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As our new reality materialized, the amazing ARS Board and volunteer committee members took action. Their foremost idea, with immediate implementation by fundraising chair Barbara Prescott, was to dedicate our spring fund drive as a Recorder Artists Relief Fund. (Seepage 5for an update) The ARS also decided it could offer online beginner recorder lessons, a frequent request. A pilot Zoom beginner lesson, hosted by Board member Jennifer Carpenter, filled up as soon as it was announced. We have expanded this project, adding August beginner sessions taught by Lisette Kielson and Anne Timberlake,with others to come.

Two weeks ago, a few days before the opening at the Metropolitan Opera of Mozart's \"Le Nozze di Figaro,\" [Lisette Oropesa] was asked to fill the role of Susanna, Figaro's bride, to replace the original artist who was too visibly pregnant for the part of a bride.

\"I thought, oh my God, they are going to see this opera about a woman killing her husband on her wedding night and going crazy. And then they are going to go to their son's wedding the day after. And they are going to go, 'Are you kidding? What are you getting into, Steven?'\" Oropesa, 29, said with a laugh. \"It's kind of like an elopement and everybody will be there,\" she joked during a phone call before \"[Lucia]\" opened in Phoenix last weekend. \"I love Arizona. I love the atmosphere. I love the attitudes of people. I think the elemental energy here is fantastic and it is unlike anywhere else in the entire world, and I just always feel happy here. Maybe it's all the sunshine.\" \"What makes the mad scene special is everything that builds up to it, everything should motivate. ... Lucia finally snapping and not being able to take it any more. But the thing is nobody else sees it coming. She comes down and everyone is in shock, just utter shock. 'How could this happen? She's the sweetest girl. We all saw her grow up; she's a darling.' Then all of a sudden she is a murderer and a psychopath.

Sometimes singers who are at home on the opera stage have trouble adjusting to the intimate requirements of a song recital.

  [Lisette Oropesa]'s tenacious musicianship was probably \"inherited,\" she says, from her Cuban family: Her grandfather was an amateur tenor, her mom was an opera soprano, her father was a guitarist and her younger sister plays piano. But the Louisiana-raised singer was surrounded by rich Southern cooking and little reason to exercise (\"I'll be damned if I'm going to run in 95-degree heat,\" she recalls with a laugh). But her Metropolitan Opera audition at age 21 convinced her to lose some of her 210 pounds. In December, she finished her first marathon, crossing the ticker tape alongside her husband. \"Now, I'm addicted to staying healthy,\" says Oropesa, who's also a vegan. \"I love to sing, but long-distance running is what I do to relieve the stress. I'm not competing for any prizes. It's purely to make myself a healthier person.\"

The soprano Lisette Oropesa has been charming in several Met assignments, an adorable Amore in Gluck's \"Orfeo ed Euridice\" and, most recently, an alert Miranda in \"The Enchanted Island,\" the company's Baroque pastiche.

During the approximate three-hour running time of the Metropolitan Opera's Shakespeare/Baroque pastiche \"The Enchanted Island,\" the character of Miranda utters the word \"wonderful\" 16 times.