Mezzo Emily Fons
...on localizing the globetrotting opera singer, managing your money, and those sweet, sweet trouser roles
Probably the most melancholy production of The Marriage of Figaro around, the Claus Guth-conceived Salzburg production first seen in Toronto in 2016 is back for another run (January 27 - February 18). The show has a different set of principals now, but its Cherubino returns: Emily Fons, American mezzo soprano best known for Handel and Mozart ‘trouser roles’. When I reviewed the original run for the Globe, it was impossible not to highlight her athletic Cherubino as a case of perfect casting. There have been other Cherubinos on Fons’ CV since, the one rehearsed at the moment being No. 7. When I meet her for coffee on Queen East earlier in January, she tells me that every mezzo excelling in boy and youth roles comes to a point when she needs to decide whether to graduate into singing the grown men of the repertoire (Giulio Cesare, Ariodante, Serse) or proceed to the other, more traditionally clad mezzo rep.
What is needed for a successful career in trouser roles, I ask her. Voice type, physique? “These days companies are casting more women who don’t have the body type you would expect in a trouser role,” she says. “I think it’s good to push the boundaries and challenge people’s expectations. But there’s always going to be those of us who walk into a rehearsal room and people go, You must be singing Cherubino. Definitely the colour of voice, the Fach, but also - personality plays a big part in where you end up. If you enjoy a certain type of role, you tend to do well in it, and people will cast you more in it.”
She sang Ariodante, Faramondo, Orlando (Handel), Hansel, l’Enfant in L’enfant et les sortilèges, Prince Orlofsky, Nicklausse. Do North American singers need to move or travel extensively to other operatic centres in order to have a career? Canadian and American opera houses, apart from the four or five big ones, can do up to half a dozen productions a year only. Does every singer need to move to Berlin or Paris to have a career – and should they? “I have a lot of thoughts on this,” she says. “When I first started my career about 13 years ago I told my manager that I wanted an American career. I had a family that I cared about, I had my dog that I love to have with me and that shouldn’t fly on the plane.” And people thought that was a highly unusual request, an American opera singer who wants to stay in America. “It wasn’t that I didn't want jobs in Europe, it’s that I didn't want to be away for 6 months at a time.” And now Fons does have a North America-centred career. For the current gig at the COC, she drove from home in Wisconsin with her dog in the back seat.
The regional houses in America, she continues, have maybe three productions a year, and only two shows per each production. “That is a lot of work you have to string together to keep yourself afloat. And I do think there's a kinda push in America… to consider opera companies as ‘community service organizations’. While they are also hiring entirely different cast every season.” This is problematic for artists and the “community building” itself. As an artist, you are hired and often participate in many different community building and music education programs – in cities far away from where you live. “If you’re on the road all the time, what does it mean that you’re serving the community? And a lot of artists want a life, a family, and not to travel 11 months of the year.”
What would work better both for the regional houses and the artists itself, Fons argues, is the ensemble model: hiring a group of singers for a specific number of years and casting from that pool of talent for all productions. “If companies really want a community service model and are not saying that just to get the grant money, then the model to adopt would be to keep the performers in the city where they are from. I think that would also cut costs for opera companies, and would make artistic careers more manageable.” Could this most international of professions be made… local, or at least regional? “Ensembles would develop ties to the community,” says Fons. “People who attend opera would get to know you; I took part in education initiatives in various companies around the country and how much more of that could I do if I just stayed put. It’s hard to make an impact if you fly in and out constantly.”
I ask her if she’s read the Alan Clayton interview in the Times of London in which he says that life of an opera singer is a life is loneliness in hotels, not being paid for rehearsals, and not getting a dime if you get sick and have to cancel. The interview made a splash and re-started the conversation around the issue of singers not being paid for rehearsals (the directors get part of their fee from day one of work, for instance.) The ensemble model would solve that problem too. “That’s right. I’m on the board of governors for the American Guild of Musical Artists, which represents a broad section of artists, dancers, choristers, stage managers, and we’re pushing for principal artists’ rehearsal time to be respected and paid. We still bear the most financial risk in this industry and it is not sustainable. Coming out of the pandemic and seeing that there is no willingness to change that is pretty shocking but at least in the States we are making strides in getting companies to pay a percentage upfront.”
“Months ahead of rehearsal start time you’re looking for a place and booking and have airBnBs on your credit card. Then you arrive in a new city and start working and work for no money, and it’s only two months later that you get paid.” And musicians in the pit are actually paid for every hour that they work in rehearsals, I remind her. “And in the States, not sure if it’s the same in Canada, choristers and dancers are paid either weekly or hourly. There’s still a lot to be done to improve the work environment for soloists. We shouldn’t make those working in principal roles risk so much.”
Is she still worried about COVID, does she find most of her colleagues have returned to normal? “I think that the pandemic and the long shutdown of performing arts were tragic. For so many people. And the fact that even now people are having a hard time coming back out of the crisis and the never-going-out mindset…” The latest reports out of UK have it that ticket sales in a lot of artistic disciplines are not going back to the 2019 levels. “Yes, though the ticket sales for opera were already on the downward trend before COVID… Is it possible to reverse it, with the current way we’re doing things? As a performer, taking responsibility for my finances meant not putting all eggs in one basket. I don’t know what the answer is… The bigger companies are gonna suffer the most because they have the biggest costs: huge theatres, office spaces, they’re often downtown and employ a lot of people. They’re probably the most affected and the least nimble to play around.”
“For the long-term survival and thriving of the art form, we need to get the ticket sales up,” says Fons, sensibly. “Yes we are non-profits, but you still have to have a product that people want to buy. And that bumps a little against “We are a community service organization”. I’ve seen some amazing arts education programs, San Diego’s for example is great… but that’s not a money maker, it’s a public service.”
Fons has just completed a book specifically geared towards singers on how to manage money as a freelance artist (co-authored with finance educator Rebecca Eve Selkowe). “I want to help and I wish this book existed when I was starting out,” she says. “As a young artist you sometimes watch some of your colleagues take off to superstar status and you watch the same people burn every penny they earn and complain constantly that they're broke. Meanwhile there are people in the trenches piecing it together and making it work. And you think, how does this happen? I wanted the people who took off to be able to manage that and to benefit long-term from that boom. Simultaneously, the people who are piecing it together, I wish that they can enjoy a safe financial life and not always feel on the brink of collapse.”
She found Rebecca Eve Selkowe through the AGMA, and the two worked on the book for three years, in between professional and familial obligations. “Our approach in the book is not, We’re assuming you have the money, here is what to do with it. We’re starting from, We’re assuming you want to be an artist. That you want to feel successful as an artist, and you want a safe financial future. You are the one defining your own success; whether you make all of your money as an artist or 5 percent of your money, you are an artist. We are encouraging people coming out of schools to plan for a sustainable professional life, and there is more than one way to do that.”
The book is written in two parallel tracks: the financial counsellor providing financial education and the artist sharing her own experience. “One of the most challenging things for the performers is - we get these massive dumps of money on our accounts and I think it’s a confusing way to receive money. It leads you to sometimes spend the money in the way that you receive it. You get a chunk, you spend a chunk. Whereas people who are getting smaller amounts can’t really spend in large chunks. What we are saying, you should spread your chunks into a nice layer.”
Most artists are entering the profession with student debt, and naturally the book talks a lot about debt. They also cover tax, savings, and - asking older colleagues for advice. “One of the least mined resources in the industry is people over 45. There is no cross-generational passing of knowledge at all. Artists over 50 have a lot to share: what has worked for them, how to balance family life with the job.”
They are currently searching for a publisher but would be fine with doing a print-on-demand book which the universities and YA programs could supply to their singers. “Young Artist programs are when you start earning your first money. When I was in my YA program in Chicago we were earning around $50,000 a year, which is pretty decent for a young singer, and you have health insurance! I would have approached it differently, had I had this book. I would have paid off my student loans first. In YA programs you have the impression that you are still in school and that there’s no urgency to pay off the student debt yet. It was more fun to spend the money by, I don’t know, shopping at Whole Foods.”
“What we’re trying to impress on people with this book is that financial freedom is really artistic freedom, in a lot of ways. You won’t have to take jobs just for the money. You give yourself more options when you set yourself up better financially.”
Oh, once again you're so good at getting artists to open up about topics that tend to be 'taboo' - here, finances and current, persistent models of how artists are paid in North America. Given the financial pressures on opera companies that have only gotten worse during the pandemic...it would be great to see some of them convert to a 'resident artist' model which, let's face it, is how the majority of companies function in Europe. I guess the challenges in doing that here are greatly impacted by the fact that most North American companies don't put on enough performances in a year to merit taking on artists full-time? But I wonder if enough of even say, the smaller 'regional' houses have considered such a model, and how it would compare to hiring in everyone on contract for each different production? If you have artists 'on staff' throughout the year, then indeed, you could do some meaningful community building...and the artists would get paid to do it! Many smaller companies certainly aren't relying on 'star power' to populate their shows...so, hiring a troupe of excellent, mid-career artists would hardly represent a big change in how they cast their opera productions. None of this is simple of course...but given all the cries for better treatment of artists during the pandemic, it's a little disheartening to see that models haven't changed much despite the justified outcry. And the thorny topic of performing arts groups now also being expected to do community service and how that butts up against their raison d'etre of selling a product deserves more discussion somewhere. It's just sort of been accepted as gospel...and I get the thinking and value behind it...but as Fons mentions, ultimately they need to sell tickets if they're to stay alive.