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Music and Drama Mega-Weekend
It started on Thursday, when I went to see my school's spring musical, Cabaret. Opening night's always tough, but they did a really good job. I'd never seen the show before, but it was a good show and well done. It's the story of an American expatriate in Berlin just before the Nazis' rise to power, who meets and falls in love with an expatriate British singer/dancer. At the same time, he becomes involved, unknowingly, with helping to finance the Nazi's rise to power. Central to the story is his growing realization of what the Nazis stand for--and the way that no one else quite "gets it."
On Friday, we went to Lauren's school for Brigadoon. I'd seen it when I was in high school, but pretty much forgotten everything except that there's this Scottish village that only appears every hundred years. As usual, the performance was amazing--it tends to happen when the kids have to audition in theater just to get into the school and then have four hours of classes in acting, dance, and singing, plus several hours of rehearsal each day (and several faculty dedicated to the show). Really, the kids were amazing, performing better than many college students. They can sing, they can dance, they can act--they're just all so talented, from the leads down to the supporting and bit parts. The show, though, I thought was pretty mediocre. It's so trite, the whole "love can make anything possible" storyline, even then violating its own premise. I guess a classic show is one that's so old that no one can remember why it was so beloved in the first place. Still, the production was very good, even if the story is fluff.
Then on Saturday, my choir had rehearsal from 4:30-7 (plus another hour having dinner). It was a looong day, all as preparation for today. We had a two-hour 25th-anniversary concert (plus an hour and a half of warm-up / last-minute rehearsal). It went very well. We did a couple Baroque pieces (Pergolesi's Magnificat and one of Handel's Chandos Anthems) with strings (one also had oboe). I'm not really a fan of Baroque choral music, but the stuff with strings--and especially with oboe--was great. We did a bunch of madrigals and some contemporary pieces including one of my compositions that we performed last year. Oh, and we did a P.D.Q. Bach piece that was a big hit.
It was a fun weekend, but I'm pooped out now.