I'm baaaaaaaack from Philadelphia! It was a great day, sunny and cool, so the rain predictions were wrong and the umbrella was unnecessary. We had a very liesurely lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel, followed by a 6 block walk to Rittenhouse Square. We walked around the various market booths set up on the edge of the Square before setting down on a bench in the Square for a bit. Around 3:15 we walked to the Academy of Vocal Art for the concert, which began at 4. The guy who runs this operetta program is a bit of a frustrated ham who uses the events for his performance as well, which is a pity. The singers appear to be ADA students who need, as I believe the Jiulliard and Manhattan Schools of Music do as well, an operetta program to get them used to acting, dealing with spoken dialogue and singing legibly in the English language. One of the tenors apparently never learned his music and sang a lot of wrong notes, while the other tenor was quite good. The baritone was handsome with a strange placement of vowels; his "Forward Forward the lily banners go" in the Song of the Vagabonds was marred by the pinched vocal sounds on "Forward." Otherwise the voice was quite nice. One soprano was fantastic, with good diction and she was wonderful whenever she appeared, especially on "Look For the silver Lining." The other soprano, Mexican or Latin American, sang totally on vowels and could have been singing Victor Herbert in Esperanto for all I know. The third lady was a soprano of dubious age whose voice and figure were on the wane and who had a lot of fans in the audience. She had the funniest number, "Cleopatterer" from LEAVE IT TO JANE and had no idea how to perform it. I doubt any of the singers had a clue on where their music originated or the original reason for the song to be sung,which I think is a necessity. Still, I'm glad we went.
The bad news is that there was no check in the mail yet from the recording, but I did get a check from FINIAN'S RAINBOW. I guess my health insurance premium won't bounce now.
