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For A
Song
Office work pays the bills, but Ben
Schnitzer aspires to a life fully committed to the
music he loves
By Michael Harris
Ben Schnitzer is serving lemon-rooibos tea and homemade
biscotti in his century-old West End apartment. The
prisoners’ chorus from Beethoven’s Fidelio
issues from his Sony—the jailbirds are rhapsodizing
over a brief interlude in the sunlight, momentarily
free from the drudgery of their dark cells. Schnitzer,
a 28-year-old tenor in the Vancouver Opera chorus, pours
the tea, left-handed, from a pot emblazoned with Kandinsky-esque
designs into matching cups. “Value Village,”
he says, holding the pot up for inspection. “Who
knew?”
A passport officer by day and a classical singer by
night, Schnitzer—like most of the opera’s
chorus members—is constantly shuttling between
the exquisite and the banal. As each member of the chorus
receives between two and three thousand dollars per
production, day jobs aren’t optional. When rehearsals
are in full swing, Schnitzer’s twin commitments
add up to a 15-hour workday. The whiplash effect of
vaulting from cubicle to stage can be harsh. “Sometimes
you leave the stage,” he says, “and wonder,
‘Which is my real life? The moment in the floodlights
or everything else?’ ”
The company as a whole does not enjoy the glamour that
“opera” suggests. About $900,000 is spent
on each production (last year’s run of Strauss’s
Der Rosenkavalier cost more than $1 million), but if
70 chorus members are called for, says Schnitzer, our
chorus is more likely to hire 40. The elaborate (read:
expensive) work of Wagner seems perennially out of reach.
Besides, as general director James Wright says, “I
don’t see the point in doing Wagner when Seattle
does it well and spends all that money on it.”
The company must also consider its audience. Do Vancouverites
demand their own Ring Cycle? Or are we satisfied with
the gorgeous, yet well-worn, strains of La Bohème
(which runs to May 8)? Either way, our opera produces
chestnuts, mostly.
Financial pressures (exacerbated by the fact our opera
doesn’t own its performance space and must rent
instead) keep our opera culture pitched between high
glamour and pragmatism. It’s a business, after
all; not a dream. (“One does not like to sing,”
says Schnitzer. “We sing because we are compelled.”)
Steal backstage during a performance and you’ll
see chorus members lounging in ornate costumes playing
poker and chugging Diet Coke. Even soloists admit to
wondering, mid-aria, “Did I remember to feed the
cat?”
Over the past few years, Schnitzer has been an 18th-century
courtier, a 19th-century soldier, and a 20th-century
political prisoner, but his greatest role is that of
surviving artist. “I feel hugely privileged to
work in the chorus,” he says, pouring more tea.
“For a few moments in a day you forget yourself
and also find yourself.”
He has a flight in the morning to snowy New York, where
he’ll spend a week dispensing résumés,
haunting the Met, and dreaming of a life bolstered entirely
by music. A Chopin mazurka bleeps out of his cell phone,
reminding him it’s time to pack the navy Swiss
Army suitcase. “I’ve decided which two scarves
I need to take,” he says, holding up a dark paisley
specimen. Otherwise, the bag is empty.
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