and let's make sure our vowels are full of mediterranean sunshine

[fox]

apparently, the guy directing last week's rehearsal is the conductor, not the guy who will be preparing the chorus.  (i'm used to these being two different people; only i figured last week's guy was the chorus guy, because, well, he was there.)  rehearsal-director guy was here tonight, and he was a stitch.  i wish i'd taken notes.  he talked about how the 'ave maria' variations from verdi's quattro pezzi sacri were written in response to a challenge -- there was a public contest to see if anyone could write a harmonization on the scala enigmatica, and verdi ('being verdi', says the director) wrote four, and won.  and about how you can tell from the score what bits verdi was particularly impressed with, because he accents them; this is verdi going -- well, it's a visual gag, but imagine him pointing to the score and going 'huh?  yeaahhh,' fonz-like, and pointing to himself.  there's an a-flat in the soprano part of the 'stabat mater', the last beat before figure 5, that is basically verdi going 'oh, yeah, i am awesome.'  he talked about puccini's gloria being an examination exercise (which it was):  you can tell, he said, because the kyrie lasts about six minutes, the gloria lasts about twelve, and then he seems completely to have lost interest -- the sanctus lasts about two or three minutes, and the agnus dei only about four, and don't we all remember writing essays like that?, where you get to the end and just rush?  there are short solos in the puccini, he says, that professional singers long for, because in pounds per note it's the best rate you'll ever get.  at one point in the kyrie he told the altos how he wanted them to sing:  so that he could hear straps breaking.  (i about fell down laughing.)

and my personal favorite:  "this is italian music.  it is not from barnsley."


maybe you had to be there.  :-)

oh!  and!  i got anonymous props!  which is to say, i got the props, but he didn't know he was giving them to me.  in one warmup, a simple thing where we were counting down on a minor scale (reinforcing the comfort level with half-tones vs. whole tones), i was the only person -- definitely in my section, possibly in the room -- who was watching the director, so i held on a note and finished the scale with him while everyone else just carried blithely on in their own time and got there sooner.  and he said "aha!  see, i have a friend -- she was watching me!"  but he wasn't looking for me (and i wasn't in the front row), just gesturing over at the sopranos.  but i knew it was me, and everyone around me knew it wasn't them.  [preens]