The following restaurants participate in the Capitol City Opera’s Dinner and a Diva series of concerts.

• Petite Auberge.
• South of France.
• The Roasted Garlic.

The newest venue is The Roasted Garlic, and if you want to find out what the hell I’m all about when I blabber on about singing, then on Tuesday, September 28 of the upcoming month you can come see me participating in an Italian Opera Gala with some of Atlanta’s finest locally-based opera singers. I’ll be singing arias from Puccini’s greatest operas-Tosca, La Boheme, and Turandot (the aria Nessun Dorma-Pavarotti actually put this one on the pop charts briefly in Europe.), and maybe an ensemble or two from Verdi and Puccini’s greatest hits as well.

To find out whether you need reservations or not, costs, click on any of the links I’ve given you above, including Capitol City Opera-they have a link to the Dinner With a Diva series which gives performance dates, you name it. The restaurant links either bring you to the restaurant’s website or a site with it’s info-phone numbers, etc.

So far I’ve only had the pleasure of singing at Petite Auberge, and I can tell you the food there is always surpassingly good. The most recent performance I had a steak oskar that was so tender and succulent I could cut it with the side of my fork.

I’m promoting this here in part because I truly believe it’s a really good way to get acquainted with opera up close and personal, and I am automatically predisposed to like these places for taking the chance-opera can be an acquired taste. If you’re accustomed to singers in the genre sometimes called “alternative classical”-Josh Groban, Charlotte Church, even-in my opinion-Andrea Bocelli, then hearing opera singers who have truly developed their voices to be heard unaided over 80-piece orchestras can be a very different experience. Some people find it thrilling, others are unnerved. I tend to believe for most it’s the former rather than the latter.

For my fellow metrobloggers, if you’re so inclined, it’d be a good way to say hi before we even have an official meetup-I’ll keep everyone posted as to when the next one after the 28th comes-I think it will be October 19th at Petite Auberge, and it looks like it will be all German opera-Wagner, etc. Since I’m a heldentenor-german for heroic tenor, american for “that’s the loudest damn tenor I’ve ever heard,” it looks like I’ll definitely be in on that one, too.

I promote it also because, well, why lie? I’m often performing there. It’s really usually Dinner and a Diva and a Divo.

And I whip it, I whip it good.