Turkey, unlike chicken, has very elegant characteristics. It has more of a cache than chicken. Turkey is a delicacy, so it should be presented in such a way. ↗
The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test. ↗
No matter what the character is, I just say to myself 'If I, Melissa George, was in that situation, how would I react?' and once you do that you can just go for it, and hopefully the performance comes through. ↗
It's necessary to track characters all the way through an opera. If you're dealing with more than one or two characters, it's very easy to forget that the others have lives of their own that feed into the story. ↗