A Singer’s Life -The Life of an Understudy
In my many Blogs for the EMR, I alluded to the fact that I often worked as an understudy in opera, and the subject has cropped up in various other Blogs that I have written. Consequently, it might perhaps be useful to elaborate on this very important part of my career, and indeed of many singers through the years. Many great singers have come to public notice through replacing the scheduled singer, often at the last moment, and being catapulted to fame themselves.
First of all, it is not something that happens everywhere. In the UK, and in Canada and America, nearly all professional opera companies work with performance casts, and a full cover cast, meaning that at any time, if a singer is ill or otherwise unable to perform, there will be a fully trained understudy ready to take over. In the majority of Continental houses, this is not the case, although most German houses, using a company system of in-house singers, may have some sort of understudy system in operation. Many houses play operas with multiple casts over a whole season, and sometimes you can find yourself singing with an entirely different colleague whom you have never met before in your life. This is extremely disconcerting, and on the few occasions it happened to me, I was really confused and didn’t enjoy the experience at all.
However, let’s look at the life of an understudy in the world I mainly operated in. I’ll give a few examples from my career and then we can look at the job in greater detail.
When I got my first contract at Scottish Opera, in 1982, I was just 26, and for three years, I was a company soloist, singing small roles and understudying some bigger ones. For the first and only time in my career, I was paid monthly, I was on a company pension scheme, and was taxed on a Schedule E basis, not self-employed. I sang such roles as Sergeant of Archers (Manon Lescaut), Colline (La Bohème) , Micha (The Bartered Bride), Second Armed Man (The Magic Flute), Theseus (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) and the Nightwatchman (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg). In addition, I understudied such roles as Zoroastro (Orlando), the Doctor (Wozzeck) and, bizarrely, the Theatre Director (Capriccio).
In Orlando, I was covering the light baritone, Steven Varcoe (a most unlikely juxtaposition), in Wozzeck, the famous Willard White, and in Capriccio, the vastly experienced Stafford Dean. It was a huge learning experience, especially when I had to go on for Stafford in Liverpool at the iconic Liverpool Empire, and this proved to be the first of many exciting nights in theatres as an understudy over the next 40 years.
My next big deal was while I was engaged frequently at the London Coliseum with ENO, between 1987 and 1993. I was contracted as a self employed soloist for several big productions there, mostly in medium sized roles like Monterone in ‘Rigoletto’ and the Commendatore in ‘Don Giovanni’. I was a Flemish Deputy in Verdi’s ‘Don Carlo’ but also understudied the Grand Inquisitor. One night, Gwynne Howell, who was singing King Philip, fell ill. His understudy, Richard van Allen, stepped up to Philip’s role and I stepped into Richard’s role of the Inquisitor, which meant that I got to sing in one of the greatest duets in all opera, when the king and the inquisitor lock horns in an existential battle for power. To make matters more exciting, there was a fire alarm during the performance, and I remember having to stand out in the street, not long after my big scene, chatting to passers by in my full Inquisitor white and red robes. A surreal experience.
Around the same time, I was playing one of the masters in ‘The Mastersingers of Nuremberg’, by Wagner, when on the day of the premiere, I was phoned up to tell me that the singer due to sing Pogner, the main bass role, was ill, and that I was on! I had been well rehearsed and knew I could sing this major role, but at the age of about 36, I had never experienced the excitement of a first night in London’s West End in front of an audience of 2,359, and all the major critics of the national and international newspapers. It all went wonderfully well, and really sealed my position as a seriously promising newcomer, although one of the reviews nearly caused me serious physical harm. It noted that I, playing the putative father in law of the hero, Walther von Stolzing, looked more like his son than his father. The famous, and easily upset, Liverpudlian tenor, Alberto Remedios, who by this time was well into his 50s, did not take well to this reminder of the ageing process, and stormed into my dressing room on the second night (I was on again), promising a beating if I didn’t improve my make-up to make me look older. My protestation that I was in the hands of the make-up girl and it was nothing to do with me, fell on deaf ears, and so the young lady and I piled on several more layers of ageing make -up, until Alberto was satisfied!
For the next few years, I didn’t find myself working as an understudy, as I was mostly employed in Europe, as a freelance singer in my own right. It was only when I found myself working back in Britain more often again, particularly at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, that my agent and I were prepared to contemplate more covering. Over the last twenty years of my career, as I gradually wound things down, I took on a few more covers at Covent Garden. Although not nearly as lucrative as a full performing contract, an understudy at the Garden is reasonably paid, with various add-on perks as well. I would only cover at the Garden, and then only top singers, like John Tomlinson, Brindley Sherratt and Gwynne Howell. I felt it was a compliment to me, as a veteran singer myself by this time, that I was judged to be good enough to fill the shoes of these great singers.
The only other understudy assignments I took on involved the United States. In 2009, I was invited to spend the summer in Seattle, on the Pacific coast, understudying Fafner and Hagen in Wagner’s ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’ in the famous production set in the north west of America. It was reasonably well-paid, one was treated the same as the principal singers, and I got to spend some time in Washington State. To get this job, however, one had to undergo unbelievable administrative hassle. The US Government doesn’t make it easy to take on work in their country, and I had to fill in numerous forms, attract willing backers, travel to London for interview at the US Embassy, pay a lot of money, and deny ever doing anything illegal or Communist. Only after all this, was I given a visa as ‘an alien of extraordinary ability!’
A couple of years later, having sung La Roche in ‘Capriccio’ with Pacific Opera Victoria in Canada, and having been heard by a representative of the New York Metropolitan Opera, I was invited to the Met to understudy the role in the famous John Cox production (bizarrely, the same as I had sung all those years before in Liverpool in 1984). Two years later, I was invited back to the Met, once again as an Alien of Extraordinary Ability, to understudy Baron Ochs in Strauss’s opera, ‘Der Rosenkavalier’. None of these contracts resulted in me performing on stage in the US, and so I have been paid thousands of dollars over the years NOT to perform in that country!
A final couple of cover contracts at the tail end of my career were both lucrative and rewarding. I covered Gwynne Howell yet again at Covent Garden as Simone in Puccini’s ‘Gianni Schicchi’ and, after an unfortunate accident to Gwynne, I did get to sing that role at Covent Garden.
I agreed reluctantly to cover John Tomlinson as the Doctor in Thomas Ades’s opera, ‘The Exterminating Angel’ at the Royal Opera House, a role and an opera not to my liking. John virtually never cancels, so I avoided that bullet, but when the opera was performed a couple of years later in Copenhagen, the singer singing the Doctor lost his voice. John Tomlinson was working in New York, and, as I was the only person who had ever learned the part, I was flown out to Copenhagen at vast expense and with a huge fee, to sing the role. I had deleted it from my memory bank immediately after Covent Garden, but the Danes were happy for me to sing it from the score in the wings, while the voiceless bass walked the part on stage. I got to sing a role I disliked enormously, but was paid a fortune to spend a few pleasant days in Denmark keeping the show on the road!
How, then, does the job of an understudy work? Your agent will phone you, often within less than a year of the contract, with the offer from management, which typically will involve a fee for covering (which will be considerably less than your normal fee), plus per diems and statutory rehearsal fees, and a promissory fee which will be paid if you have to go on stage and perform. Covers like the ones I had in the US will have all sorts of financial details, including paid flights, and accommodation assistance, while the Covent Garden covers were reasonably generous. You wouldn’t make a serious living as a cover, but I found it a very useful addition when there were spaces in the diary. You could often fit in a couple of months work at relatively short notice, ideally for a role you knew already. The contracts I took on reluctantly were the modern operas that I didn’t know and which took ages to learn. I didn’t do many of them! Spending hours learning complicated music which I was unlikely to sing in public didn’t seem a particularly good use of my time!
Having agreed all the contractual stuff, which the agents fortunately handle, you then set to learning the role, just like you would do for any normal performing contract. The caveat, and it is a very big one, is that you know you will not, as a cover, get nearly as much rehearsal time as you would as a principal. The places where I covered were extremely well run, and you knew you would get decent rehearsal time, but still only a fraction of what a principal received. The important thing you needed to remember at all times was that your job was as a continuity figure. You were prepared in advance to make sure that the performance went ahead smoothly, even if the original artist wasn’t there, and that the other cast members could continue to express themselves in their roles without worrying about anything. Nothing about being an understudy involves ego. The cover is a cog in the wheel which allows it to keep turning. Yes, it can be career transforming if it goes well, and the chance to show your colleagues and peers what you can do is very satisfying, but that is not the point of it. If you go into an understudy contract with any serious selfish intent, it will be disastrous, but it can still be rewarding.
One of my last contracts before my accident in 2018 was to sing a small role (one of the Mastersingers) and to cover the main bass role (Pogner) in Wagner’s ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ at Covent Garden in 2017. It’s interesting to note how often this opera has come up in my career, especially as a cover. I sang the Nightwatchman with Scottish Opera, I had the big break detailed above at ENO, and in 1993, I was contracted to sing the first two weeks of rehearsal at Covent Garden with the main cast, as Gwynne Howell, who was singing Pogner, was double booked elsewhere. I wasn’t the official cover, but sang the role in rehearsal.
In 2017, the artist singing Pogner in a Stage and Orchestra rehearsal was ill, so I sang the whole of the First Act, with Antonio Pappano conducting. This was an occasion where the cover experience was rewarding, as I was delighted to be congratulated on my singing the following day by Bryn Terfel, Gwyn Hughes Jones, Rachel Willis-Sørensen and Johannes Martin Kränzle. They had only ever heard me singing a few words in my designated role of Folz, and this was a revelation to these world class singers that the 63 year old bass could still sing!
On the whole, I really enjoyed my stints as an understudy. You get to work with the greats, you are working in the finest theatres in the world (Covent Garden and the Met are pretty special), you get free seats in the stalls (that’s where they usually put us for the first night), and there is a chance that you might leap onto the stage and become famous!
On the other hand, five weeks or so into a run, having not rehearsed for weeks, and suddenly getting the call that you’re on tomorrow is seriously scary.
There are also some people who are such good understudies that managements only think of them in that light, and so they never seem to get on stage at all. I was lucky that I always had plenty of principal work elsewhere, and so could look on a couple of months understudying at Covent Garden as good practice, a chance to mingle with the stars, decent extra money and acknowledgement that I was seen as a reliable artist who could be depended upon to replace a star singer with little diminution of quality, if any!
