Andrew and his partner Chelsea Lehnea on stage during a performance of "La Bohème" in Florida. His journey has taken him from opera stages to car lots, where he is trying to revive his career.
Image: Supplied
Maggie Penman
Andrew Hiers was down on his luck. A classically trained opera singer, he didn’t have a steady singing gig for months. In January, the day after he turned 38, he started a job as a car salesman at a dealership near his home in Cocoa, Florida.
“It did feel like I was kind of waving the white flag on my career when I made the decision to do this,” Hiers said.
He said he hoped to make some money and maybe move to a bigger city with more singing opportunities. But selling cars was harder than he imagined, and he wanted something to set him apart from his more experienced colleagues.
So he started making videos of himself performing robust opera arias while standing outside on a car lot, wearing his name tag. He composed lyrics to describe the cars he was selling and put the videos on TikTok and Instagram.
Hiers first posted a video about a used Corvette on February 21, set to the music of an aria he called the Free Bird of opera - Nessun Dorma, from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot.
He sang:
“This used Corvette
It was a dream to drive
It can be yours
For the small price”
A caption shows the $70K (R1 176 965) price tag.
Come here now
Ask for Andrew."
The video quickly amassed more than a million views on TikTok and tens of thousands more on Instagram.
Andrew Hiers backstage before a performance of "Falstaff" in Boulder, Colorado.
Image: Supplied
Hiers is a bass-baritone with a deep, rich voice that can hit notes sounding impossibly low - and impossibly high.
In another video, Hiers stands in front of a cherry red Camaro, making sweeping gestures and singing lyrics that include:
"Muscle car that goes fast
Act now! It will not last
Drive it fast or even drive it slow
You’ll turn heads where’re you go
Why wait? Give in!
En garde, my friend!
This Camaro’s the dream ride for you
Just be sure to ask for Andrew."
He posted a follow up to the Corvette video when the car was sold, sadly not by him, singing a melancholy-sounding aria called Una Furtiva Lagrima - “a furtive tear”.
“So many people were very upset that I couldn’t sell it,” Hiers said. “I’m like, guys, this was supposed to be funny.”
The videos have resonated far and wide in a way that has surprised and delighted Hiers, who really was just hoping to sell some cars. Whether they will be effective at their original aim remains to be seen - Hiers has only sold one car since he started the job a little over a month ago.
A recent photo of Hiers while visiting Versailles in France.
Image: Supplied
“I did just set up an appointment for a dad who wants to have his son get his first car from me because he saw someone posted the video,” Hiers said.
His manager has been amused by the videos.
“It just shows how powerful social media can be if you know how to use it,” said Justin Jarek, general manager at Boniface Hiers Chrysler Dodge Jeep (no relation to Andrew Hiers).
The job hasn’t exactly been a route to quick money for Hiers, but he said he is gaining insights that will help him in his singing career.
“You have to market yourself as a salesman. And you have to market yourself as an opera singer,” Hiers said.
As he looks back on his opera journey, he said his weakness has been not advocating more for himself, especially with casting directors. “I want to get better at that,” he said.
Hiers first started singing in church choir as a kid growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida. In middle school a choir director recognised his talents and started giving him solos. Hiers studied singing at Florida State University and went on to earn a master’s degree in voice performance at Binghamton University.
His career started to take off, with a couple of higher-profile gigs and contracts. He sang at the Northern Lights Music Festival in Minnesota and was preparing to spend two months singing in Europe when, at 30, he was diagnosed with cancer. He moved home to Florida for surgery and chemo.
“That’s what really took me out. It took me a while to rebuild my voice,” Hiers said.
He worked with a voice coach, Manny Perez, who helped him recover his voice. Perez said Hiers is an immensely talented performer.
“He’s so funny on stage,” Perez said. “When he’s on stage, you look at him.”
Hiers was building his career back when the pandemic hit and brought another interruption.
“It’s a tough business going through a tough time,” Perez said. “Many singers do give up because it’s so hard. But I don’t think he’s going to. I mean, he’s putting his singing in car sales.”
In recent years, Hiers performed with regional opera companies in Florida, but in January he decided to get a non-singing job for a little while.
“I’ve been trying to remind myself, we don’t stop being artists just because we’re not making art full-time,” Hiers said.
He said he thinks his singing car salesman videos have resonated widely because the world is full of people who pause or give up careers in the arts because they can’t support themselves. These cheeky videos became a creative outlet.
Hiers’s longtime partner Chelsea Lehnea, who is also a singer, said she hopes the success of his videos will introduce more people to opera and perhaps encourage them to go see a performance.
“Please come,” she said. “When you go in and you experience what that art form is live, and you see the relationships with the characters, you realise very quickly how human it is.”
She knows many people think opera is inaccessible.
“As someone who is from a trailer park in Tennessee and trying to be an operatic star, there’s room for all of us,” Lehnea said.
Hiers is now getting more attention for his singing on social media than he ever did when he performed in operas on stage. He said it’s surreal to be getting so much acclaim just after he decided to pivot away from singing.
"It’s giving me new hope,” he said.