So yeah, it was great again tonight! We had a bigger audience with even more cheering. Yay. I've never gotten an audience response like that before. I mean, wow. People love them some Tolkien. They cheered the first time the strings played the Ring theme. They cheered the end of the first act. They cheered the beginning of the second act. They applauded every giant swelling Fellowship theme. Lots of people (not just one dude, like last night) cheered when Aragorn chopped off the one Orc's head. And, man, at the end? About four major outbursts of applause during the end credits. That's our biggest singing moment, so it was partly like, yay, thank you, and partly like, shut up, we're singing here.
Here's how it worked: We had a version of the movie without the music. It had all the sound effects and all the talking, and it had subtitles so you could follow the dialogue when we were drowning it out. This was also good for me, because I was watching it on a giant screen above the conductors' head. Since the sound was going out into the hall, not back at us, we couldn't make out the words most of the time, but we could follow along by reading the subtitles backwards.
The conductor's monitor showed the movie with moving lines and blobs and stuff superimposed to show him when the cues were coming up. (I read about it on this random person's blog - I couldn't see that screen, of course.) He's conducted this nine times now - a significant number, if you know your Fellowship - so he's an expert. And he's like a hobbit. Ok, it's impossible to imagine a hobbit taking charge of 150 performers, but if a hobbit *could* be a conductor, it would be this guy. When the choir presented him with a little gift before tonight's show, he made an "ooh hoo hoo hooo!" exclamation of happiness.
Here are some more of my post-show blog search results: This one makes me wish I could see it myself. Here's another fan. This one left at intermission and was shocked (shocked!) by such things as Wolf Trap being outdoors and employing volunteers as ushers. And this blogger doesn't have much to say.
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2 comments:
I was curious how the whole shebang worked - completely astounding, and I wish we could have been there. Can all 150 of you handle a nationwide tour? I think it would be a phenomenon.
Man, it would be so awesome to take it on tour. But it will probably be easier to keep doing it the way they've been doing it - recruit a local choir, hire a local orchestra, and fly in the soloists and conductor. (Actually the boy soprano soloist may have been local - no idea.) In any case, I think it's awesome enough that there will be more performances. I know it's in Krakow soon...maybe next week. So you could go there.
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