I have good news and I have bad news.
10:06 a.m.
The Musica N0va concert went very well last night. In spite of the dryness (I kept feeling a constant pre-cough tickle in the back of my throat) I was in very good voice, and did some of the best singing I�ve done in a long time. It was reasonably attended--many of my husband�s composition students showed up, which pleased him greatly, but only one of my singing students came, which guarantees her an A and does not dispose me pleasantly towards her colleagues--which is pretty good for a new music concert. All the musicians wore the usual black (Hubby in leather pants) except for myself; I wore crimson: red princess-neck top, red long wool skirt, red satin sandals. I was the �Lady in Red�. Marc�s daughter, who acted as r�citante, also wore black, but she exposed cleavage, something I did not.
The world premieres were successful. Mario was quite pleased at how well his song went. He hadn�t been to any rehearsals and this was the first time he was hearing it. Marc�s two �tudes also went well, considering his comments during the dress. Hubby�s songs were the hit of the programme, especially the soprano/oboe duet. That went particularly well. I had a moment of lost concentration right at the end of the first song when I experienced a sharp pain in my knee and came in on a wrong note. Damn those high heels! The instrumental chamber works also went well, although Hubby was not pleased with the quartet. To the audience it was beautiful, but there were some games of Blind Man�s Bluff being played between the flutist and oboist.
The dress rehearsal was a different story, though. France and I played Marc�s songs for him, and he requested that they be even slower. Argh! They were so slow already that I instinctively kept pushing the tempo, and he wanted them slower! After all the cleaning and preparations of the day before (Hubby ended up washing the kitchen and hallways floors), the violist never set foot in our house, but ended up driving back with the flutist after the concert. I was sorely pissed when she told us that. Not that I don�t like having a clean house every now and again, but those were precious hours spent vacuuming when I could have been copying symphony pages. Marie-Anne was at the rehearsal with her two-month old baby (absolutely adorable; he was an angel the whole time) and recited the poems before we performed the songs (all of them). Her French recitations were fine, albeit a little broken up. Her English was execrable. We had to correct her on many pronuncations (for instance, she got �how� right, but both �prow� and �bow� she said with a long �o�, as well as �none�) and she was so halting that I thought she resembled the mechanical speaking voice of Stephen Hawking. During the performance she still made mistakes, and even France agreed that perhaps the texts could have been in the programme and not recited. We finally got home at 6:15, I heated up a frozen pizza for supper and threw together a salad (Little Princess got it started before she went for her shower), ate hurriedly, ran upstairs to get dressed and made up, getting more and more uptight as it got closer and closer to EDT, until we finally left 15 minutes after we had planned to.
However, having performed an excellent concert, we decided to celebrate and headed into Sh�brooke to a bistro called Les Beaux Dimanches where M0rdy Ferber was playing with our friends. They were mighty fine. I had one beer, which went down exceedingly well, and one orange juice (I can�t believe what they charge for non-alcoholic beverages in these places) which went down way too quickly, and sat there in the smoke wondering where the mirrors were. I for one will be very, very glad when they finally outlaw smoking in restaurants and bars in this province. It is too long in coming, that�s for sure. Maybe I�ll get out more once they do.
from zuzus-petals :
Bravo! Sounds like stellar evening!! - Zuzu
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