No autographs please, p.1
No Autographs, Please!, page 1
To Mum, Dad and Lisa –
thank you for believing in that little girl who wanted to sing
And to my nephew Archie –
anything is possible when you follow your heart
‘If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.’
–Milton Berle
Praise for No Autographs, Please!
‘Katherine’s account of life as a chorus member is full of wit and behind the scenes revelations. A must-read for theatre and music lovers, and anyone interested in pursuing a life on the stage.’
Fiona Allan, CEO, Opera Australia
‘My favourite part is when the chorus fire up! No Autographs, Please! offers a charming insight into that world! Loved it!!’
Todd McKenney, theatre performer, actor
‘The Chorus, like life, brings me joy and pain, laughter, and passion. I’m excited … to learn more of its inner workings through author Katherine Wiles … an exemplary chorister whose clever, articulate and very lovely voice dwells within the beast itself.’
Graeme Murphy AO, Australian dancer, choreographer, director
‘With the writing of this book, Katherine grows her already impressive list of talents. She literally draws back the curtain on the fascinating world that is opera.’
Sigrid Thornton AO, Australian actor
‘It’s so great to read something from the point of view of the dedicated artist, honing their craft with passion and devotion, rather than the more obvious celebrity autobiography.’
Simon Phillips, director
‘Katherine is the ultimate professional … with a tremendous sense of humour, and so much love for the work she does. I don’t think you could find anyone better to tell the tales of a life in the theatre.’
Nicole Car, Australian principal soprano
‘It is an honest account of the reality of a professional career as an opera singer, the reality of the industry and the sheer determination to “make it”. It is a brilliant read.’
Simon O’Neill ONZM, New Zealand principal tenor
‘I love the honesty. I applaud Katherine’s determination to become the person and artist she knew she was capable of and the proof that she did make it on her terms, under her own strength.’
Dame Malvina Major ONZ GNZM DBE, New Zealand principal soprano
‘Her book is fascinating, inspiring, intriguing and, yes, emotional … I commend it not only to opera and musicals aficionados, but to everyone.’
Lyndon Terracini AM OSI, former artistic director Opera Australia (2009–2022)
‘Katherine Wiles’ journey behind the theatre curtain brings to us every moment of the professional opera singer’s life … from the excitement of performance to all the work involved in its preparation. I was engrossed in all the details of a life so familiar to me, but still filled with differences.’
Conal Coad, New Zealand-Australian principal bass
Contents
Prologue
Part One: Becoming
1. ‘My dear, there is no such thing as just chorus!’
The Reality Fairy
2. Let’s start at the very beginning
The long road to success
3. The singer’s graveyard?
Becoming a chorister
Part Two: Being
4. ‘Let’s go from the chorus of the traumatised’
Life in an opera chorus
5. ‘Does anyone die in this opera?’
A chorister’s journey from page to stage
6. ‘This is your call, the executioner, and the executioner’s assistants’
The understudy
7. ‘Ladies’ chorus, this is your call to stage for the fight scene’
Sharing the spotlight
8. ‘I want you to enter the stage like a vomit’
Directing a chorus
9. ‘And you can call me Mum’
My Fair Lady and Dame Julie Andrews
10. Keep the ghost lights shining
When Covid silenced the arts industry
Part Three: Behind the curtain
11. ‘Strung-up girls, this is your call to stage’
My second home
12. ‘When you’ve stabbed yourself, can you please come back to the centre to die?’
The show must go on
13. ‘Just for tonight, please do exactly as we rehearsed’
Confessions of a chorister
14. ‘Stop laughing in the asylum, you’re not meant to be happy!’
Perfecting the art of corpsing
15. ‘Ladies, can I please collect your facial-hair boxes?’
The magic of a costume
16. The curtain call
A successful career
Epilogue
Who’s who in the book
Career history
Acknowledgements
Prologue
I love Turandot, but Act Three’s a killer!
I’ve already been standing, swaying, gliding, kneeling, dancing, leaning, singing and bowing for nearly two hours onstage at the Sydney Opera House, and I’m about to enter Act Three to stand for another half an hour.
I enjoy Acts One and Two, and I always manage to survive the physical requirements; I adore the music and have grown to love this particular production. But as I stand backstage, dressed in a long cotton undergarment, three layers of floor-length silk organza, a massive and very uncomforatable hat secured under my chin, canvas shoes that offer no support, and a black fan hidden up my right arm, ready to be revealed about twenty minutes later when everything turns to custard, my lower back is already screaming.
The audience are finally getting what they paid for. That famous tenor aria ‘Nessun dorma’ (‘No-one shall sleep’) heralds the opening of Act Three and it’s glorious. The applause after the tenor nails that top note fuels an adrenaline rush. My chorus colleagues and I are adding some rather impressive ethereal backing vocals from behind the stage before preparing for our next challenge.
Despite what you might think, the backstage area is hardly palatial, with barely enough room to swing a cat. After the crush in the wings, I attempt to make my way down towards the front entrance of the stage, standing on a multitude of chorus costumes along the way – which can’t be helped. I have just enough time to find my spot in the lineup. Draped in black, I emerge from the darkness of backstage at a rather fast pace straight out onto a completely darkened set, so it’s no wonder a Turandot season never goes by without a few casualties. It’s a ‘gird your loins’ kind of entrance, always accompanied by a quiet giggle or two as we navigate the ‘death trap’.
Not long after our first vocal entry, we must appear to gracefully glide to the opposite side of the stage to position ourselves across three levels of rostrums. I use the term ‘gracefully glide’ loosely, because we have about eight bars of music to make it before being crushed by a troupe of dancers entering the stage behind us wielding a giant dragon head. No pressure. I feel like a sardine squashed up against all the other sardines. It’s like standing on a London tube at rush hour. What’s making it worse are the hot flushes I seem to be experiencing lately, heralding ‘the change’. All I want to do is shed a few layers of costume, sit down and fan myself. But this is not the place, Katherine!
Now the real fun begins. Liù, a rather unfortunate character in the opera, isn’t having such a great time. The ice maiden Turandot is unhinged and about to lose her shit because she wants to know the name of the tenor who answered her three riddles in Act Two. Confused yet? ‘Well, bugger you,’ the tenor thinks. ‘I’m going to give you a riddle. Two can play at this game. You think you’re so clever, but I bet you don’t know what my name is!’
But now Liù doesn’t want to reveal the tenor’s name either. You see, the tenor is actually a prince, and she knows his name, because he’s the long-lost son of this old blind guy she’s been helping. And to top it off, she also fancies the tenor and doesn’t want Turandot to have him. It’s ridiculous.
Actually, thinking about it, if his name had been revealed at the end of Act Two, I could be halfway home by now, but no. Meanwhile …
Now it’s our turn to join in, and we start yelling ‘Speak, speak, the name, the name!’ Everyone just wants the tenor’s name, but Liù’s kneeling down the front there, refusing to play ball. So I continue to stand, and while I should be feeling sorry for her, I’m actually starting to feel sorrier for myself. Next minute, Turandot has called in her executioner and his assistants to sort the situation out. In walk five guys, tanned, oiled and half naked, wielding large, shiny and intimidating swords, and looking like they spend every waking minute at the gym.
Suddenly, Liù’s like, ‘I’m sick of being harassed. I’m going to end it all and take his name to the grave.’ Before we know it, she’s dead and we still don’t know his bloody name!
If only we could yell out, ‘Calàf! His name’s Calàf! Now can we all just get out of here?’
As Liù is slowly carried offstage by a group of muscular dancers, we finally reveal our fans, cover our faces to mark her passing and then sing the most exquisite passage of music. The scene is breathtaking. As we sing the final note, I turn upstage with my face hidden behind my fan, attempt to grab as much costume as possible in my other hand, and slowly leav e the stage, trying to avoid the sea of black organza at my feet. As we walk back into darkness, I’m grateful that for a few minutes I can shed a layer of costume, ditch the fan, sing an offstage, grab a quick drink of water, have a chat and find somewhere to sit for five minutes before we re-enter the stage for the big finale.
But do you know what? This is life in an opera chorus, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
part one
Becoming
1.
‘My dear, there is no such thing as just chorus!’
The Reality Fairy
In a vocal masterclass with a renowned soprano, a colleague is told in no uncertain terms to ‘go and join a chorus and have babies’.
Excuse me?
Another friend, after forging a rather successful solo career, joins an opera chorus and is told, ‘Oh well, you’ve had your career.’
Her response? ‘Actually, I’m still having my career, thank you very much. This is my career!’
Some colleagues of mine, while studying at university, were told, ‘One should never strive to be in the chorus. One only settles to be in the chorus.’
Throughout my many years of study, I had been led to believe I would become a star. I had no intention of investing all my time, money and energy only to appear behind the principals in a curtain call. Yet this is where I stand every night, on the stage of the Joan Sutherland Theatre at the Sydney Opera House. I am a full-time member of the Opera Australia Chorus, and one of only a handful of sopranos in Australasia with a permanent job. I am having a successful career as an opera singer, and I’m happy.
It’s been a long road that has brought me to where I am today, and somewhere along the way I transitioned from singing as a hobby to singing as a career. Throughout my journey there have been successes, career highlights and pure elation alongside heartaches, tears, loneliness, self-doubt, lost contracts and more failed auditions than successful ones. But despite all of that, I can say this with absolute certainty: I couldn’t imagine a life without singing. It is who I have become, and the stage I stand on every night has become my second home.
Of course, when I started out, I didn’t know how my career would unfold, or how many stages around the world I would have the privilege to sing upon, but there was only one way to find out.
There has always been a voice deep within me, whispering words of encouragement to keep going, to keep trudging forward. You will sing and it will work out. You will find your place in the world. Just keep knocking on all those doors. I mean, I wasn’t what you would call ‘the next big talent’ – far from it – but I believed I was too good to throw it all away. I knew this. I just had to convince an audition panel that I would be worth hiring.
In this industry, you’re your own boss. You need to advocate for yourself, and to resolutely believe in the quality of your unique product. Grow that thick skin, survive the knockbacks, get back up again and hold fast to your determination to succeed. Of course, it’s easier said than done, but if I’d given up every time I’d received a ‘thanks but no thanks’ after an audition, I’d have thrown in the towel years ago.
I have never had the blessed opportunity to sing in all the top opera houses of the world. Their names will never flow from my lips, as they do for many others who have had the privilege to perform on such revered stages. This book isn’t about those theatres, nor is it about having a long career as a soloist in the world of opera. It is about the success that comes from travelling along a different path: accepting the stark reality of the industry and becoming a member of an opera chorus.
For some, having the mere thought of joining a chorus might be seen as a failure, or as an acceptance that the big career they have envisioned is never going to happen. It has been seen by some as a path for those who lack ambition, who didn’t quite make it or were never good enough; as a stepping stone to bigger and better things, a transition period, ‘spakfilla’, the ‘waiting room’, the ‘bottom rung’ of a company; or, as some in the industry like to call it, the ‘singer’s graveyard’.
Yet for me, the chorus is the best thing that has ever happened. I have had the privilege – and it is a privilege, earned from hard work and determination – of working in an industry where very few permanent positions exist. Every colleague who I stand on the stage with, night after night, is filled with the same pride, passion and assurance. We are where we want to be.
***
They say it takes a village to put on an opera, and within that vast village is the community we, as a chorus, create. We are presented as a collective, and you probably won’t recognise my name, or the names of my colleagues, printed in the small font near the end of the programme that you may receive for free on arrival at the theatre. We sing onstage most nights, appearing in nearly every opera listed in the yearly performance schedule.
We are townsfolk, peasants, revellers, mourners, socialites, aristocracy, clergy, fisherfolk, office workers, night workers, streetsweepers, prisoners, servants … the list goes on. We can be down the front of the stage, gathered around the perimeter, clustered in the shadows far upstage, or singing into the backs of principal artists. Sometimes our participation is from the darkness beyond the wings, creating the illusion of a far-off group of partygoers or a heavenly choir of angels. But wherever we are, you can guarantee that our presence, vocally and physically, will add to the emotion, atmosphere and intensity of every production we are involved in.
My colleagues and I are all highly skilled in acting, movement, stagecraft, telling a story, quick costume changes, juggling multiple props, and adapting our characters to whatever scene we inhabit or whatever costume we wear. Each of us is well-versed in several languages, has a high level of musicianship and holds several academic qualifications in our area of expertise. Some have taken the classical route, while others have studied a broader curriculum of drama, musical theatre and dance. I am surrounded by an array of magnificent voices within the chorus, and even though we all sing as ‘one voice’, I know that every one of us is individually capable of standing down the front of the stage as a soloist and taking on principal roles. Some of us want to pursue solo opportunities, and Opera Australia engages a number of choristers in this capacity, while others are more than happy to remain a part of this magnificent sound, not interested in taking the solo path at all.
When among it, this level of singing can hit me with its sheer force. It can reduce me to tears with its barely whispered pianissimos and transport me to a place of absolute transcendence. The elation of being a part of something so visceral, so powerful, can be spine tingling. Anyone who has sung in a choir, in a professional ensemble, in a congregation or surrounded by a crowd at a sporting event – or has sung along to their favourite song in an audience at a live concert – knows that feeling too. When I go to the theatre, I am as moved when the stage is enveloped by the glorious sound, energy and physical presence of an opera chorus, musical theatre ensemble or choir as I am by exquisite solo moments.
The chorus is written into a score for a reason. The composer knows the impact our collective sound is going to have on the audience, the production, the story and the drama. We are an integral part of any opera, and therefore one that should always be given the respect it deserves. Yet there are still some people who look upon the chorus, or the singers within it, as secondary somehow, as less successful than those singers standing down the front and taking a solo bow.
It is disappointing when we hear comments like, ‘Can you make a living out of being in the chorus?’, ‘But what’s your actual job?’, ‘Oh, you’re only in the ensemble’, ‘Are you in the chorus because the solo career never took off?’, ‘Don’t join the chorus, you’ll ruin your voice!’, ‘You’ll ruin your solo career’, ‘Let me know when you’re doing a role and I’ll come and see you’ and ‘Once in the chorus, always in the chorus!’. And then there’s my favourite: ‘Have you given up your principal career?’
There have been times in my career when I have been approached by a member of the public wanting to chat … until they realise I’m in the chorus, after which they politely excuse themselves and walk away. Their loss! I recall an encounter at an opening-night function when, after enjoying a rather lengthy conversation with a lovely gentleman, he then proceeded to ask me my name. His reply shocked me: ‘Oh yes, I think I’ve heard of you. But you haven’t done anything substantial, have you?’
