Cenerentola - Small Glitch, Large Fun!

Cenerentola in HD was so much fun!! What a great production. It's the same production I watched last week during the free Met Player weekend, only, of course, with an entirely different cast. It was kind of cool to see it with all different people because that meant that, in spite of the music, the scenery and the costumes being the same, it was still very different because each singer brings his or her own self to the part.

The small glitch was that the people who worked in the theater didn't seem to know what they were doing. Usually during an HD broadcast, the screen is on about 30 minutes before showtime. The people in the movie theaters can watch the people find their seats at the Met, we can watch the orchestra tune up and they also show little trivia questions and ads for other HD productions. This time... nothing. At about 12:25 the lights went out completely for approximately 30 seconds, then came back up. The sound was on and then.. it began. Blank screen. Brightly lit theater. Then we got the sound. We could hear Thomas Hampson introduce the production and then he introduced the Maestro and then... it started... and still... blank screen, bright room. About 3 people went out (including me because I can move fast compared to the rest of the crowd there) to find out what was going on. There was one youngish girl on a walkie talkie trying to reach a manager... a manager type finally showed up behind the popcorn counter and said, "It's a live feed. We're waiting for it." And we were like, "Uh, it's here. Turn on your projector and shut the lights..." Finally someone got a clue and suddenly in the middle of the overture the screen came alive and the house lights went down. Hooray!

I love watching the orchestra. Usually you don't get such a close-up view of the individual musicians. I love seeing how totally absorbed they get with the music, swaying, making faces as they play and so on. I love seeing all the bowed instruments move together like a dance. This particular overture has plucky parts and it was really cool to see them all pluck at the same time. It sounds silly as I reread it but it was cool to see.

The performance was so much fun. Everyone was fabulous. Elīna Garanča (yeah I pasted her name in from wikipedia because I have no idea how to type those characters over the i and c) was so cute!! She was so pleasant to watch. And she sounded wonderful. The two sisters were HILARIOUS!!! Perfect - great sense of timing, beautiful singing, silly but not too silly - perfect.

The guys were all great too - the stepfather was ridiculous. During the intermission interview he said that he takes the ridiculous characters seriously because the characters take themselves seriously. They don't know they appear ridiculous. He was awesome.

Dandini and then of course the Prince - WOW! The Prince - Lawrence Brownlee - WOW WOW WOW! What a voice! Beautiful, like sweet liquid flowing out of him and into your ears. The moment he first sang I regretting not seeing him live in Philadelphia last fall. I'm sure I'll have other opportunities to see him live though. Gotta save my pennies and sell more earrings. And the fairy-godmother character... he's the Prince's advisor, and also, apparently, an angel come to save C. from her wretched life - that was John Relyea. He was great. We've all seen him before - he was the music teacher in the HD Barbiere with Joyce DD and JDF. Basses fascinate me - how do they sing sooooo looowww??????

I was a little distracted during the performance - see my most recent posts where I discuss feeling blue and so on - but the beautiful sounds did finally draw me out of my funk and into their crazy world. Oh and I almost forgot - things caught on fire!! On purpose, that is. Don't get all freaked out! During the thunderstorm scene the house gets struck by lightning. The rain had been leaking in the roof so C. gave the stepfather an umbrella... and... BOOM! FLASH! Umbrella ablaze! The walls caught too. You could hear the entire audience, both at the Met and in the theater, gasp. Love it! Fire. Very exciting moment. And then silly of course because the characters didn't seem to care.

Then today I had a fantabulous day with Husband and Alex - picnic in a park, hike in the woods, we saw lots of people on horseback, played on a cool playground that had a fence-maze, played in the backyard, I had a nap (hooray!!), we grilled chicken and shrimp and then we roasted marshmallows over the coals and made s'mores with spicy chocolate! YUM!!!

Next event: Vocal evaluation, this Wednesday. So far I feel pretty good about it but ask me again on Wednesday afternoon...