I once auditioned for a production of Andrew
Lloyd Weber's musical Cats
in Hamburg in August of 1985. The show opened in April of 1986. At one point during the sign-up process I was
asked if I had experience singing musicals. I thought for a moment and my mind raced back to The Music Man done at our high school in
the upper Midwest in 1979. I had run across the stage a couple times, dropped down to my knees, crooned in the barbershop quartet as a 15-yr-old lead tenor. So I said: "Yes!"
After waiting for about six hours with well over 35 men whose numbers dwindled with each passing half hour, my name was finally called and I bravely stepped onto the stage.
On stage at last
The pianist awaiting me there said:"Have you got sheet music along for your pieces?"
"Why yes, of course" I said, and handed him the piano parts for two songs in Zigeunerlieder, a set of Romantic choral songs by Brahms.
He looked at me, astounded.
"Are you serious? Your singing Brahms?" His tone of voice on the word "Brahms" was like I had said he would be the third understudy in filming Gulag Archipelago on location in Siberia.
I shrugged my shoulders, thought better of explaining the lost luggage SNAFU in Minneapolis. I felt a frisson of ill will that he would be hard put to play the demanding accompaniment well. Just days ago I had presented a highly skilled pianist a difficult piece by Peter Warlock to sight read at auditions for the conservatory. Frau Weber did well, though I pushed the tempo to the max.
I had gotten off the plane from Alaska and stepped into Europe within days and had nothing else in my carry-on bag, and basically nothing to lose. I gave him a poker face and said:
"Play the fast one first."
The director clears his throat in the semi-darkness:
"Are you planning to begin today . . . or tomorrow?"
I shrugged my shoulders, thought better of explaining the lost luggage SNAFU in Minneapolis. I felt a frisson of ill will that he would be hard put to play the demanding accompaniment well. Just days ago I had presented a highly skilled pianist a difficult piece by Peter Warlock to sight read at auditions for the conservatory. Frau Weber did well, though I pushed the tempo to the max.
I had gotten off the plane from Alaska and stepped into Europe within days and had nothing else in my carry-on bag, and basically nothing to lose. I gave him a poker face and said:
"Play the fast one first."
The director clears his throat in the semi-darkness:
"Are you planning to begin today . . . or tomorrow?"
I said: "I've got jet lag; it is tomorrow."
"Very funny." He instructs me to sing. I tear into Hoch getürmte Rimaflut by Brahms, the accompanist negotiating the difficult chords of his part while waiting for the guillotine to drop and knock me off the stage of the Operettenhaus.
I get to finish an entire verse. Dead silence.
The director's voice calls out from the parterre again:
"That's nice enough. Have you got something more lyrical?"
Wow! Maybe he likes Brahms. I had survived the first piece, whereas many other young and middle-aged singers had spent almost the whole day waiting to get their dream role in Cats, but some were asked to stop halfway through their first number.
It was also true, though, that several of the more promising singers and veteran Broadway pros were asked to sing their audition pieces over and over again in higher and higher keys to see where their breaking point was. And the accomplished pianist was able to transpose without batting an eyelid.
"That's nice enough. Have you got something more lyrical?"
Wow! Maybe he likes Brahms. I had survived the first piece, whereas many other young and middle-aged singers had spent almost the whole day waiting to get their dream role in Cats, but some were asked to stop halfway through their first number.
It was also true, though, that several of the more promising singers and veteran Broadway pros were asked to sing their audition pieces over and over again in higher and higher keys to see where their breaking point was. And the accomplished pianist was able to transpose without batting an eyelid.
I figured my odds of getting chosen were bleak at best because I was a greenhorn with no real experience with musicals. Despite my major in voice, I felt like a fish out of water in St. Pauli, Hamburg.
I gulped, nodded to the accompanist, and began Kommt dir manchmal in den Sinn as a slow contrast to the first piece by Brahms (who as a teenager lived only several hundred meters away from the Reeperbahn, before
leaving Hamburg entirely – not unlike his fabled fellow composers Handel, Bach and Mahler before and after him).
I didn't feel like leaving the stage or for that matter Hamburg quite yet. Yet my sneaking suspicion was that the historical interconnections meant piddly-squat to the director as he listened to me sing Brahms at an audition for a world-famous musical.
It was perhaps like reciting No Man Is An Island 30 years later to Senator Mitch McConnell.
I didn't feel like leaving the stage or for that matter Hamburg quite yet. Yet my sneaking suspicion was that the historical interconnections meant piddly-squat to the director as he listened to me sing Brahms at an audition for a world-famous musical.
It was perhaps like reciting No Man Is An Island 30 years later to Senator Mitch McConnell.
The director stopped me halfway through the lyrical piece: "That's it. Send in the next guy."
I countered with: "Sorry, I can't. I'm no. 42, and only 42 singers are trying out today. So 'Next!' won't work. But I'm already leaving voluntarily."
I never heard from them again.
Postlude
A few weeks later, when I took over as choirmaster at the English Church in Hamburg in the fall of 1985, Cats cast members sometimes came over from the Operettenhaus a few hundred yards away to sing in church as soloists. This always delighted the international members of the congregation, for the quality was top-notch.
Among other singers who sang for free at our church services were Jim Sims of the NDR Chorus and Susanne Snortland, as well as Anthony
D'Artagnan, both of the Hamburg State Opera Chorus, the latter also a dancer in various musical
productions in Vienna who contributed a lovely, brooding and floating Bruckner solo (Entsagen) to a benefit concert that raised money for the building and organ fund on February
21, 1986. A capacity audience made the fundraiser a complete success.
In retrospect, a fish out of water in the red light district had flopped his way from Spielbudenplatz 1 past the hulking and imperious Bismarck monument to more familiar surroundings inside the neo-classical English Church.
From the program of the 1986 benefit concert:
In retrospect, a fish out of water in the red light district had flopped his way from Spielbudenplatz 1 past the hulking and imperious Bismarck monument to more familiar surroundings inside the neo-classical English Church.
From the program of the 1986 benefit concert:
This concert is being held at the onset of a two-year project to renovate the 150-year-old building of St. Thomas á Becket in Hamburg. DM1.2 million will be necessary to complete the work. In 1612 the English community in Hamburg was first allowed to establish its own church [as a concession to the Merchant Adventurers – the English traders guild in Hamburg], meaning this year shall mark the 375th anniversary of that event. That makes St. Thomas [á Becket] the oldest Anglican church on the Continent. The present chaplain looks after the well-being of the English-speaking people in Hamburg. Within the renovation project shall be efforts to restore the unique pneumatic organ, part of which date from Bach's lifetime. Your generous support is most appreciated.
