As you probably didn’t know, today is my blog’s six month anniversary.  I’ve been publishing one book review a day for half a year now, give or take a few reviews because of power outages and personal issues.  So how am I going to celebrate yet another great milestone?

How about a giveaway?

YA author Michelle Hansen, who wrote the amazing self-published novel Painted Blind (which I had no idea was self-published until she mentioned it because it was of such professional quality), has offered to help me with this first giveaway.  She has generously offered to ship to my two contest winners a prize pack each that includes a postcard, a bookmark, a calendar and a coupon on Smashwords for a copy of her novel.  I would quite honestly recommend Painted Blind to anyone who loves amazing fantasy.

That said, let’s get to the contest!  Part One of this contest involves correctly guessing a question on one of my favourite interests: opera.  You will have one week to post your guess in the comments below and whoever guesses the answer first wins.  If no one guesses it, I’ll ask a different opera-related question.  After Part One is over, Part Two will begin and run for a week in which you may guess the answer to another question, this time book-related.  If no one guesses it within the time-frame, I’ll ask a different question and so on.  That said, here’s my first question:

What is my favourite operatic aria?

Here are your hints:

• It is sung in Italian
• Many attempt to sing it, but there is only one king or queen of this highly emotional aria
• When I hear my favourite version, I have to hold back the waterworks because the lyrics in Italian are so beautiful.  In English this aria would  sound absolutely stupid.

So go on and use Google like you’ve never used it before!  You may only guess once and the first person to guess correctly will win the contest.  I will announce the winner of Part One at 12:00am local time on Friday, July 20.

Note: I have told Michelle Hansen herself the answer so she knows I’m being honest.  And no, she will not tell you the answer.

UPDATE: A great place to look would be Wikipedia, especially this page.  *Hint, hint*