Day Five - Cincinnati May Festival 2008

Wednesday night’s rehearsal began with the Zeisl Requiem Ebraico in the large Music Hall rehearsal room. Bob told us he was pleased with our rehearsal of The Opera-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named from the night before – for a first rehearsal. He made some suggestions for improvement when we have the dress rehearsal for the opera on Day Seven.

Then it was on to the stage for the Zeisl and Beethoven rehearsal. Conlon began by explaining a little about his commitment to music suppressed by the Nazis, and connected that effort to the performance of the Zeisl. Zeilsl left Austria for the US in the 1930s, so his music wasn’t suppressed, but this piece was composed as a memorial to his father and others who died in Nazi concentration camps.

Zeisl’s daughter Barbara married the son of Arnold Schoenberg, and their son, I think (this is where it got confusing) married someone from Cincinnati. The family tree also includes the California judge who prosecuted O.J. Simpson in the civil trial (Judge Ito was the judge in the criminal trial). At any rate, some of these people will be in the audience on Saturday night.

A surprising addition (since the score doesn’t call for it) was the children’s chorus who sang the soprano part for the last few bars

We finished the rehearsal with the last movement of the Beethoven Ninth, and left the hall at 10:00 pm.

A humorous episode kept the chorus giggling wildly during much of the rehearsal. Considering the goings-on of the previous four days with the “Bucket O’Dipthongs” and all the underwear that was draped all over it, imagine our amazement when one of the soloists (who shall remain nameless) stood up to sing – with her thong underwear very obvious, since her outer garments were in close proximity, shall we say, to her undergarments. The jokes were fast and furious:

“She’s a thongstress.”

“Thing, thing a thong.”

“I, for one, will NOT volunteer to play the role of the ***** soloist during the alto skit this year.”

“She cracks me up.”

“Obviously a thongbird.”

“Isn’t this a lot like a bad auto accident? You can’t stop looking.”

And so on.

We probably should have been ashamed of our obvious glee about the situation, but we couldn’t stop ourselves. We remembered that she had been similarly attired during rehearsals at a previous May Festival.

My camera’s battery had died prior to this episode, so there are no photos. If she repeats the performance for the Saturday morning rehearsal, I may oblige the readers of this blog with a photo – despite the fact that it probably will be considered as extremely tasteless.

I hope to include some short video of the orchestra rehearsal in a later posting.