Jumping In:

After a busy fall season of rehearsals and performances, I was enjoying a quiet few days after Christmas without anything on my schedule. Then the phone rang. The personnel office of a theater a few hours away just found out that their lead tenor for a production the next day was sick and could not sing. They noticed that I sang the role before in New York, and wondered if I could jump in. I immediately felt that surge of fear and excitement from a rush of adrenaline. Vacation would have to wait. 

After a busy fall season of rehearsals and performances, I was enjoying a quiet few days after Christmas without anything on my schedule. Then the phone rang. The personnel office of a theater a few hours away just found out that their lead tenor for a production the next day was sick and could not sing. They noticed that I sang the role before in New York, and wondered if I could jump in. I immediately felt that surge of fear and excitement from a rush of adrenaline. Vacation would have to wait. 

 

The next 24 hours taught me about trust. I learned to trust in myself and my preparation, my colleagues and their flexibility, and my intuition borne of experience to recover when things go wrong.

 

 

Act I: Trusting in myself

The very first step was to trust in myself and my ability enough to accept the contract. I last performed the role, which was long, difficult, and full of fast passages in Italian, five years before. How much would I remember? Could I really refresh it well enough to do a performance the next day? I asked the theater for an hour to look through the score and see how much I remembered. After quickly looking through the entire part, I suspected that I could refresh the role in time if I worked hard, but that memorization on such a short time frame was impossible. I called back and communicated this to the theater. We agreed that I would sing the role from the side of the stage while the colleague who lost his voice silently acts the part on stage. 

 

I was still not sure that I would be able to refresh the whole opera, but I cut the task down to a more manageable size by keeping my score in front of me. There was no going back. The next day I would sing the role in front of hundreds of people, so now I needed to prepare.

 

Act II: Trusting in my colleagues

The next day, I had to trust my colleaguesto fit me into the ensemble. After working non-stop to relearn my role, I had prepared as well as I could. Normally, I would rehearse an opera for a couple of months with the same partners in duets and ensemble numbers. I would get to know the chorus, connect musically with the conductor, and grow used to the acoustics of the house. This time, I met my partners for the first time on stage during the performance. My job was to listen, watch, and take their cues. Fortunately, the rest of the cast was well-prepared and professional. While the performance was not as perfect as one in which we could rehearse together beforehand, my colleagues adapted to fit the new dynamic and helped me get through the performance. The conductor met with me for a few minutes before the show to talk through the role. He and the orchestra took my tempos and followed my phrasing. After a few minutes, thanks to my colleagues, I felt comfortable in the new ensemble.

 

Act III: Trusting in intuition

In live theater, a performer must trust in his intuition to overcome and correct when things go wrong. Ideally, we rarely test our intuition because preparation prevents accidents, but this situation was different. Rather than working on the piece for two months of intensive musical rehearsals, I had only 24 hours to refresh the role and no time with the other singers or the orchestra. 

 

I had marked all the theater’s musical cuts in my score immediately after accepting the contract. But towards the end of the opera, the music I was hearing from the orchestra did not match what I saw in my score. Still, I recognized the music, and knew I was supposed to sing shortly. There must have been a miscommunication with the cuts. The orchestra had seamlessly sprung forward in the music by an unknown length of time. This was my worst nightmare as a singer. Standing in front of hundreds of people, out of control and unsure of what is happening is terrifying. As I felt my heart start to pound and my palms sweat, I made a split-second decision to trust that my intuition gained through experience would deliver a solution before it was too late. I didn’t have any other options anyway, and panic only makes these situations worse.

 

My first instinct was to look at the conductor. We made eye contact, and at that point I think he understood that I had missed a cut. My eyes then darted down to my score. I scanned quickly over the notes, looking for a pattern that matched what I was hearing. I heard a familiar part that I was supposed to sing, but I didn’t know what it was. I missed the entrance. My colleagues kept going. I turned the page, furiously scanning the music. Just before my next phrase, I spotted where the orchestra was in the score, just a split-second before my highlighted entrance. Not having time to even think about what I was about to sing or where my tone was in relation to the orchestra, I instinctually relied on two decades of music and singing in Italian and simply sang what was on the page, hoping that the notes I sang would be correct. I was back in the piece. The whole episode lasted a matter of seconds but required intense concentration and reliance on pure intuition. I managed to stay calm and find the end of the musical cut under pressure, saving the performance from an embarrassing derailment. A conductor friend in the audience didn’t even notice the mishap.

 

Conclusion

The experience of jumping in for a role on such short notice taught me to trust in myself and my ability to prepare, trust in my colleagues and their teamwork, and trust in my intuition from long hours of practice when things go wrong. After the opera, the audience, knowing that I jumped in on short notice, cheered wildly for a long time when I bowed with my sick colleague. The intendant of the theater thanked me backstage. Though I was initially unsure if I could prepare the role in time, it worked out well. After that experience, I trust more in my ability to prepare for risky assignments on short notice. In those circumstances, I learned to trust my colleagues to be prepared as well and help me get through the assignment. Finally, when a high-pressure environment requires a prompt, strong response, I learned that can trust my intuition to find a solution.