It is a mixed blessing. There are always useful things there, but there is also a lot of "attitude", which I don't like. The "attitude" IMHO is the amount of malice that so many of these people have toward the ignorant, the misguided, the slightly delusional, and (the worst of the worst offenders) people who sing for free and who are happy when they see an opportunity to sing somewhere for free that for once, won't be overrun with overqualified singers.
I think it's fine for established professional singers not to want to sing for free, even to be insulted if someone who knows them wants them to sing for free. (Although IMHO being insulted is really a waste of energy.)
I know voluntarism (known colloquially as "volunteerism" - I worked at a nonprofit long enough to know that the latter was a malapropism, like "irregardless") has a long and chequered history. For example the Museum of Modern Art probably shouldn't use volunteers to staff the various reception areas: they can certainly afford to hire paid staff. On the other hand, I knew a woman with a history of mental illness who worked at one of those volunteer "jobs" for years. Would they have hired her to work for pay if she had had to undergo a rigorous screening process? Probably not. Did she do a good enough job? Absolutely.
I know there are things I have been asked to do for free that I have actively not wanted to do, mostly because they were too much like what I do for a living that I simply didn't want to use my pittance of discretionary time doing them (I can remember being asked, for example, to read and critique the manuscript of a friend's son's novel and saying that if I did that I would expect to be paid, sorry.) On the other hand I wasn't angry that this particular friend asked me. Nor did I feel that it impugned my professional integrity. I simply felt that I spend enough time looking critically at the written word and I need to spend my free time doing something else. End of story. Not worthy of a rant either in person or online.
I sing for free because I love to sing, and I know that living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, I am not good enough to sing for pay. Should I stop singing, then? Should people stop providing opportunities for people to sing for free because there are professional singers who don't want them? And as I've said before, there is a humongous amount of hypocrisy here. A lot of the "average Forum type" singers (whom I would loosely describe as people with conservatory degrees who sing and act as well as highly paid professionals but just aren't getting work and are angry about it) show up and audition for these no pay groups, which is why amateurs like me can't get our feet in the door.
So, OK, I have stopped looking for these opportunities.
Well, today on the Forum I found something tailor made for me, I think. A woman posted that she wanted someone to sing "something from Carmen" in a bookstore as a tie in with the publication of a new edition of Prosper Merimee's The Loves of Carmen. When I fall prey to my recent yearnings to live in a small town, this is exactly the kind of thing I could imagine myself doing. Nice and small scale. People wanting to buy a copy of this book wouldn't be able to tell the difference between me and one of the emerging pros (or even the unemployed pros) who posts things on the Forum, certainly not singing in the limited range of the "Habanera". And we could all have a lot of fun.
So I called the woman who made the post and we talked. I hope I get to do it. I can wear my costume and shake my booty, and sing something in a comfortable range and have a ball.
So I dusted off my score of Carmen. If this woman wants to hear something else I can sing the version of the "Seguidilla" that is in the score. I have given up trying to sing the version that is usually excerpted because I can't staccato up to a B natural; it just sounds like a bloodcurdling scream. But in the score the piece ends "J'irai chez mon ami Lillas Pastia" and the highest note I would have to sing is an F sharp. I sing both those pieces (if you exclude the B) extremely well. I have the perfect gutsy sound for it, and let's face it, scores of people have told me, even at one month shy of 63, that I am still dripping with sex appeal. And the costume is, well, if not X rated, certainly PG 13. Here's a picture. When it was taken I was 59 and I don't look much different.
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