Solomon went great this Friday! It was a great house, and very well received. The soloists were fantastic, and the orchestra was focused, and strong.
A few highlights:
Act I ends with lovely lullaby for King Solomon and his wife - a gorgeous little chorus known as the "Nightingale Chorus", ending with just a quartet of muted strings - leading into the intermission. Well at the after the final chord, a lovely moment of silence, disturbed ever so gently by ... the sound of someone snoring in the front row. Well, I guess it worked!
I spent the intermission in my dressing room with Nancy Argenta figuring out tempo changes in her next aria, and then invited in our continuo cellist to go over the same moments, talk through all the cadenzas and etc. Nothing like learning the music of the second half during intermission! To quote the soloist - we stuck together like "shit on a blanket".
As far as the union clock was concerned, we finished the oratorio with one minute to spare, saving the organization a fair bit of money!
Although a few notes were left on the floor from time to time, the performance was a career highlight, and hopefully the start of something very special.
Dan Taylor suggest that next year we should try to mount "Saul".
Stay tuned!
2 comments:
wonderful...learned a number of new "musicological expressions" from this post! And I'm relieved to hear that you came in "under the time." I was gearing up to hold bake sales etc. if the performance had "gone long."
A wonderful evening.
Indeed it was! Well done sir!
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