On Mar 31, 2006, at 10:17 AM, Chuck Israels wrote:
I lost the thread of who wrote this, but I have some inside insight (department of redundancy department), into this. A young baritone I know was a semi - finalist (or something like that in the auditioning process) in this debacle a year or so ago. As he got closer to the point where they'd let him compete on TV, he was challenged with the question, "You have musical training, don't you?" When he answered, "yes", he was summarily rejected.
A few years ago I was chorus director for a regional opera company with a volunteer chorus. One of the better mezzos in the group was a vivacious and buxom blonde in her early 20s. She went to L.A. to try out for American Idol one year and made it through the various auditions to the last level before the group that goes on TV. She sang the Habanera from Carmen and similar popular operatic fare. She told me that everyone there oohed and aahed about what a fabulous singer she was and how she was so much better than everyone else. In the last round when she was rejected she was told something like, "It's clear that you have a lot of vocal talent, but it's really not the kind of talent we're looking for here."
The funny thing is, in the opera community I was working in, she wasn't extraordinary. As an unpaid choral singer I was definitely happy to have her, but when she started auditioning for solo roles, even small roles with small companies, she was up against a dozen other young mezzos just as good or better. And yet, I don't doubt that it really was true that she was vastly superior to most of the other American Idol auditionees.
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