Day Six - Cincinnati May Festival

Day Six (Thursday) was the dress rehearsal for Friday’s opening night. Both choruses (youth and adult) assembled on a crowded stage (there were over 200 of us in total) and Conlon ran through the entire Mozart Requiem without stopping – which may be a first in the 27 festivals I’ve sung in). He apparently was pleased.

Apparently Patti LuPone “graciously” acquiesced to let us sit in on her rehearsal after all. Bob told us that we could go out into the hall and listen, but that “I’ll be backstage, and we have a lot of work to do.”

I went out into the hall. LuPone’s concert opening, Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins, was a neat performance and I really liked the music. I’m not totally certain that her range was suitable for the piece, but it was still entertaining. The male quartet was terrific (Rodrick Dixon, John Aler, Jeremy Kelly, and James Creswell,), performing with great wit and style.

After that was over, I went back into the freezing rehearsal hall (it felt like a refrigerator back there) where a portion of the chamber choir was working on the Vaughan Williams piece for Sunday’s Basilica concert. It still needs work. We will assemble early on Sunday afternoon to clean up some errant bass notes here and there and it will be fine by concert time.

Day Five - Cincinnati May Festival

Wednesday was the first orchestra rehearsal of Luisa Miller. It was pretty uneventful. Conlon was considerate enough to do the choral parts first,so we were done very quickly.

The soloists for the production are excellent. They are Annalisa Raspagliosi, Stefano Secco, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Rodrick Dixon (one of the “Three Mo’ Tenors), James Creswell, Stephen Powell and Catherine Keen. Secco and Raspagliosi are marvelous together. Even though I’m no fan of opera, I love hearing this bunch sing. They are having a good time, and it shows.

When the soloists were introduced to the orchestra and chorus, everyone applauded the heroes and hissed or booed the villains. It was fun.

The only worthy-of-note Bob-ism of the night was a comment during the warm up before we went on stage. A soprano started a coughing fit, and was told, “No, we’re doing La Boheme tomorrow night. Tonight is Luisa Miller.”

After the orchestra rehearsal, we retired to the rehearsal room and worked on Mendelssohn’s Die Erste Walpurgisnacht. I think that’s all we did – but I’m beginning to get a little loopy from lack of sleep (my cat disappeared for 24 hours, and I was getting up every hour or so to look for her), so I’m not really sure.