but that is a direct quote of Seneca the wise who wrote, "Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity."

Serena Williams the pro has more definite ideas where luck is concerned, "Luck has nothing to do with it, because I have spent many, many hours, countless hours, on the court working for my one moment in time, not knowing when it would come."

Bruce Springsteen the boss thinks, "When it comes to luck, you make your own."

There are lots of other quotes, thoughts, and utterances about luck, opportunity, preparation, hard work, coincidence, and chance. It's a rabbit hole that supports the notion that yes, luck plays a part in success, but one has to be ready to be lucky.

I'd like to share two success stories.

There once was a soprano from a small Iowa town and very modest means who was given a Puccini aria in high school and told to learn it. She'd never sung opera before, or Italian. Her high school choir director took her to a NATS competition and she won it. She got into a terrific college and was cast in lots of roles as an undergraduate, did more NATS competitions, winning almost all of them.

She headed off to the Manhattan School of Music to audition for their masters program very very late in the audition season. She got a full tuition scholarship, a free-ride, to go there.

A few years later, she sang for Santa Fe Opera and Central City Opera summer apprentice programs on the same day in NYC and was offered to cover Mimi and Violetta respectively.

That day.

Like in the audition.

So, she accepted the Mimi offer, as she'd already sung the role in college (and Violetta would be performing miles-high in Colorado and it was - to be honest - also a bit high for her.)

Off she went for multiple summers in New Mexico. She sang for Juilliard in Santa Fe and got into the Juilliard Opera Center where she ended up singing Vanessa in Vanessa before heading off to take her contract as a young artist at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. A whirlwind success, looking back on it.

She'd never really gotten a rejection letter, except from Merola. She was always put through to the finals of any competition she entered. She opened her mouth and the golden tones came out. She was beautiful, had a beautiful voice, was a pianist (so she learned music easily), and a convincing, emotional actress (in the lyric, tragic roles especially.) She sang for Pavarotti, who put her into the finals of his competition. She got all the way to the Met Nationals before Nico Castel would tell her "you're too old to win, they're looking for someone in their early twenties, not their late twenties."

She didn't win that one, as Nico prophesied, but Benita Valente heard her that day and invited her to the Marlboro Festival for the summer. Numerous summers later, she'd made music with the wondrous pianists Mitsuko Uchida and Richard Goode, the violinist James Ehnes, members of the Guanieri string quartet, and many other diamonds of the international music world.

She never struggled to win competitions or get contracts. She sang with Renee and Sam and Flicka and other single-named opera stars. She had gone from HS voice competitions to the Pavarotti competition to singing with the best and brightest conductors and divas, being directed by famous Roberts like Robert Altman ("MASH" and "Gosford Park") and Robert Falls (Goodman Theatre).

She climbed the ladder. She followed the path. Ya know, that career path everyone talks about? Get a degree, get another degree, do some summer programs, get into a prestigious resident young artist program at an international company, then the career starts and VOILA!

You must know her name, surely? She had some massive international career, yes?

Not quite.

Just as her career was starting, she had a baby, then another baby.

And that, my dears, was the end of her singing career.

The mystery woman? Elizabeth Koch. My wife.

For much of my early career, I was Elizabeth Koch's husband. "So, Mr. Koch, what do you do?" they'd ask at cast parties or receptions, or "Oh, you play the piano, do you play for Elizabeth?" Yes, I followed her around and was her audition pianist and sometime coach. But I didn't have babies, she did. And the business was not very open to mothers. In fact, the worst kind of harassment she ever received in the business was from two women while rehearsing an opera 7 months pregnant. You see, she had to pee a lot and that made both of those ladies upset she was "interrupting the flow" of the rehearsals. One of those ladies still works at a major opera company and I'll never forgive her for how she treated my wife while pregnant with our first son.

But that was in the late 90s, before we all decided that operatic harassment only comes from men.

My success story was different. It involved lots and lots of luck (and, frankly, lots and lots and lots of harassment from gay men.) Elizabeth's success stemmed from her natural golden voice that was seemingly there from the start. My talent was very precocious indeed, but unfocused. It was diversified. Hers was about one extraordinary thing: the sound of her voice - "indescribably beautiful" according to the late conductor Richard Bradshaw who uttered the phrase during a rehearsal at Juilliard. And it was.

I was, on the other hand, indescribably impossible to pin down. I danced. I sang. I played solo piano. I played for singers. I acted. I edited anthologies. I coached. Later I conducted. Later I directed. Later I administrated. My critics said I was good at a lot of things, but not exceptional at anything. They said that about my piano, conducting, and directing teacher as well (the late Robert Larsen who founded DMMO and ran Simpson College music program when Elizabeth and I were both students.) Robert was certainly a renaissance man (he even watercolored in his journals) while I was more of an operatic factotum.

But after two piano degrees, this Iowan dancer turned vocal coach found himself at the Juilliard Opera Center (alongside the Florentine athlete turned conductor, Giovanni Reggioli) playing for terrifically talented yet not-quite-ready-for-prime-time singers like Jay Hunter Morris and Clifton Forbis in classes taught by Nico Castel, Corradina Caporello, and the crazy stage director Frank Corsaro.

Then one day, luck struck big time: A singer missed a coaching I was playing for guest conductor Hal France. Hal said, "let's get a coffee and talk about your career." So I trundled after Hal across the street from Lincoln Center to a coffee shop (not Starbucks, those hadn't infested NYC yet) where standing right in front of Hal was this other guy. I was the tag along, not involved in the following conversation until it was too late.

"Hal?"

"Donald?"

"What are you doing in New York?"

"I'm auditioning rehearsal pianists."

"You should hire this kid. He's great. He's at Juilliard playing for me now."

Me: Huh?

Then a short Q&A from this Donald guy followed by another solid recommendation from Hal and, voila, I was hired.

By Donald Palumbo, the chorus master at the Lyric Opera of Chicago back in the 90s before he moved to the Met and became a total legend! I played 15 shows for him over the course of the two most amazing summers I'll ever experience.

Luck. Absolutely. The baritone didn't show up to his coaching so we got coffee at the exact same time Palumbo got coffee. So, so, so many things had to converge to put us all there at the same time. Opportunity did meet preparation because I was certainly prepared to play for Hal. I worked my arse off on the scenes program that included excerpts by Berg, Walton, Stravinsky, Floyd, Bernstein, and others. Stuff like Lulu's Lied and the big duet "One day soon" from Of Mice and Men. Hard shit.

So I guess I had impressed Hal. And I was at The Juilliard School.

But luck was involved in getting to Juilliard too.

I'd auditioned there for the Doctorate in piano performance, got in, but didn't get much money. I wanted to move to NYC so I could live with my then fiancé Elizabeth. She'd be at the Juilliard Opera Center and I'd get my doctorate and off we'd go.

But I had no money and came from no money. Outside of a six figure student load debt there was no way it could happen. I was despondent.

Following Elizabeth (as I did at the time), I played a lesson she had with her teacher, Marlena Malas. About half-way through she stopped and questioned me about whether I wanted to really be in NYC. Of course I said yes. Then she walked out of the room. When she came back, she said, "I called JOC and you've got the fellowship if you want it." (Now, I did end up having to play for the director of the JOC, but that audition was barely anything.)

A different kind of luck was involved in why I ended up getting my piano degrees. Entirely BAD luck. Or at the time, it seemed bad. Looking back, it was entirely the best thing that ever happened in my life!

I'd no notions to go to college and get a piano degree, let alone at Simpson College (the home of the founder and then director of Des Moines Metro Opera). That was way out of my mind. I was going to get a musical theatre degree and dance/sing/act my way to Broadway! Unfortunately, my senior year in high school I landed a Russian split during a dance in "Tommy" and practically split my right ankle. No more dancing career, certainly not in time for the college auditions.

"Bad luck, kid.", I remember my high school drama teacher saying.

Not knowing what to do, I talked to my piano teacher who advised that I could get a piano scholarship pretty easily. So I auditioned at Drake and Northwestern. Full ride to Northwestern was offered, but I turned it down (didn't like the teacher). I also turned down Drake (didn't like the teacher.) A friend had gone to a piano camp at Simpson in HS and suggested I audition there. So I took my hour-long recital of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Ravel, and Prokofiev and made an impression.

The bad luck of the ankle brought me to my future wife, opened the world of opera, and eventually prepared me for every opportunity that presented itself. I stepped through every single door that opened up. I figured it was my talent. Certainly it wasn't hard work (I never practiced), but I DID SHOW UP to everything. Building sets, moving pianos, singing in madrigals, accompanying dozens and dozens of singers in recitals, playing rehearsals, building props, conducting rehearsals, and appearing onstage in roles.

Im quite proud of my professional singing debut in 1988. The singer who was supposed to sing the Emperor Altoum in DMMO's Turandot cancelled (or was asked to cancel, not sure). Again, luck. I had played a small role in Gianni Schicchi at Simpson and Larsen knew I had within me a very loud and very ugly character voice I could create. So there I was at 23, up on the throne in full Emperor regalia making my debut ahead of most of my peers (some who were kneeling down in the chorus as I entered to Puccini's fanfare.)

There were many other lucky moments - an audition gone bad in Pittsburgh that resulted in my being hired in Memphis by Michael Ching which resulted in my conducting debuts there. A chance meeting in Memphis with the soon-to-be announced GD of Tulsa Opera that brought me to Oklahoma. A chance audition in NYC for an old Juilliard chum singing for Glimmerglass that resulted in me catching up with the late Stewart Robertson in a taxi and a few years later he hired me to run the YAP at Glimmerglass.

More luck - Stewart was the first person I picked up from the airport one cold day when he flew in to Des Moines to listen to apprentice audition tapes (yes, cassette tapes!) way back forty years ago. (He ran the DMMO apprentice program during the 80's.) I ended up playing for him on a number of shows where he was the assistant conductor, never knowing years later he'd bring me to Cooperstown, then later to Miami as the artistic administrator for FGO.

And it was when I was at FGO that I applied for the McGill job. More luck.

And so my charmed, Canadian life happened because I volunteered to pick some guy up at the airport 40 years ago.

Lots of preparation. Lots of opportunities. Lots of hard work. Many long hours in practice rooms (not enough), many more hours on the bench in rehearsals. Many wrong notes, tens of thousands of them at least. Many people - most who were really lovely and supportive.

But I was never 7 months pregnant trying to pursue my career. There is no comparison. When you have no family money nor gotten the big career money, it's impossible to travel with nannies. Having a family and being an on-the-road operatic soprano is tough. I applaud anyone who figures out how to do it. For Elizabeth, she didn't want to leave the kids at home and go off singing, so she pivoted and started teaching. And luck walked into her studio one day in the form of Aaron Tveit. Google him if you don't know his story.

And as luck would have it, Elizabeth turned into this amazing voice teacher at Ithaca College, Cornell University, later at Brevard's Janiec Opera Company, and now for the Bel Canto in Tuscany program. She has students scattered all over the stages of the world, both operatic and musical theatre stages. Just this season, her former students grace the major stages in Europe, the U.K., Canada, and the United States.

Some in the biz don't want to acknowledge luck. Some chalk up others' successes as "God-given" talent, hard work, or superior networking skills. Others say it's because some are privileged and others are not, or that some boy's club (which one...?) helped us guys get to a higher rung on the ladder. Bitter types point to successful singers and whisper things about Domingo or Mo. B., while others do the same for those who found success at the Met back in Levine's day or nowadays at certain other companies.

Not acknowledging luck allows many other ugly "reasons" to enter into the discussion about why someone is, or is not, successful.

And let's admit it. Some are successful despite everything. The biz sometimes hires shockingly incompetent folk who can barely play, sing, administrate, conduct, design, or direct. It's true. I'd like to say that most of the great hires I've been around, or I've hired myself, were the lucky, circumstantial, word-of-mouth, run-into-ya, crazy lucky hires. In contrast, the hires that were carefully thought through, or were picked because of their pedigree or who they knew, often didn't work out so well.

The luck of the draw is a powerful thing.

Regrets for either of us? No. Everything led us down the path that brought us to being parents and, now, living in Canada. I'd do it all again, but maybe with a lot more grace and patience for those struggling.

Recognizing we actually were talented? Sure. We had talent. More so, we had nurturing parents, teachers, and experiences early on that made us feel talented.

And luck? Yep. We were lucky. Two kids from opposite sides of Iowa met in the middle of all that corn and had an adventure. A hundred times more rehearsing and practicing than actual performing, a hundred thousand times more positive experiences than negative ones.

Lots of doors opened, we walked through them - with a smile, with gratitude, with curiosity, with trepidation, with nerves, with glorious gorgeous tone, and with tons of notes in the fingers.

I'm not one for destiny talk. I'm also not one who thinks that if you just work harder, things will happen. I think, ultimately, it's about showing up as prepared as possible and acknowledging all possible connections, even those unseen at the time. It's those connective tissues and fibres between people that might bring a little luck to the room.

And then, when that twirling dervish of a demi-god appears, grab it!

As Steve Winwood aptly sang, "While You See a Chance, Take It!"