My Big Fat Italian-Scottish Life

I don't know exactly how much Scottish my mother has in her, but her maiden name is Scottish and her mother's maiden name is Scotch-Irish, so I guess there is a lot of Celtic in there among all the other mixtures that have made their way in.

My father was Italian, though, straight from the Old Country, brought over to the United States by his parents when he was three years old. So I guess that makes me Second Generation Italian on my father's side and gazillionth generation Northern European mixture (mostly Scottish) on my mother's side. My mother is into geneology, and she has traced her family back to the American Revolution.

My mother has joined the Daughters of the American Revolution, since she is eligible. I suppose I would be eligible, too, but I am not interested. I would never want to join the organization that wouldn't let Marian Anderson sing in Constitution Hall. I love history, but I HATE racism and snobbery.

It was very interesting for both families when my father and my mother decided to get married, My father's family were Italian Catholics and my mother's family were working-class WASP Protestants from a small town out West. But that is a subject for another journal entry.

I don't know why I am meandering about my family history. It just sort of popped into my mind.

What I really wanted to talk about was how my life has been going in the last couple of weeks.

I was supposed to sing an aria or two in a gala charity fundraiser on Wednesday night. My dentist was producing this as a 50th birthday celebration for herself, in lieu of a party. It was going to take place in the Tribeca Performing Arts Center, which would have been great. But when I called up a couple of days ahead of time to ask some last-minute questions I was told it had to be canceled because of technical problems. No details were given.

You would think I would have been really disappointed, and I was -- for my dentist, who I knew had put a lot into this. For myself, I was relieved, because I was going into this thing blind, not really knowing how it was going to come off and how it was going to turn out, with no opportunity ahead of time to test out the space and only a sketchy idea of what the program was going to be. So it was actually a load off my mind when I didn't have to do it, even though it probably would have been a fabulous event.

If my dentist reschedules this, I will ask if I can sing in it, but I will try to make sure next time that I know exactly what is happening, so there won't be surprises come performance time.

I should be used to surprises, though, after all the years I have been onstage!

Anyway, I have another performance coming up here in Brooklyn, New York next weekend, and that one should be fun. I will be doing the big duet from Act III of "Otello" with a very good tenor, and will also be singing the "Ave Maria" from the same opera.

Life goes on, and often in very interesting ways.

Italiansoprano