Not many singers are lucky enough to get to work on music by Fats Waller and Handel at the same time.(soprano Jennifer Aylmer)(Interview)

Not many singers are lucky enough to get to work on music by Fats Waller and Handel at the same time. But that's what JENNIFER AYLMER was doing when I spoke with her in February. The Waller was for a program of music by Waller and Dorothy Fields given by the New York Festival of Song on February 16. (This song series continues to go from strength to strength, driven by the imaginative programming of STEVEN BLIER. On April 20, NYFOS offers "The Last Time I Saw Paris," featuring works of Roussel, Auric, Milhaud and others.)

Aylmer's latest Handel venture is Orlando, at New York City Opera, opposite BEJUN MEHTA, who recently scored a big success in the Met's Rodelinda. "I'm a shepherdess," she says. "Every Handel opera needs to have a shepherdess." She finds part of the public's ongoing fascination with Handel operas comes from "wanting to know where more modern opera comes from, where the structure of an aria came from. I like to approach Handel like I'm singing jazz, because once you go to Handel, you're free to embellish the harmonies as you wish. It's like contemporary music--you get the structure of the thing, and you can embellish it. I ...