The Meaning of Redundancy for Opera Choristers - an investigation of musical identity in the context of job loss

This study looks at the impact of job loss for seven professional opera choristers. The individual aspects of such change are not always addressed by traditional methodologies. Motivated by these concerns, this study takes an idiographic approach using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). IPA is concerned with the subjective meanings that people ascribe to experiences, but also recognises the active role of the researcher in gaining access to that window of experience. Three main themes emerged from the data analysis but, for the purpose of this presentation, only one theme will be discussed which is ‘Issues of Identity’. This theme looks at the differing levels of importance assigned by the participants to the singing and performing aspects of their work. It also investigates the effect that these varying priorities have on an identity construction when adapting to job loss. Analysis showed that some singers experienced redundancy as a positive change and a chance to develop aspects of the ‘self’ that were not possible in a professional community. Others found difficulty in dealing with the lack of continuity in their identity that was enforced by loss of work