Training to be an opera singer is expensive. Also, I’m fairly sure we’ve been blacklisted by about 90% of sash window repair people in Melbourne. Madame Verre is the best in the business, having trained generations of successful opera stars, and just to be accepted into her school…well, it was a dream come true. Graduating from here practically guarantees that you’re going to be an international star.
No one mentioned how hard it would be, however, far more than I was expecting. There are thirty levels of training, and you have to progress through them all by practising eight hours a day. Slack off and Madame will smack you with a beech rod before making you sing interval scales for a week. And nobody likes interval scales.
And after all that, there’s the final step of every each level of training, which is shattering a window with nothing but your chosen aria. Thirty arias equals thirty windows broken, and Madame makes us pay for them. Window repair, every single time. You’d think with how expensive the tuition is she’d be a bit more forgiving, but this is Madame Verre’s Operatic Excellence Academy. You do what you’re told, even if it involves breaking perfectly good glass. I’m up to level eleven, and by this time I’m starting to become slightly ashamed every time I have to call in the window replacement people. I’m pretty sure they know our number just by looking, because they always know exactly what we need when I call.
And Madame just had to have the most expensive, ornate sash windows all around the place, the most expensive to replace. Whatever small satisfaction I get from seeing the glass shatter from my very own high notes has steadily faded. By level thirty I’ll probably be blowing out every pane in the place and feel nothing. Yep, whatever Melbourne window replacement and repair place will have us, on the double please. Madame Verre is at it again.
-Florence