At what point does one pull the plug on a prickly negotiation? In preparing our 2012-13 schedule, we've just encountered an odd request. A potential visiting artist has asked for two dressing rooms -- one for him, the other for his children.
I can write to you all about this now because as of late last night, our negotiations ended abruptly when this artist (who shall remain nameless) withdrew via a text message from his manager. Luckily for us, he wasn't our only choice. But the whole fracas made me fume. I mean, really fume. And of course, having been on the other end of such negotiations -- as the visiting artist trying to squeeze whatever I can from an agreement -- I understand how this happens.
One person gets something special. It's like on the playground. Sally has a new toy. The bully sees Sally's toy and simply must have it for himself. So he steals it. In the opera world that translates into two singers sharing cocktails in a hotel bar. One casually drops the fact that Company X recently gave her an extra dressing room for her toddlers to play in so she could nap in peace and quiet. What a marvelous toy, thinks the other one and upon returning to the privacy of his hotel room upstairs, shoots off an email to his manager asking that this be added to his own future contracts.
And so the world spins round and round and we become more petty and more disagreeable until at some point someone completely loses it (me, for example?) and fires off an angry email not to the manager but to the singer himself.What I would have written to him (but will say here instead) is that one need only pop one's head into one of the overcrowded chorus dressing rooms to understand how petty, selfish and idiotic this notion is. When you see those kids -- so hopeful, so hard-working and committed -- all crammed together like sardines, leaning over each other to get to a box of kleenex, then you know what true commitment is. Ugh!
But thank God for blogs. Thanks to you all, I don't have to send that angry email. I can just vent here. In the supportive comfort of this loving community of peers.
But boy am I fuming!