"If you rush, you're dead. (Not literally.)"

At the RNCM tonight, which was great in that it wasn't WHGS, but bad in that the concert hall was very airless and very hot. Oh well. Did two things - first half of rehearsal on the Fire Chorus, and second half on a chunk of Gerontius (from the Angelicals bit to the Praise to the Holiest bit). Fire Chorus is now just about recognisable as Verdi rather than, say, Stockhausen, although there's still quite a way to go.

Jamie mentioned at one point about the ENO plan to use surtitles on English operas (which is of course all they sing, but still). His comment? "I was there [at ENO] last night, and... well, let's just say that we ought to work harder at our diction..."

Oh, and do point friends towards the Sing With The Hallé day website, which has just gone live.

I'm falling asleep, I'm afraid, so I'm just going to list tonight's Jamieisms (which were many!). These are in the order in which they're scribbled in my score as opposed to the order in which they occurred...

Fire Chorus:

(to the basses on page 2) "It sounds a bit too much like you're from Gerrards Cross."
(to everyone) "Get your tongue involved, folks - in fact that's probably good advice for life in general."
(on trying to get us to put the rolled r of the last word before the next beat - first he tried getting us to tap our feet on the next beat) "It's like a bad Charleston. Forget the foot, click your fingers."
(after witnessing the result of this) "Gentlemen, watch the cheese!"

Gerontius pages 95-147:

He made the tenors sing a top Eb (a minor tenth above middle C) in order to improve the Eb below, on page 106. The basses' faces were a picture, especially when Jamie turned to them and said "You must warm up in falsetto too!" Then: "Write it in, tenors: we did this bar well once..."

Page 108 prompted the idea that we should get a sign printed to stick on the door, and/or a T shirt for Jamie to wear, with a picture of an ice cream cone and the text "NO SCOOPING!"

Page 108 also sparked off the surreal few minutes which started with him asking the altos to think 2 octaves higher for our last note, and somehow caused him to start to tell us about Eddie Izzard and Engelbert Humperdinck and then say he'd tell us another time, leaving us all baffled... This may shed some light on the subject. But then, it may not :-)