As my father would say, we were sloppin' up culture like a hawg yesterday. (I believe the reference was to a L'il Abner comic strip, although it may have been Pogo.) It all started when the Orlando Magic (local basketball team) advanced to the playoffs, thereby causing a parking problem for the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra concert since the Bob Carr Auditorium and the O-rena (it keeps changing its name based on sponsorship, so since I can't keep track of it I generally call it by its original appellation) share parking facilities.
In order to help alleviate the problem, the OPO delayed its concert by half an hour. We figured that still wasn't going to be good enough, since one never knows how long a basketball game is going to last, so we decided to expand the evening.
We left for downtown at 4:30, and found our usual parking garage already filled to capacity. On to Plan B, which involved parking some distance away but near the free downtown bus line. We could have then taken the bus to our first event, dinner at the Napasorn Thai restaurant, but decided instead to enjoy a walk in the lovely weather. Mmmmm, tom yum gai, beef with basil, and pad Thai. :)
Our next stop was an easy walk away, for an Orlando Cabaret Festival show at the Mad Cow Theatre. This was our third year at their popular It Was a Very Good Year series (see last year and the year before, and our choice of year was made easy by the fact that 1951 was the one that made it possible for us to see it and still make the OPO concert afterwards.
Actually, 1951 had been my first choice this time, anyway, it being close enough to my birth year I thought it might be especially interesting. It turned out to be my least favorite of our three years, not so much because I recognized fewer of the songs as because the singers often didn't take them seriously enough to make them sound authentic. Well, okay, there's only so much you can do with I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat.... The songs from various musicals were the best, and the most convincing.
No lingering allowed after the show; it was time to run to the next event: The Orlando Philharmonic and the Bach Festival Choir presenting Verdi's Requiem. We didn't run, exactly, but having just missed a bus we decided to walk the nine-tenths of a mile to the Bob Carr, moving as quickly as we could against a flood tide of basketball fans in various states of depression, elation, and/or inebriation. Arriving on time to the concert was necessary because the Requiem was performed without intermission. Not only is it rude (and often forbidden) to enter the hall after the performance has begun, but we had also consumed many large glasses of water with our fiery Thai food....
This was, as far as I remember, the first time I'd heard Verdi's Requiem, and though I go into OPO concerts predisposed to enjoy whatever they present, I must confess I found this oddly disagreeable. The orchestra and chorus were splendid; it was an excellent performance. But it felt less like a requiem mass and more like an opera without costumes. Actually, supertitles would have helped, since it was too dark in the hall to read the words printed in the program. One of the advantages of being in a liturgical church, however, is that I was familiar enough with the words to follow fairly well anyway.
Perhaps it wasn't that much of an advantage, because often the music did not seem to fit the words. A mental shift, not without effort, did enable me to envision someone (not seraphim) singing the light, dancing Sanctus around the throne of God, but it was a far cry from my usual Isaiah 6 inspired image. Verdi did the Dies Irae well, however, with Carl Rendek and the men of the chorus providing a relentless, driving energy to the terrible words.
One or two of you might understand when I say that the absolute highlight of the delightful evening was the few minutes we shared with our table-mates at the Cabaret. Turns out they were from France, and though as always in such situations my very limited French vocabulary took rapid retreat, nonetheless we did manage to communicate some in French before reverting to English. It's always a thrill to me when someone actually understands my French, and, gracious woman, she said my accent was very good....
This took much longer than I had expected...I guess Pentecost and Mother's Day will have to wait till tomorrow. But I did get the coolest Mother's Day present.
