"She's dumping Paul Scholes for David Beckham..."

... and if I've understood things correctly, Paul Scholes kills her because of this...

NOTE: This is Jamie's explanation of the story of Carmen (Don Jose = Paul Scholes, Escamillo the champion bullfighter = David Beckham). We are in no way suggesting that anyone has actually dumped Paul Scholes, least of all for David Beckham, and we are DEFINITELY not suggesting that Paul Scholes has killed anyone!

Opera choruses tonight - all of them, including the Carmen finale (as you might have gathered), which is a relief because we hadn't tried that one before tonight! Before I forget, Gill asked me if I could provide practice tapes (or something similar) for Fuoco di Gioia and Carmen. Choir members are welcome to download mp3s of these which I have put online (I will be removing them after the gig - they are for study only):

Carmen finale (page 372-384) (8.5 MB)
Carmen finale (page 384-end) (4.3 MB)
Fuoco di Gioia (3.2 MB)

Hopefully the mp3s will solve any problems. If need be, though, I can make helpful amendments!

An amusing moment during the warmup, when the basses kept chatting and Maggie had to shush them several times. Finally, exasperatedly, she said to Cliff "I'll put you over my knee!" He didn't look too displeased by the prospect :p

Started with the Fire Chorus ("Fuoco di Gioia"). Could tell the men had had a sectional last night - actual pitches were discernible on the infamous bit on page 41, and page 43 sounded extremely confident! Scottish Refugees came next - I told Jane this was boring. She liked it. But that's probably because she's only sung it once...

Then a bit of time on Brindisi, which is always a laugh. Lots of practice at breathing in on a high-positioned "ah" vowel. Jamie's "in/out face" while demonstrating it was amusing :p Also a bit of work was done on making the low notes audible. Jamie reckons Mark will never have heard them before (they're usually inaudible). Apparently Mark commented after Tannhaüser that he'd never heard our bit in tune before - in opera houses, says Jamie, it's usually sung with a "healthy vibrato" (air quotes, pained look) which isn't conducive to singing in tune!

Finished with the Carmen finale, which wasn't too hard once we got used to it, but was a bit of a shock at first because it was extremely fast AND in French (I find singing in French harder than any other language, and I know I'm not alone in this). (Apologies for the pronunciation of the French on the mp3s, btw - it's not great!) During the course of learning this, Jamie decided to make a badge for each of the sopranos saying: "I'm not going to reach for the top notes!" This was followed by a diversion in which he quoted from Shrek 2... "Are we there yet?"

And unbelievably we finished 5 minutes early! I think the clock must have been wrong...