Opera Idol? Yesterday marked the preliminary auditions for the first annual Opera Idol competition run by the Lakes Region Opera Company. It was quite an experience. There was no Simon telling me that my Italian was horrible or that I should never sing again, just a normal panel of judges.

We had to send in a list of 4 arias that we would be singing from in the competition and when I got there, I thought the judges were going to pick the one aria I would sing from that list. Apparently that was a misprint on the website and I was allowed to choose. I decided to sing "Che Gelida Manina" since I have had quite a bit of practice with that lately. The other 3 I had are "Addio Fiorito Asil" from Madama Butterfly, "Una Furtiva Lagrima" from L'Elisir d'Amore and the 131st Psalm from Hine's I Am The Way.

I sang and it went well. It went so well in fact that later, when the news team showed up, the judges came and found me so that I could sing again for the news. So last night I was on the New Hampshire news channel 9 singing a nice high C.

Overall it was a very good day. One of the judges gave me something to really think about over the next year and all of the judges were very complimentary about my singing. Just as I was about to leave, one of the people staffing the event came and told me that I sang really well and she enjoyed it. She enjoyed it so much that she decided to tell me that I had made it into the semi-finals. So, I have to go warm up for them because at 3:25 today I will be trying to get into the finals tomorrow.

- Gregory - ¶ 8:54 AM