All posts by Laura Wilde

Challenges, Inside the life of a performer, Laura

Being Human

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After a three year hiatus from this blog, Kristin and I decided to start it up again. Glancing back through some of the posts I wrote in 2016, I can see that a lot has changed…. and very little has changed. I was just launching into the next step of my career and now I’m launched, but still climbing into the unknown. I know more, but still have so much to learn. I’m more confident than ever in my voice and what I have to offer the opera world, but now have first hand experience with imposter’s syndrome. I think it will be good for me to take the time to look at my life, where I am, how I feel, and take stock.

The analogy I use a lot for what it’s like to do this career is the Narnia Wardrobe. I go away for a gig, have a whole experience, meeting new people, singing new roles, speaking new languages, discovering new things, facing new challenges, success, failure, and a lot in between. Then I return home, where it seems like nothing changed (even though plenty has… I just wasn’t there to see it) and no one there experienced the past few months with me in the wardrobe. Then I’m home for anywhere from a couple days to a month, before heading back into the wardrobe for the next adventure. This makes the year fly by and I wonder where it all went!

It’s fitting that I decided to pick this blog back up while singing the same role I was doing the last time I wrote in this blog — singing Jenufa in English for the 2016 debut in London.

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I’m currently in one of my favorite places on earth (Santa Fe, New Mexico), singing with one of my favorite companies (The Santa Fe Opera), performing one of my favorite roles (Jenufa), this time in Czech.

From day one of this show, all I wanted was for time to slow down. I came home from the first day of rehearsal with both excitement and melancholy. I honestly felt a twinge of sadness that this experience would be over in 7 weeks. Now, after 3 years of the gig opera life, I know how quickly wonderful experiences go. I’m already finishing the 3rd week and I feel as though we just started. Every day is a joy when you are doing what you love, feeling good about your work, and loving the people around you. 

This year, especially, has been teaching me the joys of my job and the perils of doing this job while being human. Back in college, I remember the day my friends and I discovered a YouTube video of the epic tenor crack. We listened to it over and over, laughing at how hilarious it sounded, not connecting that it was probably that man’s nightmare coming true on stage AND being recorded. We discovered and fell in love with famous opera singers. The further we got in school, the more we felt we could criticize. She scoops too much! His straight tones! He was so flat! She totally botched that high note! Young artists could be some of the worst, watching principals sing the roles they cover, quietly talking about how much better they could sing it.

Ignorance is bliss. 

Now that I’m a of couple years into being the principal, I regret any feelings I ever had like that. I do tend to be a singer who likes others voices and looks for the beauty… but I would be lying if I said I didn’t have times when I floated around with a critical ear and judgements of how I would sing something. There are healthy levels of critical listening, learning, and developing your own style… and then there is youthful ignorance or arrogant pride.

When you aren’t the one doing the job, you haven’t yet experienced what it is to be a human being in a career that doesn’t account for you being human. 

This season has been heavy and stressful. I will have debuted 6 brand new roles in a row. (And yes… I’m counting Jenufa in Czech for the first time, because Czech is a beast and it basically felt brand new.) I’ve had to be learning and memorizing the next role, while trying to get the current one on its feet. For example, my first time singing the challenging role of Fiordiligi from Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte was in Stuttgart, Germany this past spring. I was speaking German in daily life, singing a new role in Italian, and furiously learning and memorizing Jenufa in Czech. My brain simply stopped working by the end of the day. 

I’m a very ordered person. I plan out how long it will take me to learn and memorize a role and have always felt 100% prepared when it was time to start rehearsals. However, the human element has started messing with my best laid plans.

I had a month home in Chicago to memorize my Fiordiligi role before flying to Germany to begin rehearsals. Anyone who knows this opera, knows it is A LOT and not an easy sing. It’s long, high, and takes lots of endurance. According to my plan, I would have the whole thing learned and memorized by the end of the first 3 weeks, leaving one week to sing the opera through every day to learn how to pace it and build endurance before leaving home. Foolproof.CAE89FAC-20EE-45A9-B1AB-4FAE99B11AA0

But then, the WORST singer calamity happened….I got sick. Really sick. A horrible combo of Strep throat, sinus infection, and laryngitis. It was the first time I lost my voice since college. So instead of pacing and endurance building, my final week of preparation was spent in bed with a high temp, taking drugs, and foggily packing for my month and a half in Germany. The day I flew, I wasn’t contagious anymore, but still didn’t have my voice and had two very plugged ears, causing my eardrums to almost burst on my flights overseas.

I finally made it to Stuttgart, where the real frustration began. Since this opera was not new for the opera house, we had only 10 days of rehearsals before opening. I still didn’t have my voice. The company was incredibly supportive and patient as I healed and tried to gauge if my voice needed rest or endurance training during rehearsals. I imagine it was like trying to run a marathon while still recovering from an injury. I knew this role would be good for me and that I could sing it.  But I had to make peace with the fact that I was a human, who couldn’t control getting sick. I simply had to figure out how to do my job to the best of my abilities in whatever circumstance was thrown at me.

Thank goodness, I had a wonderful director and conductor, colleagues and administrators who trusted that I could do what I was often doubting in myself. And they were right, it’s a good role for me. I was able to figure out how to sing it by opening, and got even stronger as the performances went on. But I had to face my own judgements and the imposter syndrome of knowing I could sing much better than I was currently able to. I knew the audience and reviewers had no idea what I had gone through leading up to opening night, but I had to have grace for myself anyway. I know my performances were far from perfect, and I will, Lord willing, be much stronger the next time I sing the role, but I’m proud of what I was able to do, considering the circumstances. 630E5833-A272-4FF2-85B0-D7888A9F035E

My teacher used to say: “You will only have a handful of performances in your career, where your voice feels 100% going into it”. Young Laura nodded seriously, but secretly assumed it would be different for me. NOPE. Between sickness, allergies, hormones, sleep, dryness, jet lag, reflux, exhaustion, stress, and emotions, I am finally making peace that I will simply only ever have what I have that day. I’m now at the place with my technique, where I’m not ONLY at the mercy of those factors. I’m getting to know my voice better and better with each new role, and am able to be present in the moment to adjust and let go, even when things don’t feel great.  

I can now see why most regularly working singers are more gracious to their colleagues than young singers. We understand that we are all human. While the world of reviewers haven’t quite figured this out yet, I’ve come to value the opinions of the wonderful people around me, who have been on the ground, working to do their best in the face of being human.

This quote by Theadore Roosevelt speaks to all of this perfectly: 

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

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Living Alone. 

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It’s Saturday night and I’m sitting on my balcony overlooking the Thames, enjoying the cool breeze, the night air, and the music coming from the party boats as they pass below. It’s simply lovely. 


This first week of rehearsals for Jenufa have been amazing. I love my colleagues, the music staff, this city, and the work. The process of finding this character and walking through her incredibly heartbreaking journey has been more exausting than any other role I’ve sung. Every moment of the opera is real, important, and intense. Each day this week, I have left the flat around 9:30am, returned around 6pm, and crashed in bed by 9:30, completely spent. I spend the rehearsals being thrown around by emotional men, calapsing on the floor in anger, anguish, and horror, and vocally experimenting with color, word stress, dynamics, and tempi. I have loved every minute of it and am excited to start up again on Tuesday, but know I also very much need some rest. 

The work is wonderful and incredibly familiar. No matter where I am, the music is the music and the craft is the craft. This, I know and understand. Days off are another matter altogether. After spending the past 8 years studying and being a young artist, my time has never been my own. Young artists tend to be in multiple shows at once, so a day off on one show means a rehearsal for another. On the rare day off, it usually had to be spent preparing for upcoming recitals, auditions, and the next opera. This is the first time in my singing history when I can just focus on one thing of the time being. My next role won’t start until the end of August and I actually have it mostly learned already. I can finally allow myself to do one thing well, without feeling over extended. This wont always be the case, as my career progresses, the hope is that it will be filled with work, but for now, I’m going to enjoy this luxury. 

However, this time also begs a brand new issue. The daily markers in my day have been stripped. My Chicago apartment, neighborhood, routine, regular workplace, and especially the people who walked through daily life with me. While I am an introvert, the people in my life are vitally important to me. I have nothing short of utterly fantastic people in my life. My friends and family have always been deliberate in being witnesses to my life. I am a verbal processor and love to dissect in discussion and debate my day, experiences, world events, philisophical and theological concepts, and my work. Suddenly leaving the constant of having people who know me and enjoy the same thing around every day has made me take pause and figure out what it is to live without physical witnesses present in my day to day life.


It’s been odd to not actually feel lonely, but to suddenly be highly aware of being alone. It isn’t accompanied by sadness or longing, just the curiosity of how to find and feel tangible meaning in day to day life, when meaning use to come from the verbally processing what I had just lived with those around me. Skype is amazing. I’ve already had multiple skype dates with friends, family, nieces and nephews, and, even with the time difference, have lots of wonderful people checking in, asking about my day, and always making me feel remembered. So, again, this experience isn’t of being lonely, just literally, physically alone. It’s also different from every time I’ve moved to a new place by myself. I’m not here long enough to need to find friends outside of my work colleagues (who I LOVE getting to know and will also continue to be constants throughout my career). I’m in a temporary, resigned state of being physically alone. It seems obvious, but is still an experience I’ve had to process. 

An interesting development has been that, as the presence of people has declined, my awareness of the presence of God has increased. I have a constant, sweet, feeling of companionship always in how I experience God, but being alone highlights this in a really beautiful way. Perhaps this is why I am not lonely. I don’t actually FEEL alone as I go about my day, just void of human presence. I do have a witness to each and every moment, it just doesn’t look or feel the same as with people. What I love the most about this is that I can experience and process my day without having to explain myself or deal with the frustration of not being understood accurately. I am completely known. Recent events over the past year have shown me how fundamentally important being known and understood is to me. It is the core of all my close relationships and I have a deep desire to know others in this same way. I love “getting” people and feeling like they “get” me. 

It’s been interesting for me to process through this aspect of my relationship with God in recent years. Most people who know me, know my love of the intellectual side to faith, my desire to understand, to challenge and to be challenged, and to engage with people who agree and disagree with me. As someone who isn’t a “high feeler”, my emotional experience of God often looks different from many of those I’m around in my faith communities. My relationship with God isn’t a fiery struggle through anger and trust to overwhelming exuberance, nor is it cold, complacent acceptance; it has simply been a steady deepening, a slow revealing of Himself and who I am, and a constant in life’s losses, changes, and struggles. As it turns out, what I value the most in my close human relationships is exactly how I feel about God. And I love that. 

And, it seems this blog may end up being a place I do my “verbal processing”. As I sit here watching the umpteenth party boat go by, I’m simply feeling grateful for where I am, the love and joy I have in my life, and the Constant that gives meaning to it all. 

*It should be stated that of all the party boats, I’m torn between wanting to be on the one playing swing music and the one playing Whitney Houston/Michael Jackson… However, I am certain I would massively avoid the one playing the Macarena. 

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What I am learning about myself.

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I am currently sitting in the Hamburg airport, waiting for my flight to Zurich, so I can catch my flight to Munich tomorrow to continue my audition tour. I am in the midst of three major career Firsts: 

1. My first European audition tour.

2. My first non-young artist opera role as Jenufa. 

3. My first international job singing said role in London. 

I’ve spent the past two months preparing for my role in Jenufa at English National Opera, booking flights and hotels throughout Zurich, Hamburg, Munich, and Geneva, brushing up on my audition arias, figuring out an international phone plan, attempting to pack as light as possible for 2 1/2 months in Europe, and singing gigs around the Chicago area. It’s been a whirlwind of preparation and, essentially, limbo. In the midst of the chaos of planning and preparing, I discovered a wonderful and difficult aspect of my personality. I am extremely present focused. I am constantly living and experiencing the moment, which is one reason I tend to not live in a state of high anxiety or angst. I don’t dwell on the past and I don’t fret over the future. I am here. This is one reason I never procrastinate. If there is something particularly important in the future, my way of dealing with the possible anxiety it might cause is to bring the thing into the present. If I deal with it now, I can just take care of it. It’s one reason I almost always had my school papers done days or sometimes weeks in advance. 


This trait has generally been a blessing in my life. It keeps me from living in angst, allows me to be prepared or over-prepared for my singing gigs, and is probably also why I arrive obsessively early for everything. However, preparing for this massive life change from being a young artist to a working singer has revealed a struggle with this little trait. 

What do I do when I HAVE to wait and can only prepare so much? 

The last week before I left for Europe was overwhelming and incredibly stress inducing. I had my planning planned out and whenever something didn’t go as planned, I flipped out. My switch to a phone company with a good international plan was suppose to be a smooth transition the Monday before my Friday flight. I had checked weeks earlier and assumed it would be an easy check off of my to-do list. It was not. Turns out my number couldn’t transfer to this particular company. I didn’t want to lose my number of 15 years, and after 2 hours in the store, decided to go with a portable wifi device. That night, around 10pm, I happened to read a review of the device which read “WARNING: DOES NOT WORK INTERNATIONALLY”. I had a mini panic attack at the thought of showing up in Europe with no cell service or google maps. I then was up for the next 3 hours googling solutions and emailing my friends in London. 

The next day, I went back to the phone store and we figured out a fairly simple solution and after two more hours of setting up the solution, I left with my phone plan. It was a fairly simple fix, but since the solution came much after I wanted it to, I had lived in panic for half a day. 

Before boarding my first plane to Zurich, fairly jet-lagged, I obsessively planned my train routes and took screen shots, in case I lose service. I find myself dealing with some anxiety as I do this, since all I can do is plan. As soon as I’m off the plane, DOING the traveling, I am fine. It seems so ridiculous. I am a fully capable adult, with decent enough German and in cities where they all speak English. But I also experienced this kind of anxiety about traveling to NYC the first number of times. 

The irony in all of this is that the thing that SHOULD be stressful, the actual auditions, are the place where I feel the most relaxed. I feel prepared, know myself and my voice, and LOVE getting the chance to sing some of my favorite pieces on these beautiful German and Swiss stages. I guess I can still be grateful for this, even if it does baffle me that I’m not nervous at all. 


I think the other thing this pre-traveling anxiety boils down to is my dislike of the idea of “Adventure.” I have NO interest in getting outside of my comfort zone and routine to explore or do something exciting…. Especially alone. If I have a companion or know the place, I’m all for it. But I would never choose to go on an adventure. 

This realization, during my stressful weeks of preparation, scared me a bit. That IS my career. I will spend my life traveling to new (and old) places alone, figuring out how to get around, and getting out to see the sites. I can’t get around this. I was terrified that this trip would teach me that I will HATE the career/life path I’m on. That I would lock myself in the hotel room of whatever city I had traveled to and stay where it was safe and familiar. 

HOWEVER… 

This is not what is happening. I should NOT have assumed anything about myself during those weeks of preparing for 3 GIANT firsts in my life (one huge change/event is bound to bring a good amount of anxiety, much less THREE). As soon as I stepped off the plane in Zurich, I just slowly started figuring out where to go, I used my favorite German phrase: “Sprechen Sie English,” and I allowed myself to look like an idiot when I did something wrong or misunderstood. Once the adventure was in the present, I was fine and actually found joy in my surroundings and the experience. I love the German and Swiss people and the Counties are stunning. I’ve developed a deep desire to REALLY learn German; I find myself jealous of every person around me who is fluent. 


I’ve had a feeling that this next career step was going to reveal a lot about myself and I’m already finding that to be true, even though I haven’t even started up the job in London yet. I can now be aware that, when anxiety hits in my travel preparation, my fear of not currently having control is to blame. I am learning that I will, not only, be okay, but will learn, adapt, enjoy, and thrive. 

I know this blog has been silent for quite a while, but I hope to revive it. I will have lots to report, process, learn, and express over the next couple of months. I beg your forgiveness for ramblings… Hopefully some of it will come out cohesive and interesting.