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This Old Man

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 12/12/2011 - 17:32

The Portland Opera office -- as you might have guessed from our live-in costume shop cat -- is very pet-friendly. People routinely bring dogs in; some dogs come nearly every day. Having good-natured pets in the office creates a really great vibe; nearly everybody likes to pet a nice dog. Plus, it means that despite the strange and long hours we sometimes work, we still have the option of owning pets.

In the future, I'll share with you all the other pets of Portland Opera, but this week, we'd like to introduce you to a very special dog.

This Old Man Blog 1

All About Auditions

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 15:34

Last week, our Artistic Staff traveled to New York City, to hear more than 50 young singers audition for our Studio Artist program.  Read thoughts on this process from Clare Burovac, Director of Artistic Operations.

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We've now heard about 50 preliminary auditions, and at the end of the day on Tuesday, Rob Ainsley and I had the unenviable task of trying to choose about 10 singers to invite for a callback audition on Wednesday morning.  The level of singing this year was very high, and there were many singers who could easily be considered for a position with our POSA program.  How to choose?  There were a couple of factors that went into the process:

My POSA audition

Submitted by PDX OPERAbeat on Mon, 11/28/2011 - 15:41

Sharin Apostolou, former Portland Opera Studio Artist (POSA),  writes about her POSA audition:

I’ll never forget my auditions for POSA program. It was a little over 5 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday.  It was April and I was thiiiis close to getting my master’s degree. I (unlike a few of my luckier classmates) had not succeeded in getting a job for the next year. I saw the listing for the POSA audition and was determined. Portland? Singing? Yes! THIS GIG WILL BE MINE.
 

The day of the audition, I spent extra time curling my hair and making sure my makeup was fabulous. My green silk audition dress was perfect from the dry cleaners. Extra pairs of stockings? Check. Ridiculous number of résumés and headshots? Check. Throat coat tea in a thermos? Check! Anything else I could possibly need in packed into massive bag? Check! I was ready. Looked outside- bright sunshine. Who needs an umbrella? I got off of the 1 train at 116th Street and nearly screamed when I resurfaced. SNOW. In April. Big, fat, wet, horrible, hair-flattening, silk dress ruining SNOW. Riverside church was a mere 4 blocks away, but still. There was no way around it. I was going to look awful. EPIC FAIL. I covered as much of my dress as my little trench coat could and ran like a tiger was chasing me.