All in all, I was happy about how it went. I sang well, I acted well, and I had a ball. I did make one huge gaffe which simply would not happen in a professional performance: I was reading along with the script offstage, so when I came on for one scene I had my glasses on! Of course in a professional performance there is someone in the wings who checks you before you go on stage, so something like this would not happen.
Eight of the 13 people I invited showed up, and they all enjoyed it. My sense is that the producer was lukewarm about it. I don't know what that means. There are some people who only make critical suggestions and don't pay compliments, so maybe she is one of them. That is ok. I just hope I can sing with her again. What she said was that it needed "tweaking" (not a surprise! we only had two runthroughs and this is the first time I did anything with staging that had to be memorized in 35 years). She mentioned that I had to stay in character when came on and off the stage, which was a useful piece of feedback. The problem is that I do these things so infrequently that I don't have a chance to tweak or refine anything really. She did compliment me on having memorized all that music, and implied that there would be a "next time" for this piece.
Next up: she is producing a concert for Hispanic Heritage month, so I am hoping I can sing two Manuel Garcia songs that inspired the Habanera. I also hope I can sing "Erfreute Zeit" as a summer anthem. And I keep hearing from the filmmaker intermittently about singing the Bach aria in her film, but she seems not to understand that she can't just give me a week's notice. If nothing else, I will need to reserve an accompanist and their schedules really fill up.
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