"Engage the enemy more closely"

... was actually Nelson's last signal to the fleet at Trafalgar (after "England expects that every man will do his duty"). Not a lot of people know that :-) I mention it because I was lucky enough to be at the International Fleet Review yesterday, which was great, but caused me to feel like death warmed up throughout tonight's rehearsal, because I got home at 5.45 am and had to be at work at 8.45 :-(

Not much to say due to this. Also there was no Jamie - don't know why (they never tell us!) Apparently we'd been due to have Fanny (although the schedule didn't mention that) but she couldn't come, so David stepped in at the last minute, bringing with him a replacement pianist. I've forgotten her name but she did really well, particularly in the opera stuff. Gerontius threw her a bit, but it isn't easy!

We did all the opera stuff (well, except Brindisi, but we know that pretty well) and the end of the Demons' Chorus from Gerontius. Another amusing warmup with Maggie prior to all this; my highlight was when she got to the usual "relax your jaw" bit of the facial stretches and pointed out that the men couldn't talk with their faces like that (they'd been giving her a hard time by chattering incessantly when she was trying to give instructions), so of course they all promptly tried to prove that they could. They may have had second thoughts if they could have seen themselves in a mirror! Also amusing was when she got us to practise the demonic "ha! ha!" bits - turned out the men can easily sound demonic, but the ladies just sound like cackling witches... Mind you, it's possible that that's what Elgar wanted, I suppose :p

Fire Chorus is sounding better all the time. The basses did ask if they could go over their notes at the bottom of page 38. I must admit I hadn't noticed it was wrong, and neither had David; he said "I think it would be counterproductive for you to hear what you're supposed to be doing!" And I'm still not convinced that they're singing their last entry on page 90 of gerontius in unison, although it does sound closer to it than it ever has in the past...

A couple of people have said to me that the mp3s of the opera choruses were useful, which is good news. So I've completed the set by putting up the Scottish Refugees chorus as well. Not that I expect anyone needs to practise it as much as the others - it's mainly for Jane, who really likes it :-)

Chorus of the Scottish Refugees (7.2 MB)