Another Monday Night of OGR Rehearsal

We worked on a lot of Act 2 of Pagliacci last night. Since there was much to go over, we didn’t have a chance to review Act 1. There was a point where Maestro Davis divided the chorus up into men and women to work separately on our parts leaving the women in the care of his assistant, Bill Bokhout, as he took the men into a side room of the church. It is very helpful to have that intrinsic focus on our words and music that we may have missed if we are looking at 4 parts all at once. Robert Byrens, our piano virtuoso, also helps with correcting our Italian and we do need a lot of help. There are times when Robert stands up from his bench and says “We need to fix something here…” because our pronunciation is beyond recognizable. All together I feel it was a very effective evening with our time well spent on delving deep into the score.

There were a few announcements: on a sad note, Henry Jansma who was a long-time Opera Grand Rapids supporter and supernumerary died after collapsing at his home back in December; and on a happy note, Ashley and Art Wallace (both members of the OGR Pagliacci chorus) are pregnant.