A tale of two tenors

First of all, it's only polite to introduce myself.  My name is Charles Edward Fluffington Penguin, and I love music, which is why I'm wearing the headphones in the photograph.  I live with a cuddly human and three cats, and they all have very interesting personalities.  Cuddly Human also loves music, which is very fortunate, and she has a number of friends who are either professional or semi-professional musicians.  She herself is an amateur singer, but she says I'm not allowed to tell you what I think of her singing because I may be biased.  The best thing of all is that she goes to quite a lot of concerts, and very often she takes me along.  I hide in her bag so that the box office people don't have to worry about whether or not I need a ticket; she says they're not used to penguins.  A shame, but there you go.

As you can see, I'm a pretty cheerful little bird, but the one thing that does make me rather sad is the fact that I'm no good at making music myself.  In particular, penguins can't sing.  No, really, not a note.  It just comes out as this terrible squawk, so I don't bother trying any more.  Still, I can dream, and one day I asked Cuddly Human what it was like to be a professional singer.  Of course she isn't one herself, but I thought she might know enough of them to be able to tell me.

So she reminded me about two of her friends, both professional tenor soloists.  She says she would rather I didn't use their real names, so I'll call them Song Cycle and Masterchef.  Song Cycle is very cheerful and upbeat, just like me, and he really loves his work.  He does find all the travelling a little bit too much at times, but all the other things make up for that.  He enjoys most of the music he has to sing, he gets to work with a lot of interesting people, and he visits all sorts of interesting places, even if sometimes he doesn't quite get enough time to see them properly.

Now a little while ago, Song Cycle was out of the country singing with a prestigious European ensemble, and one morning at the beginning of the tour Masterchef started grumbling online.  First of all he grumbled about the fact that it was morning.  Then he grumbled about the transport problems he was having.  Then he grumbled about the weather.  Somewhere during the course of this tale of woe, he happened to mention his destination, and this made Cuddly Human very interested because she knew that was where Song Cycle was at the moment.  So she checked the ensemble's website, and there was Masterchef, listed as the second tenor soloist.  She told me that if she ever got to be good enough to sing as a soloist with that lot, she'd be squeeing all the way there, transport problems or not!

So I have to conclude that being a professional singer is what you make of it, and I can offer only one small nugget of advice to anyone who is considering such a career:

Don't be a penguin.