… but when the singers drop in it’s not such a great thing. Fortunately the singer was okay, and no one else was injured. (I’ve been in three productions where a cast member came into the pit; a chorus member, a musical theatre actor, and a ballet dancer during the Nutcracker Russian number (the guy just tumbled his way in and that was the scariest one).
An opera singer was rushed to hospital after tumbling into an orchestra pit during a performance at a British festival.
Puerto Rican Ana Maria Martinez sustained minor injuries in the accident while playing the title role in Rusalka at the world-renowned venue near Lewes, East Sussex.
A Glyndebourne Festival spokeswoman said she was taken to hospital as a precautionary measure but discharged after being checked over by an orthopaedic surgeon.
(Thanks, Jillian, for bringing this to my attention!)
By now I expect you’re already at SJSU (or en route, or eating dinner, or both), but we’re planning to show up (and bring the neighbors), FWIW. Assuming we can find parking. I will attempt to say howdy and introducificate them (circumstances permitting). I’ve been thinking about how to add a bassoon line to the OTR duet, also (obviously it ceases to be a duet at that point, but something about it makes sense to me aurally).
I saw some old high school friends there, but I didn’t spot you. Did you wind up getting there, or was it too crazy (I couldn’t believe how many people came!)
Have fun with your arrangement. 🙂
I was there – my wife didn’t get home until fairly late (busy season), so we got there only about five minutes to 7:00 and ended up off to the side by the barbecue pit (I could only see some of the basses, violins and the chorale). Awesome job overall (although I felt that one section was…struggling). I was a little disappointed with the sound system, since the wind section (double reeds in particular) were harder to hear :(. Every time I heard Tony I was impressed, and the violin solo nearly made me cry. There were some great oboe solos, and the English horn solo I heard was perfect. The flute and piccolo players also stood out to me (in a good way – lovely sound) and the saxophone solo was really good. In fact, the solos were all quite good, and the chorale was excellent (as an instrumentalist, it’s hard for me to admit that the human voice can really add so much depth of emotion, but they sure did – dagnabbit). My family really enjoyed it (as did I) – even the nine-year-old. If we weren’t going to be in Walnut Creek tomorrow I’d try to get at least one more in (I know my kids would enjoy the harmonicas, and my daughter is a huge Lemony Snicket fan).
They set up the microphones far too late because the darn things didn’t get there on time … not sure what happened, but there must have been a glitch in the microphone delivery! What was rather odd is that there was NO microphone anywhere near me. I attempted to play out a bit because of that, but if you only hear one EH solo then they obviously didn’t get out well enough! I had tons of stuff during the violin solo (much of it has an EH part running through it), two solos in star wars, and I played a bunch in Harry Potter. I kind of figured those wouldn’t all reach the audience. Ah well … not my fault!
The JW stuff is pretty taxing on the brass, and we had a 2 1/2 hour rehearsal earlier in the day. But that’s show biz! 🙂
See you Wednesday-
p
Dagnabbit! I had a whole post in here that got lost somehow (I hate when that happens) – bottom line, I honestly had no idea it was you on EH when I posted that, seriously (the program only listed the tunes, and it didn’t even have the last one correct – but I like the Star Wars theme better than the Superman theme anyhow). I’m not kissing up – you were great (brava!). And my next duet arrangement will be Simple Gifts (don’t know if that’ll be available by Wednesday, but we’ll see – not part of my regular curriculum anyhow, but possibly fun with your other students at least). Concert-sound-wise, it might’ve been the angle – we were off to the (your) right quite a bit, so we might not have gotten the full impact, depending on how they distributed the sound (I saw that they had a serious mixing board, or whatever they’re called).
Oh, and we’re talking about getting at least two season tickets (it was that good).
Oh, one last specific accolade – the harpist was amazing – it really adds a lot.
(The bass and cello sections did their usual perfect job – I could really feel it when the bass section did their thing – and the rest of the strings were also tight.)