Advice Please - Can Local Chorales "Do" Opera?

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Instant coffee with those pink wafers in the interval?

No coffee in church tonight - just the wine.

I'm just settling down having had my take away burger but it was much better than I expected and with a few significant surprises which really lifted it.

Like these two:

http://www.nicolawydenbach.com/soprano.html

https://www.operamusica.com/artist/dominick-felix/#

I really liked it. More shortly.

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Set list.

I will do the brief essay later:

Chorus of Enchanted Islanders (Alcina) (Handel)
When I am laid in earth; With drooping wings (Dido and Aeneas) (Purcell)
Padre, germani, addio (Idomeneo) (Mozart)
Voyagers' Chorus (Idomeneo) (Mozart)
Villagers' Chorus (William Tell) (Rossini)
Chorus of Wedding Guests (Lucia di Lammermoor) (Donizetti)

Interval

Habanera (Carmen) (Bizet)
Lensky's Aria (Eugene Onegin) (Tchaikovsky)
Chorus of Scottish Refugees (Macbeth) (Verdi)
La donna e mobile (Rigoletto) (Verdi)
Chorus of Hebrew Slaves (Nabucco) (Verdi)
O mio babbino caro (Gianni Schicchi) (Puccini)
Quando m'en vo' (La Boheme) (Puccini)
Anvil Chorus (Il Trovatore) (Verdi)
Nessun dorma (Turnadot) (Puccini)
De miei bollenti spiriti.....Oh mio rimorso (La Traviata) (Verdi)
Brindisi (La Traviata) (Verdi)

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Whodunnit?

The Official Review

Part 1 of 4

Outline plot. Could this have been "our" first live music event in eight years? "We" can hardly believe it and yet it is probably true. We don't travel far now. Ideally, we need to know that we can walk home for any number of arguable reasons. Luckily, home is a mere ten minutes away. Obviously we see no reason why the truly world class should not be appreciative of our requirements and travel to us as is only appropriate. It is just that while a few will always naturally comply, the vast majority will choose to be unacceptably difficult. Such are the ways of the globe. But here's a different thing, not that it should matter. When was the last time we had set foot in the church of our Christening? An emotionless 1963 conveyor belt affair by all accounts. Much longer ago. Possibly decades. Certainly not since we discovered that any local alternative did not offer something better but was rather run by egotistical ex bank managers and ex civil servants. And not indeed since we learnt that this was the parish and mother church of Croydon, originally dedicated to Mary, not that anyone in Croydon actual would admit it. Or that it forms the southern tip of the Croydon Triangle linking to St Mary's, Beddington which in turn forms a pentagram axis to Camlet Moat near Barnet, not to mention Gog and Magog in Totteridge, also in North London, before geometrically ley lining off towards the folk music capital of Sussex, Rottingdean, and King Arthur's Glastonbury.

http://www.earthstars.co.uk/earthstars-sites-to-visit/

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Part 2 of 4

Background. We did pop into "the local" first - a place we very much dislike - at precisely 22 minutes before 7.30pm. In that way we could be swift; feel on theoretically safe ground by comparison; know in view of the usual clientele there that we were on comparatively "not really us at all" ground; forget momentarily the destination with whatever that might bring; and hope that something peculiar might happen to distract us. Well, the peculiar happened. After a very lengthy wait to be served which put us on tenterhooks and the inevitable decision to be outside, a man approached and said it was probably a funny question but could we give him detailed information on how he should walk to Reading. We hoped that in providing detail for a full minute he would realise that he had taken on more than he could bear in terms of listening. But, oh no, he was serious which meant that he listened very well while laughing maniacally. We can read the runes here. To walk 40 or more miles to Reading is preposterous. Less so the message that had come to link our direction with farther west. Some point to Avalon. Anyhow, so then it was a panicky dash to the venue where most people were still meandering among the graves. No one else was wearing track suit bottoms.

Our memories of the church were never very good. They were not exactly awful. But as teenagers in what is on paper suburbia but perched so high it still has claims to having a village feel, we tended to think the grass was greener elsewhere. The area was always a little too conservative socially for our liking or perhaps seemingly pompous and to the extent that there was any feeling for religion it was decided that nonconformism could be a better bet. Now, this was and is strictly C of E as we have been and we suppose that ultimately it all has to be accepted. That is even with the criticisms about the way in which the lawn isn't mown as regularly as it might be and that only regular attenders of the church are permitted burial there when that should be based on the length of time we have been in the locality. A lot of things are better now. It is slightly hard to fathom how high ceilings so often led to a feeling of being about to fall; occasional visible shaking both in the legs and the hands; and on a rare occasion passing out. But that was a very long time ago. We look at the interior of the building knowing that there is also an exterior and with the eyes of a builder or a designer. What we note especially today is the sheer lack of anything on the inside other than a strange but eternal exotic canopy which is to say that the latter was there in the 1970s. For a very historical church, it could almost be modern or if not then a large old Methodist place in somewhere people rarely go. The spiritual and the musical as it relates to the building via Google can now weave through our perception of it and attach warmly enough to its modesty.

http://www.surreylaneweddingphotography.co.uk/images/surrey-wedding-photographs/st-johns-coulsdon/Choir_practice_before_a_wedding_at_st_johns_church_coulsdon.jpg

http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/adidas-tracksuit-bottoms

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Part 3 of 4

Evidence. Many tickets were available. There may behind the table have been a ticket put aside especially for us as had been agreed but in the event that sort of discussion wasn't needed. Nevertheless the place was packed. We estimate over 90% of the pews were taken. There was an awkward moment when we held back from the entering throng by delaying our entrance and trying to buy a programme. The main seller was on one side of the chorale as it was travelling inward and we were on the other side. Consequently we got in their way until we managed to dance through a gap in their order. "You could join them" said the change giver, laughing. "They really wouldn't want us", we said. To be seated. We're on the end in the second to back pew with three seats between us and other people. Lovely. All the doors now open - more than we realised. Every quiet moment was addressed by birdsong which made such moments magical, especially as it was elegantly phased in by nature's disc jockey after each performance piece and subsequent applause. Yet few probably noticed it.

The chorale? 24 women and eight men, we think. Two women and one man of non white colour. As for their aptitude, we are not skilled at assessing such things. However, we would say that the women sounded slightly reedy in the quieter lower sections. They were much more convincing in the more emphatic moments, especially those which required a higher pitch and the addition of the male voices whenever that occurred added to the conviction of the chorale as a whole. Whether they would have been worth the £10 on their own we are not too sure. But the conductor was excellent. He gave a pen picture of each opera before the individual performances and with just the right amount of numerical humour. Berlioz had so much promise but he died in his mid thirties. Donizetti could easily turn a small event into a full five hours. Those refugees from Scotland celebrated that they were close to England but the place they thought they had reached was a hundred miles away. Such a shame it was his last performance as their musical director. As for the two soloists, they were stunningly good. We knew that we instinctively do genuine tears rolling down the cheeks and bright beaming smiles inside 30 seconds but we thought that was only for Puccini. No. It is also for Purcell.

http://assets5.classicfm.com/2012/43/dido-and-aeneas-6-1351088410-view-0.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_50zj7J50U

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Part 4 of 4

Judgment. Forum members kindly warned us about the possibility of prayers. There were no prayers. The church is, after all, their rehearsal rooms. There was wine. There can be wine and wine. This was red as would be fitting for communion but it was accompanied by the statement "well, this is more like it, here looks like a man who will be saying yes". We didn't have the heart to tell them that two people had come. But it was in our view fairly reassuring just as that moment when our ninety year old grandmother inadvertently gatecrashed footballer Kenny Sansom's wedding and was immediately invited by the clergy to their basement bar. The overwhelming majority of tonight's parishioners were grey and perhaps for that reason what there wasn't was any overt attitude although initially it seemed surprising. That was once the stuff of the elderly but now it is for the young and middle aged. One final point. We have detected similar dry humour at music events in the past. It is generally the sign in more serious affairs of a light but solid sophistication. Here, in a church, all sorts of nuances came with it - with reference to the plots, talk of lotharios and loose women, gypsies, suicide and much else. The male soloist even flirted during one of his renditions with a couple of seventy-somethings if with minimal chance of frisk. At the door, raffle tickets were being flogged and nice books were on sale. The secular ran through its every vein and yet there was something religious too. All of it merged. But the spiritual side was separate. It was in the music itself which to us is always spirituality or the gateway through it, depending on outlook. Texts tend to be a diversion. That's how we see it and how we feel it. That's me and me who feels I am becoming, as I aspire to be, ever closer in my soul to Morse. I and I may be easily pleased with virtually anything now but I am unanimously pleased it was my very first "opera". That turns out to be the key distinction and I am happy to rest my case.

http://i3.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article5837146.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Elaine-and-Kenny-Sansom-on-their-wedding-day.jpg

Signed - @ Neighbourhood Watch.