One for my baby...

It's quarter to three, there's no one in the place except you and me.......

Blame it on the Prednisone I've been taking to help with a terrible bout of sinusitis and bronchitis I've been suffering with these past days, but as much as the drug helps me breathe easier, it also wakes me up at these weird hours with all sorts of brilliant thoughts racing through my head!

One should never write about a subject about which one knows absolutely nothing, so, of course, that is exactly what I am about to do.

I was watching women's figure skating from the Olympics last night. The first skater I saw was a 17 year-old American woman who skated what, to me and to the commentators, looked like an inspired, wonderful, artistic, involved performance. She was followed by a young woman in a Cleopatra costume (and we all know how much Cleo enjoyed figure skating up and down the Nile) who skated a lumpy, unimaginative program with lots of slow, heavy jumps and twiddles. More jumps than the first skater.

Guess what? The lumpy jumps and the inartistic twiddles came in ahead of the artistic performance.

To my eye, if you do any of these things and don't fall on your butt, you are remarkable.

After that, it's got to be what is artistic and emotional and totally involved. There is now one judge at these competitions whose only job, apparently, is to look at a slow motion film of whomever has just skated, analyse exactly where their foot landed, how much it was turned, and give merits or demerits accordingly. This, on top of the fact that in the 'free program', the skaters now have a number of 'required' moves they must make. It's like telling Ella, 'Go right ahead and scat this piece, but include this and this and this, or we don't want to hear you do it!'

In trying to equate this kind of judging to singing, we would have to insert little cameras in the throats of the singers so that one judge could watch the vocal cords in slow motion as they sing each note and make a judgement on whether it's thumbs up or thumbs down for the singer. Bring on the lions!

Have I confused you enough by now?

Birgit Nilsson used to say that all Scandinavian singers sing a little sharp. What a shame. That would eliminate Nicolai Gedda, Kirsten Flagstad, Jussi Björling, and probably Jenny Lind, at very least from the running, to say nothing of Birgit herself. We all know how no one liked to her her Elektra because it sat on the top edge of the pitch rather than some other boring place. I heard her Elektra many times and trust me, I didn't mind it one bit! I also heard all the other Nords I just mentioned (with the exception of Jenny. Even I am not that old!) What an exciting bunch!

Lily Pons used to have many of her coloratura arias transposed up a half step for more brilliance. At the point in the Met broadcast when this aria was sung (remember, I was at home in Battle Creek listening to this on the radio in those days, usually reclining on the davenport, as we called those things in Michigan), Milton Cross would quietly announce, 'And Miss Pons is singing this aria up a half step!!' Lily, at this point, would sing sol do, to some very high note (I guess it would be a very higher note), come in slightly flat, and with good luck (sometimes), raise it up to pitch before she got off the note to a standing ovation.

Now I ask you.

Listening to Maria Callas sing some of her coloratura roles was often equated by critics to watching an aerialist perform without a net. 'Will she make it or won't she?' With Maria, it was always a fifty-fifty proposition.

With skating, the 'up-close, slow motion judge', apparently watches the camera after the fact at the point where the skater's foot landed after a major jump. It they are an inch off where the judge thinks they should have landed, they get a demerit. If their foot didn't turn to an exact point, they get a demerit. I guess they must get demerits for falling on their butts, too. That, at least I understand. And so should singers!

Now I am all for as close to perfection as we poor humans can possibly come both as skaters and singers. But when we leave artistry, technique, and overall beauty out of the equation and count jumps and lumps, we have tossed out the baby with the bath water.

Neither the young American nor the lumpy Cleopatra won a medal last night, but the fact that dull and lumpy comes in ahead of brilliant and spectacular gives me pause.

Am I making any sense at all? It is after all, 4:00 a.m.