Happy Birthday George Washington...

I'm glad to celebrate by not going to work today!

George Washington's Birthday is interesting in that it was widely celebrated as a folk-holiday before it was made a national holiday. People used to have "birthnight dances" and singings and such... it seems odd to me from the perspective of today that politicians would be celebrated as national heroes.... Because Presidents today are seen to be the primary representative of their political parties, there is always a rush to either deify or destroy them (which is why republicans always talk about Ronald Reagan as the greatest being to ever walk the earth, while trying to erase both Roosevelts and Kennedy from history.) So after all the bickering, most Americans love the presidency but hate the president.

As for the "Day of Opera" at the Cultural Center, it was a big success. If I told you not to come because we weren't performing all of Tartuffe, I was wrong-- this event was really really neat. If I'm not in it next year I plan to attend. Tartuffe, for it's part was very popluar.

As for me, I think I did the best singing I've ever done. However, I wasn't offered a myriad of A-house contracts on the spot. but I'm told "the important people" were there.... I did get a lot of very nice compliments, and I met a very nice composer.

And I learned something kind of interesting about character choices. When we first performed Tartuffe it was set historically. For the role, I used a sort of character voice-- this had to do with certain vowel choices and phrasing. When we set it in Texas-- this character voice didn't work anymore, so I started using more southern mannerisms and vowel sounds....

Here's what I learned-- a European-ish (read sophisticated, college educated and liberal) man getting angry and jumping up and down and yelling at his daughter, wife and maid is funny, because it's not threatening. In fact, the angrier he gets, the funnier it is, because everyone knows he isn't actually going to do anything about it. On the other hand A southern, American man jumping up and down and yelling at women conjures the trailer park, and makes people a little nervous. Everyone is thinking "oh my god, he's going to hurt that girl!!'. Indeed, when I exited in rage, I charged at a woman in the audience and she actually yelped at me in terror: "oh my god! I'm sorry!" It was a comedy, but she was honestly terrified of me!

The second time through, I played the character very charming at the start of the scene, and established that I loved my daughter. Then I played down the angry stuff. The result was that the audience laughed a lot more....

Anyway, it was a wonderful day. I've been something of an absentee boyfriend lately with rehearsals and such, and I got to spend the day with K... it was really nice.

PS- Happy birthday to "she who must not be named in this blog."