Miss Dairy Baby, 1974

Sacramento Bee's Bob Sylva wrote up a really nice profile about everyone's favorite ballerina, Jennifer Lin, in the Sunday, October 8th issue. Jennifer, of course, was modest about the attention: "Does it make me sound like a dork?", was all she asked. Instead, she was worried that a lot of Sacramento Opera information didn't make it into the article. But a human interest story wouldn't - and shouldn't - focus too much just on an institution. Instead, it's nice to know that she's there, doing her part to promote good singing and theater in Sacramento:

Jennifer Lin is 32 years old. She is tall, slim, intelligent, alarmingly funny. Verbally adroit. And gifted. She plays the piano and violin. She knows all about art and literature. She can sing. She practices yoga and dances ballet. An amateur motorist, she has managed to negotiate the city's freeways unbruised in her Volkswagen Passat station wagon.

Lin is director of marketing and audience development for the Sacramento Opera. Which is to say she beats the timpani and sells tickets. She has been in Sacramento for two years. And has performed her job with some inventiveness. Still, in an era of file sharing and acoustic mayhem, opera has a demographic problem. Lin is probably half the age of her average patron.

"The stereotype of a large woman wearing horns on her head, singing forever and ever," says Lin. "There are preconceptions about opera. But it encompasses all art forms. It has a theatrical element. It's the whole package -- the lights, the stage, the actors, the passion and the tragedy."

Then, turning delightfully morbid, she notes, "Opera always has a death in the end."

And if Lin were to sing a role, what role would it be? "Let's see," she grins, considering. "Would I want to die -- or just suffer?" Thinking of her fate more, she mentions Puccini's "La Bohème" and sighs, "I think the role of Mimi is beautiful and tragic at the same time. But I don't have tuberculosis."

...Tickets for November's "Aida" are on sale. Jennifer Lin forgot to mention that.