¡¡Raul appears to be utterly at ease as he prepares to make his stage entrance in the middle of the first act of Dracula. I have time for one more question: "Is the acting life everything you hoped it would be?"

WESTSIDER SHERRILL MILNES

Leading American pianist

Four months out of the year, Short takes to the road, giving concerts from Los Angeles to Paris, often as soloist with major orchestras. The hottest and coldest months of the year — January and August — he sets aside for vacation, sometimes taking a house in the south of France, since he is well versed in the French language and is constantly seeking to expand his knowledge of gourmet cooking.

A: It's longer than I thought it would be. As soon as I get you out I'm going to deliver pages 1374 to 1500 to Doubleday. I'm hoping to get it finished by the end of the year … . It will probably be in two volumes — which is unreasonable, considering that I've led a very quiet life and not much has happened to me. I guess the only thing is that I tend to go on and on when I'm on my favorite subject.

She has made numerous opera recordings, including the role of Susan B. Anthony in Virgil Thompson's The Mother of Us All and Maddalena in Rigoletto. "I don't ever listen to my recordings," she says when asked to name her favorite. "I listen to the playbacks, when I can do something about it. But I don't listen to recordings afterwards because there's nothing that I can do about it, and I know I'm going to find a million things that I don't like."