I went to the bank today. The bank in Uptown, which is deceptively located to the south of me. And on my way back to the train I saw a Borders Bookstore I'd passed a million times on my way downtown...the REAL downtown, not the fake downtown that's really Uptown but located south of here. Well, since I had the day off, and I always meant to go to the store anyway, I decided to go to the store...anyway.
I found a new non-fiction book called "Fortissimo" that mentions a friend of mine, Stacey Tappan, by name. The book is about The Lyric Opera's Young Artist Program. Stacey is a soprano and a graduate of the program. (Class of 2003, GO RHINEMAIDENS!) So I sat down and skimmed the book looking for her. I found a paragraph where someone is using her as an example of a performer who is now a much more comfortable and commanding acting presence than she was when she entered the program.
I'm not sure that's the compliment you want in opera. "For a singer, you're not a bad actor." But what about my SINGING? "You're great actor...I gotta go!"
I'll never forget what Pavoratti said to her when he met her, "I thought you were taller!"
Well, no matter what a published author and the world's most famous tenor think, she a terrific singer. Check her out. http://staceytappan.com/audio.html
I also noticed that they had the "Sci-Fi/Fantasy" section of the bookstore right next to the "Romance" section. That's just cruel. Why would you put the two most socailly awkward type of readers TOGETHER in the same aisle. It's like some cruel science experiment. It's like spiking the punch at the chess club mixer! Just wrong!
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I'm not so insulted that he said I improved from where I was when I came to the program; I did. Everyone who's any good improves. And not every singer is a good actor, so that's pretty cool too.
He also said several times in the book that he couldn't understand why I wasn't getting huge gigs and having a big famous career. This doesn't worry me quite as much as it bothered him. I'm not doing too badly (just being in LOCAA has already opened a lot of doors), and my career is growing little by little. It doesn't ever all happen at once; except if you become a "flavor of the month", and if you do suddenly get a big break, you have to have the skills to stay there. That's what I'm doing: developing those skills, so I'll be ready when opportunity knocks.
Bill Murray (not THAT Bill Murray), the guy who wrote the book, was a real sweetheart. I really liked him. And he said some really nice things about me and my colleagues in his book. He was an aspiring singer himself at one time, so he was very sympathetic to the all the stuff we have to go through on our way to a career in singing.
He died about a year ago, right after finishing the book. We'll all miss him.