Tales from London # 51-58

Hello,
It's been a while! I have been extremely busy in the last two weeks, traveling, writing papers, seeing concerts, etc. Here is the blog for the last two weeks (or as much as I can get to right now).

Monday

Today was a mostly uneventful day, I mostly worked on homework and ran a few errands. I went to choir rehearsal at night, where we are now working on the Mozart Requiem! I won't be there for the concert, but I can still keep coming to the rehearsals until I leave.

Tuesday

Today, for Music History class, we went to the Handel House museum. It is the house that Handel lived in when he was in London, though it doesn't have the furnishings that it would have when he lived there. It was neat to be in the space and see replications of what it would have looked like though.
In the evening, we went to hear a talk by the theater designer Allison Chitty on her process. It was very interesting to hear her talk about the details of her job, although much of it was over my head. After that, Jon and I went to see "The Habit of Art", a play within a play about the relationship between Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. It was a quirky, funny play, with lots of banter between the actors and stage manager. I really liked it.

Wednesday

Today, we learned about the Vienna Philharmonic, "The Rite of Spring", and Anton Bruckner, and then went to see the Vienna Philharmonic in the evening! They were really awesome; I loved "The Rite of Spring", and they had a really interesting quality about them. They also played two of Brahms' Hungarian Dances as an encore, which was very fun.

Thursday

Today, I went to a bad concert! I know, it doesn't happen much, but it happened. The LSO was doing Rhapsody in Blue with an American Conductor. It was sloppy, obnoxious, even sometimes out of tune. The two pianists made up ridiculous embellishments that made it really difficult to hear the piece, and the conductor was swaggering around the stage, dancing like he owned the place! It was absolutely ridiculous.

Friday

I worked on my essay for British Culture class during the day today, and also went to the National Portrait Gallery. The Gallery was very interesting; it is weird to see a set of paintings that are all of famous people. The styles were so scattered, which was in its own right intriguing. The room that focused on imperialism, with romantic portraits of snooty British people in the various states of invading a country, made me pretty uncomfortable. It was good to see portraits of a lot of writers and musicians though!
In the evening, I went and saw Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" at the Coliseum. It was put on by the English National Opera, which meant that all of the singing was in English. It was set in an American diner in the 1950’s and the plot revolves around a sort of Music Man-esque traveling salesman who comes in with a magic elixir to sell to the rural folks at the diner.

The catch is, at the beginning of the play, a stage manager came out to make announcements, and said “I have some bad news. The singer who is playing Nemorino (the main male character) is ill. But that’s not the worst of it. The understudy for the role is also ill. After a lot of discussion, we decided that it would be better to bring in a singer who knows the words in Italian rather than have someone sight-read the English words with music on stage”.

So basically, what happened, was the entire opera was in English except for the main character, who was singing in Italian. It made the already hilarious play even funnier! There were many interactions between the main character and others where they would be speaking to each other in different languages, which was just a bizarre situation to witness. Moreover, the salesman knew the Italian words also, so he sang in Italian for his duets with Nemorino, and would also throw in random Italian words into his singing (example: “Che muerte, Uncle Joe”). Nemorino also said the words “20 bucks” one time, which was a hilarious juxtaposition of the folksy translation the rest of the characters were singing on his beautiful Italian lyrics.

Saturday

Today, we rode up on a bus to Stratford upon Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. We toured around the home he grew up in, which was a small cottage, as well as other homes related to him and his family. I got curry for dinner at a pub, and then we saw King Lear put on by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was good, although I was not a fan of the actor who played Lear. It was 3.5 hours long, and we didn't get back to London until 1:00 in the morning!



Sunday

Today, I went on an exciting thing called "Ethan and Emily's Excellent Adventure". Basically, Emily and I went around to a bunch of the really touristy famous places around London and took pictures in front of them for our blog (http://blogs.lclark.edu/england2010/). It was a fun day, and we walked basically all of the way across western London! At night, I went to see John Adams conduct the LSO, which was very exciting. He was a very good conductor, and the piece he conducted (the Dr. Atomic Symphony) was good, but not great.

Monday

Today was another average Monday. I went over to my internship and worked all day, mostly preparing spreadsheets and word documents for this and that, and then picking out quotes from reviews of the choir. Then, choir rehearsal in the evening. Pretty standard.

Cheers,
Ethan

Tales from London # 43-50

This is going to be my longest post ever! Hooray!

Saturday

We had to wake up at 6:00 in the morning today to catch a 7:30 train to St. Ives. The train ride was really long (6 hours), but when we got there, it was definitely worth it.

St. Ives

St. Ives is a small, seaside town, traditionally known as an artists' colony. The air was so clean, the sky was a gorgeous, deep shade of blue, and the weather was beautiful. It was so nice to be by the ocean for the weekend, though it was certainly too cold to go swimming!
We went to the art gallery (Tate St Ives) in the afternoon, which was pretty interesting, although it was small. After that, we went out to dinner at a pub on the waterfront, which was really delicious.



Sunday

Today, we woke up, went out to a local bakery, and got some scones. We went over to the waterfront and ate them with local jam and Cornish clotted cream. Cornish clotted cream is incredible. It must be terribly unhealthy, but it tastes so good!
After that, we walked around for a little bit, and hiked up into the hills. The entire place is so green and beautiful. It was sad to leave after such a short time, but we had to go.
We hopped back on the train, but then got off in Exeter to walk around and explore a little. We walked through the cathedral, which was very pretty, and then walked along the wall, which was very old and medieval.
Then, we went back to London.

Monday

Today was a fairly uninteresting day. I went and took care of a few errands during the day, including going to the library.
In the evening, I had a choir rehearsal, the second to last before the big concert. My voice was very tired after the rehearsal; it's a very difficult piece of music.

Tuesday

Today, we had Theatre class in the morning, during which time we acted out some scenes from a melodrama from the 1800's for the rest of the class, which was very dramatic and entertaining. After that, we went to the Handel Foundling Museum.
The Museum was on the location of where a house for babies and children who were found abandoned by their parents would be taken. There was a lot of art work in the museum, which was kind of strange, and only one room had anything to do with Handel. It was interesting to hear what life was like for these children, though.
After that, we went to a preconcert talk about Handel's Belshazzar, which is an oratorio. After a couple of hours, we went to the concert at St. James Hanover Square, by the London Handel Festival. It was an extremely long oratorio, with a choir and 5 or so soloists. 2 of the soloists were male altos, which was very interesting. Although the concert was very long, it was also very beautiful (if repetitive).

Wednesday

Today, we went down to the Apollo Theatre at 8:30 to queue for 10 pound front row tickets to Jerusalem, which we succeeded in getting. After that, we went to our final class for Fine Arts in London, where we all had to give presentations on various art related topics. My project was on Damien Hirst, a very controversial British artist who likes to display dead animals. He is also the richest artist in the world, which is cool I guess.
Anyhow, after that, we went to Jerusalem, a long play on the West End. It is about a Gypsy who lives in a trailer home in the woods in rural England, in a place where his family has lived for decades. The plot of the play circles around his impending eviction, and (without giving away the details too much) explores many difficult questions about how he is leading his life. Mark Rylance, who played the main character, was absolutely awesome in this role. It was a very intense, emotional performance, particularly in the final 20 minutes. Although I feel as though I should see it again to try to understand exactly what happened, I definitely think it is the best theatrical performance I have ever seen.

Thursday

Today, we had class all day, none of which is particularly worth noting.
In the evening, I went to a pre-concert rehearsal for the concert on Sunday. We were in a big church, and I could barely hear anything the conductor said.

Friday

Today, I went to work for my internship all day. I worked on getting things like the seating plan and budget for the concert ready, which was very hands on and useful. There were a lot of final details to take care of, and it took the whole day. In the evening, I had dinner, went out for gelato with Jon, Will, and Jackie, and then went to see "The Last Station", a film about Leo Tolstoy (supposedly). It was really more about Tolstoy's secretary and his wife, and about Tolstoy dying. It was entertaining, but not really what I was expecting going in.

Saturday

Today was the day of the big Barbican concert! I had to go in at 1:30 to start setting up for the concert, getting flowers and refreshments ready, and carrying things all around the building. We had a long rehearsal at about 4:00, and then I had a quick dinner I had packed earlier in the day, and then the concert started!
It was extremely hot on stage, with the lights on and a basically sold out crowd of almost 2000! We performed Beethoven's "Choral Fantasie" and "Der Glorreiche Augenblick", the latter of which hadn't been performed in London in over fifty years! The concert went really well, and it was an absolutely amazing experience. I performed on the same stage that Yo-Yo Ma had played only 3 nights before!


Sunday

Today, I was going to go out to Dim Sum with some friends, but after we got separated, my phone died, and I never was able to find them! I went out to a cheap Chinese buffet by myself instead, which was tasty, and I ate the most meat I had eaten in a long time, since it's so expensive at the supermarket. After that, I went to see the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Southbank Centre. They performed Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto and "Symphonic Dances". They were very impressive, but didn't really blow me away.
After that, I went to the Barbican Centre for the day's second concert, this one by the London Symphony Orchestra. The piece was James MacMillan's (a contemporary Scottish composer) St. Matthew's Passion. I went to an unenlightening preperformance interview with him, but the performance itself was absolutely awesome. It was conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and the piece was reminiscent of "Carmina Burana" There were many beautiful choral parts, as well as epic and emotional instrumental parts. It was very interesting, and I thought it was a unique adaptation of the story.