Day Seven - Cincinnati May Festival

After all the rehearsing, it was about time for a concert. We were joined by the May Festival Youth Chorus for Mozart's Requiem.

Just prior to going on stage, it was also time for service awards. The two big boxes were for a soprano and a tenor who had each achieved 35 years of service in the chorus. The little boxes were service pins for those have served 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and there were also 30 year awards.

I received my 25 year pin (a small gold pin with the festival's logo set with an emerald) two years ago. I'm very proud of it, needless to say.

The hall was filled with festive concertgoers, and it was fun, as usual, to watch the tuxedo-and-fancy-dress-crowd come down the Music Hall aisles. They're not as over the top as they were back in the early 80's when I first joined the chorus, but some people still dress up and it's a nice thing to see.

I don't have much to report about the concert, except that it went extremely well, and both reviewers loved the concert.

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 Four - Cincinnati May Festival

No photos today. The rehearsal was a shorter one, although pretty intense.

The youth chorus joined us on stage for the first orchestra run-through of the Mozart Requiem. We ran it, with only a couple of repeats. Conlon wanted to move on the second half of the program, with Patti LuPone's stuff -- Kurt Weill's Seven Deadly Sins.

As Conlon told us the other night, her manager won't permit anyone to be in the hall while she's rehearsing, which is really irritating. Shades of Kathleen Battle! I have very little patience with divas.

After all, WE (the festival) are her employers and she is a GUEST performer at OUR festival. To not be permitted to see her performance in rehearsal is insulting. Despite Conlon's promise that we can see the real performance (as opposed to the rehearsal), we've been told that is not possible, as there is no time to get us from the hall at intermission in time to warm up and get on stage for the second half of the evening.

Conlon says he's working on her, but I doubt that we'll see her. I'll have to ask someone who was in the audience to find out how it went.

Grrr.

After the Mozart the Youth Chorus had a quick meeting in a large dressing room about their schedule for the rest of the festival, the Chamber Choir went into the rehearsal hall to work on Sunday's concert stuff, and everybody else went home -- and it was only 8:00 pm (we started at six).

We went through most of the Brahms Zigeunerlieder, finishing at 9:30.

It's good to have the extra half hour.

And, with a tip of the hat to Mr. Pepys, so to bed.