I DESERVE IT !!!!!!!!!

The nights seem to be shorter and shorter, life goes faster and faster, it seems that it is yesterday that I was trying to become another, and today I am still the same: An attempt to find a justification to my desire to be another, with at the same time the belief that nobody deserves everything more than me.  Because I am talented, because I know, because it is my destiny, because I am different, because I deserve it, because it is MOI.

Years have passed and I am still the same and completely different, I am what I became, what others want me to be, what my image became created by the look of others. 

Is that what all of us think too often? At 20, 30, 40 years old? or forever?  Are we lost in the hurricane of life? Trying desperately to be heard as an artist, to share what we know, to give our talent, to cease to exist as a person and become a way for others to see themselves thru our failures, our successes, our desire to be.

Are we perpetually led by the need to have a life thru the expression of our artistic side?
If yes, how can we continue to believe in our task and duty to share ourselves if we do not believe that we are special, that we are different, that we have something to say, that we are ONE…
If yes, we deserve to be successful because we are unique, we know the answers, we know what others do not even approach in their thoughts, and it cannot be just a dream of achievement, we are more talented, we are more knowledgeable, we DESERVE to be at the top of the artistic world.

Unfortunately, NOBODY DESERVES ANYTHING, all this is part of the dreams of childhood, the dreams of adolescence, and tragically the dreams of maturity and beyond… Can we spend our entire life dreaming of what will never happen? Can we justify to ourselves and to the ones surrounding us to spend our life in the quest of a life that will never be ours?

Do not be confused, dreams are only a hidden reality…the reality of the surreal…
Who can decide that dreams are less important? Who can impose that dreams are not real life?
We are for life sitting in the waiting room of achievement, never totally satisfied, and we wonder or more exactly we have a perpetual attack of self satisfaction.

I have been thinking about all this forever, for 5 or 10 or may be 50 years:
Why do some people have success very young or very early in their career and some Wait for Godot.
Sometimes to try to understand or to accept it  we say it is luck, no it is a lottery, oh no it is real talent, no, no, no it is who we know, who can push for us, or may be it is who is paying for us, or what we look like, who we sleep with, or may be it is the ghost of somebody protecting us, may be it is the friend of my friend who talked about me,  may be it is because I am Italian or American or French or Russian or Chinese or an inhabitant of the planet called earth.

Regularly I wonder why a few years ago I was directing in San Francisco, in Zurich, in Dallas, in Toronto, Vancouver, and then it was Palermo, Detroit, Montecarlo, and then Seattle, Miami, Germany, Baltimore… why do we go to places and then suddenly we go somewhere else… Do they become tired of us, do they need new faces,do they want younger people and we belong to another generation, are we becoming a threat, are we behaving badly, or do they change administration and the new one brings their own friends.

I know that to be fashionable is very important, we all wonder WHY this one is now everywhere and I am not?
“I deserve it, I deserve better.
I am better.
My high notes are better.
My low notes are darker.
I am a real director and he is not.
He is not good with the orchestra and I am, so why not me?
Why I am not at the metropolitan, I am better than most of THEM there, why I do not sing there when everybody tells me how talented I am.”

Guess why?
BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT.

We are in a production where everybody tells us that we are wonderful and amazing,
HOW COME YOU DO NOT SING EVERYWHERE?
Suddenly the entire world owes us to hire us, our management is not doing enough, not PUSHING enough.
I love the expression PUSH…you have to PUSH for me… what does that mean? We push all year long.

Why do we suddenly wake up from an eternity of self-indulgence, believing suddenly that the world owes us something…every day, some of my friends, singers, conductors, directors, after a long time, too much time spent in non action, in satisfaction of who they are, in limbo of the anti chamber of success, believe that they should be hired by everybody because they are rehearsing something somewhere and everybody tells them that they are fabulously talented.
The years of neglect and passivity, of waiting for Godot, do not count anymore…they deserve to be everywhere and if their management believed in them, they will act consequently and PUSH for them everywhere…their talent HAS TO BE RECOGNIZED immediately by all, they deserve it, actually companies should be happy to have them.
Yes, I know that self confidence has a lot to do with all this, and artists have the right to doubt, and sometimes they reach their maturity later, and everybody is different... but in that case do not wonder: why not me? Accept that YOU have delayed the verdict, that YOU were the one who did not take the passing trains.
And remember the very important words: You can doubt about everything and everybody but do not doubt about yourself!  (I do not remember who said that)

So, what do we do to believe it is still possible and doors will still open, and trains will still pass?

It is the same thing than acting… some people have it inside them but the majority do not. A career for the majority is based on a long time of work… where is the cult for work, the cult for perfection?  Or at least the attempt for perfection?
I know singers who arrive to the place of work not prepared, they are in important companies and DO NOT KNOW THE ROLE THEY ARE SINGING OR COVERING? And then they wonder, why was anything else not offered?
And when confronted they answer: ”But I knew my role after a few coachings!!!!!!”

Amateurism is not acceptable in our work, the competition is becoming challenging, more ARTISTS on the market every day, less productions every day, singers singing the wrong repertoire and not enough opportunities to progress by being on stage.  Locals filling the comprimari roles, assistant directors directing, and even conductors directing and directors conducting.  Young artists programs flooding the market and young artists after a summer somewhere believe that they now are full professionals and deserve a career….

All this is wonderful because it creates a vibrant surrounding of possibilities but….

Yes, some have a voice and know their music and the words, so what? How can we call that prepared? A painter has his hand and his brushes and his colors, should I be in ecstasy about it? What he will DO with the brushes and the colors is art.
The knowledge of the words and the music are the brushes and the colors, what you will do with it could be art, sometimes.
The tragic difference is: When a painter looks at his painting and believes it is bad, he throws it out…for performers, it is too late…

REHEARSALS give you this opportunity; rehearsals give you the possibility to throw out what is not good…
Day after day, for three weeks or six weeks, try new things, always try to go further with the guidance of conductors and directors, do not be satisfied with what you believe is good…
I have done the role, I know it, I do not need rehearsals…PLEASE NO!!!! Your colleagues are different, the production is different, you are different from the last time you did it, it is always a new experience.

We do not deserve anything; we earn it by working, progressing, building a reputation, and gaining the trust of colleagues, of companies.

To be an artist is to be self confident, but also to question ourselves all the time about who we are, what we know, where we go.
BE SURE TO DEVOTE THE TIME AND THE YEARS TO LEARN, TO PROGRESS, TO BE and remember this is a rule of life whatever you do or whoever you are.