La Vie parisienne, Deuxième acte

Now for the performance...

What can I say? We kicked ass. Kathleen played beautifully, and I sang like a beast. That's all there is to it.

Oh - you need more detail? Okay - here goes.

We get back to the residence later that evening (Wednesday) and got there in time to wait for an hour just outside where they were having dinner (this was the last event of a long celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Marshall plan), and where we would sing in a minute. Long lines of servant-types going in and out with food and drinks tried to mke us nervous, but hah! We foiled them.

THEN - we get introduced by Connie Morella (U.S. Ambassador to OECD) and walk into this room -



Morella hypes us up, big-time, and Vivien (our great friend who set this up) talks about the songs we will sing. We then launch into "La vie en rose" and the song we were supposed to do "One Song." This one was really the whole point of the trip, and they had cards printed up for it, and everything. We were in great synch and I sang my heart out for this piece. It went over very well, I must say.

We were originally told that they MAY want one more after that, so we planned on a German operetta piece - Dein ist mein ganzes Herz. Great show-stopper. They definitely wanted more, so we launched into it and knocked it out of the freaking ballpark. It was great.

We leave the room on an absolute high. We did what we had come to do and we did it wonderfully, together - in a high-pressure situation. It was amazing.

THEN - we were taking a quick breather and looking to pack up, etc., when the U.S. Ambassador's assistant came out and said "The Ambassador wants more!"

This will remain one of the greatest moments of my life for a while, I think.

Unfortunately, of course - we hadn't prepared anything! We weren't sure we'd be able to do all three we'd put together, and now we had to perform some more opera arias picking relatively random things out of the book I happened to have to hand - in front of big-time state dept. people!

What fun.

Of course - we still kicked ass, and they gave us a standing ovation after we finished two more arias... but MAN was that harrowing. We didn't do AS good a job on the last two bits (I forgot some words, and we didn't stay together as well as we would if we had actually practiced them at all), but we still sounded solid... which under the circumstances is amazing, I think.

Then we went back to the hotel, got some food at out, and crashed like mad.

Oh yeah - did I mention that they were so impressed they asked us to come back the next day for a wine-tasting they were having at the residence? And that we were too cool to go?

Living the life, man...