Cattle Call!

Well, it happened. I sang for People yesterday. Luckily it was totally unplanned and a friendly crowd so there were no pre-singing nerves or jitters.

What happened was, the mother of one of our friends is getting surgery this coming week to get a mass removed. She is freaking out, naturally, that it might be malignant. She thinks of all of her son's friends as her "children," so she decided to have all of us over. She's your typical overly-dramatic Italian mother so, although we were all happy to go, there was this sense of, "You all have to come see me b/c it could be the last time..." Catholic/mother/Jewish (for some of us) guilt surrounding the invitation. However, it was a nice evening. At one point one of our friends pulled out his very beautiful tenor ukulele and started singing Eddie Arnold songs, which our friend's mother happens to love. I can't explain how surreal it was as we sat there singing Cattle Call, complete with the yodeling. (Go ahead, click on the link!!) And were weren't even drinking that much. Certainly not enough to break into yodeling. I joked that I could sing in Italian for her but it would have to be opera, and she was totally into it. Said she loved that scene in Moonstruck when they played that song from "that opera where the girl dies of TB," that it always makes her cry. So since she was already weepy from the Eddie Arnold, we started with sad and I sang, a capella, Lasciatemi Morire. Then I did Una Donna a quindicci anni, again with no music. I have the instrumentals on my iPod so I gave a listen to get the right starting note. I had been practicing Una Donna over the past few weeks and I really got into the character, without (I hope) compromising my singing technique. I mean, I'm sure my teacher or any other professional singer could have pointed out ways to improve... but I digress... So I explained each piece beforehand, including the opera, the context and the gist of the song. And of course I know I can sing better than I did - it was so on the spot - but I only got nervous a little partway through Lasciatemi, for some reason. Everyone applauded and hooted and were all excited - it was weird. All I could think was, "If you think I'm so good, then you obviously haven't heard real opera singers..." I mean, I was ok, like, I'm not embarrassed, which is something, but I know I can do better. Having the music would have helped. I think much of their reaction was due to the surprise factor - I've known this group of friends for like 15 years and none of them knew I had it in me. Plus the Italian - the guy who sang with the uke told me that he doesn't believe he could ever learn "all those words" in another language. My friend's mom is Italian and told me she could understand all the lyrics, which was cool. In true dramatic Italian mother style, she was just gushing about "a gift, a beautiful gift," but then she said I had to hear this singer, Paul Potts, he won a competition and he's the best opera singer ever. Amazing how hearing that can change your view of someone's praise. I mean he's not bad, but... it's obvious to me at least that he's not a professional. He must have a great deal of charisma as he has somehow charmed so many people. So then of course I played some Juan Diego for her. At first she said, "Oh, Paul Potts is as good as this guy..." but as she listened more it was obvious that she changed her mind. Nothing against Paul Potts - but he's no Juan Diego Florez.