"There's no blood YET..."

Soprano and alto sectional tonight. Spent it being introduced to Cavalleria Rusticana, which we're doing with Mark in April. Jamie told us the story. Apparently the tenor "interrupts the overture to sing a love song... to the WRONG GIRL!" Of course he dies in the end. This led me to wonder whether the eternal shortage of tenors is in fact caused by this tendency of theirs to get themselves killed by jealous rivals. Maybe that's a possible topic to investigate for my OU project this year :-)

The music's not that hard - or at least it wasn't when we were sight reading it without the words! There's one ridiculously high bit (goes up to a top Ab!) (well, strictly the alto part doesn't, but since it's identical to the soprano part except for a few random notes put down the octave, most of us are just singing the soprano part - it's actually easier to stay up there once we've made it) but it's actually not that bad... without the words. (I can sing as high as you like, as long as it's loud and I can use random vowels!) But sooner or later we had to put the words in. I actually love singing in Italian once the words have sunk in, but it's hard to learn in, despite the fact that it's "all vowels, except for the consonants" (a typical Jamieism!)

There were a few good Jamieisms tonight. Mind you, we'd got the giggles during the warmup (which not only featured the notorious "red leather yellow leather lavender leather" exercise" but also a new one, even more evil, to the increasingly rapidly repeated words "kit kat kit kat"). But I was amused by "the words 'rocket science' spring to mind" when the poor guy was trying to explain to some of the slower members of the choir that a particular note needed to be held for an extra bar. (Seemed perfectly clear to me, but maybe I could hear better then people further back.) And then there was the bit where he said "I'll get some hiking boots and send them to you as an email attachment so that you can use them for the GUILT TRIP you'll be taking!" (I forget what the guilty party was supposed to be feeling guilty about, although it was probably not stopping the sound in a double consonant...)

Concert week next week. That means choir stuff on Wednesday, Thursday and most of Saturday. Promises to be exhausting, particularly as I'm also out on Monday, Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Ouch. Oh well, it's usually fun :-)

Note to self: Write stuff other than Jamieisms next time!