Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Pagliacci

Pagliacci

Who doesn’t enjoy a crazy, murderous clown? I have always thought clowns were a bit creepy, so this show ought to reinforce my opinion. I have searched YouTube for performances of Vesti la giubba and my favorite is a Coke commercial where a little boy is watching from backstage and walks out to hand Canio a Coke to make him feel better. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAUDHxDYMMo) You have to see it; it’s absolutely adorable!

We started music rehearsals for the chorus last Monday. There are 40 choristers and it is nice to have more people both for the voices and the camaraderie. We had about half this number in Cosi fan tutte, and not much to do in performance, so a lot of chorus members were bored during the long rehearsals the week of the show. In fact, we almost got in a lot of trouble when a baritone started a debauchery game of “Name that tune” which resulted in too much laughter in the theater while the principals were staging. It is always a good idea to keep the chorus busy or we will find trouble.

My music room is painted and put in order, but I need to sort through all my music and get it filed neatly by genre before I will be satisfied. For now I can rehearse my Pagliacci music and the concert pieces I will be playing on my flute at the end of January. I am still using a keyboard and may give up on the idea of a piano since they require a lot of care and I don’t have the resources to keep up with the never-ending tunings.

Now we have a break for the holidays and return to music rehearsals on January 4. I hope to have the music we worked on memorized by that night so I will be off to a good start. The Opera Grand Rapids office is closed from Christmas Eve until the 4th and that gives me a lot of time to work on my music room as well as my materials. As long as I don’t procrastinate, it ought to be a productive time.