Germmtits!

(I discovered tonight that trying to text "Gerontius" using predictive text produces the above...)

No Jamie tonight (he was supposed to be there but couldn't make it; we didn't find out why) so David took the rehearsal and his place as accompanist was taken by the lovely Jonathan. We like it when he's with us because he usually appears to be enjoying himself. Plus, he's very cute :p

We sang through just about the whole of Gerontius. This was interesting as it was (I think) the first thing we ever did with Jamie, in St Paul's Cathedral in 2002, and (to me at least) it really showed how much progress we've made since he took over. There are parts that I remember always sounding less than great, but they were pretty good first time tonight. (I hasten to add that none of these bits were in the alto parts!) But it also made me realise that I've personally improved in some ways; in particular, I found that I could sing through most of the phrases without running out of breath. I've done this piece several times and never managed that before. It's encouraging :-)

David was absolutely correct, though, to point out that while the loud singing is fantastic, the quiet bits need work before they can sound as exciting. I've noticed this before; a lot of choir members seems unable to sing quietly when the music calls for it, at least until it's been pointed out to them several times that they're singing too loudly. (I have been accused of singing too loudly myself in the past, probably with good reason, but that's been in loud bits... I like to think that if it says "ppp" then you can hardly hear me.)

Sometime I will share my list of "good bits to watch out for in Gerontius". I know you all want to see that :p (you won't be surprised to hear that I have many such moments marked in my score!) Highlights from tonight, though: "I know this piece is about death, but...!" (David to the basses, after hearing them sing a line alone) ... and of course the "Dispossessed" contest, which the altos won hands down (there were impressed whooping sounds coming from the tenors after we did it the first time!)

Other stuff: It was great to see Rachel back tonight, amongst others who've been missing for a while. She's not been to choir since before Christmas. Oh, and we were given music for the opera stuff coming up, although we didn't try any of it. 4 things: Brindisi is familiar enough; Tannhäuser has us singing for a total of 23 bars (looks as if it might be offstage, which would be useful as then we wouldn't have to sit through the rest of it!); the Scottish Refugee chorus from Macbeth has, typically, no alto part at all, although the soprano part divides into 3 and goes down to bottom A... go figure!; and the Fire Chorus from Otello has the tenors split into 3 parts while the sops and alts hardly split at all. This isn't the first time this has happened, by any means - I often wonder whether choirs a century ago were drastically different (in terms of balance of parts) than choirs today!

Oh, and two final Gerontius points: firstly, some information about the story and musical details is online here, and a discussion of how to pronounce Gerontius is here. Summary: It's almost certainly a HARD g (i.e. not Jerontius)... I'm pretty sure this is how both Mark and Jamie pronounce it, too.

And it's back to Elgar....

Seems like a really, really long time since we had choir! A couple of things to point out:

1. If you own your own copy of The Dream of Gerontius, you should bring it to tomorrow's rehearsal.

2. The BBC Proms site went live today, and online booking is now open, although the bookings won't be processed immediately. Tickets for our prom are from £6 to £25.

3. It looks as if we're not going to be involved with the Proms in the Park this year, as the Manchester one features the BBC Phil rather than the Hallé.

See you tomorrow!

"The Hallé Choir ... soared through the Easter Hymn to memorable effect"

Briefly: Times review of the Cav gig here and Manchester Evening News review here, in case anyone hasn't seen them. Four stars from each. I haven't seen anything in any other papers - if anyone else has, could they let me know please?"

"Teeth in!"

... said the irrepressible Bruce to the front row sopranos, as he held open the door for them to go onstage. Cheeky thing! However, we will forgive him as it his birthday today :-)

Great gig. Everyone really enjoyed it - particularly the audience! They particularly liked the Easter Hymn; they burst into tumultuous applause after it, even though the music hadn't actually stopped. (I love it when that happens - it really irritates me when, in some other halls, spontaneous applause is frowned upon because it's "not in the right place". If the audience want to approve, let them, I say!) Mark had to wait quite a while before continuing. Don't think he was too upset though! (unlike at the start of the concert, when he stood on the podium and stared at two latecomers until they got to their seats... the couple in question got a round of applause, but I don't think Mark was too impressed)

The soloists were great, particularly Santuzza (Dolora Zajick). They all wore black apart from Lola, who (being the "scarlet woman" of the piece) wore a bright red dress. (I am very slow at noticing things sometimes, so I must admit that the significance of the colours didn't dawn on me until Lindsey pointed it out.) The only disappointment was that Turiddu (Ian Storey) sang with a score, whereas the other soloists all did it from memory. He had a fantastic voice, but the communication just wasn't there. For example, he sang a long aria to his mother (Mamma Lucia, played by Frances McCafferty), during which she gazed worriedly at him throughout, perfectly in character, yet he didn't look at her once!

I took a few photos in the interval - some better than others, as ever - which are up on the choir website. (Yael asked me tonight if I could possibly put thumbnails on (linking to full images) instead of the images themselves, which would really help non-broadband people. I felt a bit guilty as I've been meaning to do that for ages, but the way I currently do it takes approximately 5 minutes (literally) to get the photos from camera to web, and I have had no time to sort it out an alternative method (which would probably be just as quick once in place). Sorry! I'll get to it sometime, I promise.)

Not many Jamieisms tonight, sorry, although you will be pleased to learn that we did do "the Spider-Man warmup" (a good way of stretching when there are a large number of people in a small space), and the ladies were asked to sing the opening chorus "as if twirling a long, handlebar-type Edwardian moustache" :-)

No choir next week, but I'll be seeing quite a few choir people on Saturday night for Sue's party, at which my band is performing. Can't wait!

"Don't go away, darling. It was just lovely. The scream was great."

(Mark Elder to "una donna solo, assai lontano, gridando" (a.k.a. "the woman who runs up behind the choir at the end and screams a lot")

Orchestral rehearsal for Cav. We were hopeful at the start when Mark said he'd do our bits first and then do the middle section after we'd gone home - "wahay, early night!" we thought... but in fact we left at 9.00, only half an hour before scheduled. Oh well.

Rehearsal wasn't too bad, although it took a bit longer to get things just right than we expected. The biggest surprise, announced by Mark at the start, is that all the soloists who are supposed to be in the concert have actually turned up! (Mark has some sort of curse on soloists - invariably one or more of them is taken ill at the last moment, in any concert he conducts. So to have all the ones we're supposed to have is very rare. Of course, he's probably now guaranteed that one will develop some lurgy or other before the gig on Thursday...)

We arrived to find the aforementioned Ian Storey (tenor soloist) standing at the back of the choir seats singing an aria accompanied by two harps. It was lovely! Turns out that this is his offstage aria, and they were trying to find a good position from which to do it (this is always a time-consuming aspect of offstage stuff, as ladies who've sung The Planets will testify!) Later on they were trying it again from the side of the stage to see if that was any better. It'll be interesting to see where they end up (I suspect it won't be on the choir balcony - Ian was plainly unimpressed by that, complaining that it was "like singing in a bathtub").

Our own tenors surprised me slightly by not sounding quite as inebriated and enthusiastic as usual in their drinking song, which has been a highlight of every rehearsal so far (particularly the slide halfway through the tune!) I'm sure they'll be back to normal by tomorrow though.

All the soloists were great. Santuzza in particular (Dolora Zajick, an American mezzo) was very lively, and had the choir giggling at her impression of the Screaming Lady! As for the Screaming Lady bit, which culminates in the last note the choir sings (a very loud C major chord) it took AGES to sort out. This was partly because it involved an offstage action (see above) but also because no-one had decided when the choir should stand to sing this chord, and Mark wanted it to be a surprise, which it wouldn't be if we stood up too early. So Jamie had the idea that we should leap to our feet at the SAME MOMENT as we burst out with this unexpected chord. Seems straightforward enough, but some of the sops in the front row couldn't cope with this :p Still, they got it in the end. There were quite a few people I could hear singing wrong notes, despite a C being played on basses and timps for quite a while before the chord... I don't think these could be heard, though, with the number of people blasting out the top C! (Not sure how many, but it's not just Santuzza, it's all the sops in the Hallé Choir and Hallé Youth Choir who "have it in them". Quite a sound!)

"Make an Italian face... no, actually, Sicilian"

was my favourite instruction of tonight :-)

Piano rehearsal with Mark Elder for Cavalleria Rusticana. Much fun, as usual. The Hallé Youth Choir were there to run through the Easter Hymn with us (they're singing the church choir part in that) and there was a great sound a lot of the time. Other things weren't quite as good at first - we were finding it hard to sing rhythmically and in time, particularly - but it was fine by the end. (Although, infuriatingly, there were some people behind me who talked almost all the way through. I suppose this explains why they seemed so confused when we altos switched, within the space of a few bars, between the alto, soprano and tenor lines. I assume they were also talking during the rehearsal when we all wrote down which line we were singing :-)

Mark did like quite a lot of what we were doing, though, even before we got all of it correct - at one point he told us that "Covent Garden don't do it as well as that!" And he is in a position to know, so that was nice. He told us a few interesting things, as usual, one of which was that the tenor soloist (Ian Storey) is rare in that he's an Englishman who sings in Italy regularly. Mark says that he (Ian Storey) is very good-looking - can't say I'm convinced, from the photos on his website (example below), but I will reserve my opinion till I've seen him in the flesh :p





Talking of good-looking, Mark also informed us that Mascagni (pictured above), in his day, was considered to be very good-looking (in a different way from Puccini, who apparently had "bedroom eyes"). And that until recently, you could go into a barber's in Milan and ask for a Mascagni haircut - "no, I couldn't!" retorted one of the more follicly-challenged basses!

New choir schedule issued tonight (as usual, it's online) and letters about the London trip in July. And in case anyone hasn't been able to get a Cav recording and wants to practise, I've put mp3s of the chorus bits online. I haven't labelled them, but they're in the correct order in the score and all the choir bits are there. (Obviously, these are only for private study - I'll remove them after the concert.)

"Your tongue should be almost bursting with excitement!"

"Well, Jamie's on form tonight, isn't he?" said someone in the tea queue tonight. And he was. I forget what the title quote was about, but it was one of the double-consonant Italian words (I suspect "neggiamo"). There was also the reverse um-cha thing, which produced a sentence that was something like "you expect to come in on an um but you actually come in on a cha - but it FEELS like an um. You know, like speaking French with a Spanish accent". Seemed perfectly clear to me, but since it was the sops who actually needed to follow this instruction, more help was needed, so Jamie got the whole choir to chant "1, 2, 1, 2" till they managed to come in correctly :p

There was also the demonstration of how to sing a D so that lots of high harmonics are audible. This was very impressive, although we were a little disappointed that he stopped after the A and the high F sharp! (If you didn't hear this, it's much too hard to explain what he was actually doing. But trust me, it was very clever.)

Oh, and there was something about how to make a pirate's "arr" noise, but people were talking behind me (I *hate* it when they do that - it was particularly bad throughout the choir tonight, presumably because people hadn't seen each other for almost 2 weeks) so I didn't quite catch whether you do it by pushing your larynx or *not* pushing your larynx. The former, I think, whereas the latter is what's usually required for singing. I think.

BTW, I would very much like to get a photo of the look on Jamie's face when he demonstrated how he wanted us to sing "beviam, beviam, beviam" - "Look dangerous!" he said, and he did. Although I'm not sure why, when the words mean "we drink, we drink, we drink!"

Two slightly unrelated things he mentioned - firstly that he'd heard from the recording engineer for the Elgar, who told him that he was so moved while listening to one of the choir bits that he'd burst into tears! Should be worth listening to... And also, Jamie says he is taking part in tomorrow night's Brand New Flashmob Opera... but he didn't say in what capacity (I presume singing). Apparently at the climax the chorus have to sing the Hallelujah Chorus in order to save the heroine from going to hell. In the Meadowhall shopping centre in Sheffield. The mind boggles!

There were three new members who joined the choir tonight, and I had one of them (Jane) next to me, which was nice, particularly as her brother is an old friend of mine. But I felt really sorry for her - she joins the choir as a 2nd alto, and the very first thing she has to sing is the bit of Cav where we're singing the soprano part, which goes up to a top A flat! Oh well, it will only get easier :-)

Daniel Barenboim and I...

... were both at the Bridgewater Hall tonight :-)

I was there for a choir committee meeting. When I arrived I was surprised to find my way to the Artists' Entrance blocked not by the usual Hallé truck but by three HUGE orchestra-type trucks. I figured there must be some huge rock band playing - I couldn't think who else would need that much equipment - but when I went to sign in, I found that the sheet next to the committee one was for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and DB's name was at the top! I was quite excited by this, particularly as I'd totally forgotten they were playing here this week. During the early part of the committee meeting (which Jamie only attended part of, as he had a much-sought-after ticket for the concert) we could hear CSO players warming up. Gave the place a real buzz!

2 other vaguely-choir-related things. Firstly, I'm currently reading Michael Kennedy's "Portrait of Elgar" and was amused by this quote, in which Elgar explains why he disliked meeting choirs when rehearsing a new work: "I can face any orchestra under the sun, the players always enjoy new effects, but a chorus looks so disgusted if they haven't a shouting four-pt yell from beginning to end". (That is SO not true of us!)

Secondly, those choir members who took part in the Henry V tour of a year or two back will be amused to note that Prince Charles plans to open his wedding with music from this: "Touch Her Soft Lips And Part" :p