The Houston Symphony Chorus sang opera choruses and Christmas music as backup for Andrea Bocelli in front of a huge audience in the Toyota Center. It was in general a very successful concert with many encores. The chorus' role was, of course, secondary. I did not sing this concert due to an out-of-town wedding, but here are some comments from George Howe:
Talk to Bob Albans about the voluminous amount of smoke that wafted throughout the arena before and during the concert, purportedly as an echo-absorbing technique. And the conductor was in the top five for effusive florridity (if that ain't a word, it oughtta be...) - He looked like a Siberian Crane doing a mating dance, and not a very convincing one, at that. The ictus was a constantly changing thing, and there was a fair amount of approximatura singing going on. I think we did not have sufficient preparation time with the conductor or the orchestra. The beginning of Funiculi, Funicula sounded differently than we had heard before, and the conductor forgot to give us the stand signal. Consequently the chorus stood right as our choral entry measure occurred, and our first phrase was nothing to be proud of. Second and all subsequent ones were.
I'll bet there weren't 500 empty seats out of maybe 16,000. ALL of the severe nosebleed seats were full. And Bocelli was phenomenal - I couldn't see him take a breath, yet these effortless high B's would soar into everyone's soul. President Bush 41 and the Missus sat near downstage left, and received a warm welcome from the nearby crowd.
Here is an essay by Joyce Lewis:
It's not every week that you get to sing backup for a world famous tenor who has supposedly won more awards than the great Pavarotti (I'm not sure I believe whoever told me that). Anyway, there we were on Wednesday, December 8, 2010, boarding buses to take us to the dress rehearsal for a singing engagement by Andrea Bocelli, to be the same night in the Toyota Center (where the Houston Rockets basketball team plays their games). What a thrill....60 of us from the Houston Symphony Chorus were to sing in front of a soldout crowd of 18,000-plus people, easily the largest group I've every sung in front of.
We had been told that parking would be a problem, so we should park at Jones Hall and be shuttle-bussed over, and that ID badges would be on the bus for us. The person I rode with, Bill Parker, and I were among the first five people to arrive at Jones Hall, and it was a little disconcerting to find that the security lady at the stage entrance knew nothing about us gathering there or being transported to Toyota. The bus did arrive soon, and we left for Toyota, but the bus driver didn't know where at Toyota we were to be dropped off. We knew from info given us that he should take us to the loading dock and not the front entrance, in order to avoid security problems; supposedly, if you went on your own, you had to endure about 30 minutes of security search. Once we got the loading dock thing cleared up, we asked about the ID badges we were supposed to get. The driver knew nothing about them.
Once there, we were told we could go to the dressing rooms or a holding area where tables had been set up for the meal they were to provide us with later. I think the dressing rooms were those allotted to visiting teams, because they didn't seem fancy enough to be the Rockets'. Our rehearsal was to be at 4:00, and it was only 2:30, so we had nothing to do until 4:00. I usually have a crossword puzzle or Sudoku with me, but not this time.Finally, most Chorus members arrived (except for 7 sopranos and one tenor, I think) and we lined up to go in. In our last rehearsal at the University of Houston, Charles (Hausmann, our director) had asked who had pitch pipes because we needed a pitch for Silent Night. Two people raised their hands and said they would bring theirs. Just for kicks, just before leaving for the rehearsal/concert, I grabbed my pitch pipe and stuck it in my totebag. While we were waiting for everyone to get into formation, I mentioned to Charles that I had a backup pitch pipe if needed. Once in our designated places, Charles asked for pitch pipes, and seeing that I was in the front row near the center, he said that I should be one of the pitch pipers. Wow! I would get to play a pitch (with just one other possible person) on that stage with 18,000 people listening for my B-flat. I had my pitch pipe set on B-flat as soon as Charles gave me my big role, and I checked it several times to make sure it was still on B-flat. I didn't want to mess up my big moment!
Then we processed in and the rehearsal began. How different than dress rehearsals with the regular conductors of The Symphony. In our rehearsals, the conductors go through pieces, correcting minor and major problems and finally going all the way through each piece, sometimes more than once.
Mr. Bocelli travels with his own conductor and soloists, and this conductor, Eugene Kohn, was on autopilot, being content to just start each orchestral piece and quit after a few measures, saying, “That'll be fine,” or something similar. At least we did get to go all the way through our choral pieces, but they needed more rehearsal time. In his “let's get this done quickly” mode, the conductor also, in running down the altered program, told us that four pieces on the original list would be cut. IT WAS MY WORST NIGHTMARE: MY PITCHPIPE SOLO HAD BEEN CUT (when he cut Silent Night, our only a cappella piece). Of course, we understood that the 18,000 people were paying big bucks (I heard $650 a pop for front seating) to see and hear Mr. Bocelli, not to hear an a cappella piece they could hear for a lot cheaper somewhere else in town. Too bad for me; my big chance was gone with the wind, or in this case, with the artificial fog they generated to enhance the lighting effects.
Oh well, at least they would probably provide us with a nice meal, being that they were making all that money from all those ticket sales. So we proceeded to the seating area to eat. Some of us decided to change into our dresses before we ate, while others had come in their dresses and didn't need to change. The orchestra members were being fed at the same time, so it was really “first come, first serve.” By the time we late dressers got to the serving line, they were out of paper plates, rice, squash (which I love) and desserts. The available food was chicken and almost-raw asparagus. Employees began bringing out large (real) bowls on which we put our servings of chicken and asparagus. Seating was at a premium, but fortunately, my friend, Berma, had saved me a seat. It was hard trying to cut a piece of chicken with a small plastic knife, but since there wasn't much else to eat, I had to be content with the chicken. Just as I finished and was taking my bowl to the table designated for stacking up dishes, I noticed that they had just brought out a large container of squash and more desserts. Oh, well, the rehearsal was a disaster, so why should the dinner be any different!
Finally, it was concert time, and what a strange beginning to start a concert with the Hallelujah Chorus; when not in context of Messiah, it is usually an encore. But when Mr. Bocelli came out and opened his mouth to sing, all the other rehearsal/meal trivialities were forgotten, because he is just marvelous and the audience responded to him just like the star he is, with wild ovations at every turn. The other soloists (a female violinist, Anna Tifu, and two sopranos, Alexia Voulgaridou and Heather Headley) were incidental, just to provide variety.
I had asked someone if they knew what had caused his blindness and the answer was that he began losing his sight because of a soccer accident about age 10, and that his sight had gotten increasingly worse until he lost it completely. Either the conductor or a soloist led Mr. Bocelli on and off the stage.
After intermission, we were lining up to go back on and two of us were in the middle of the hallway “backstage,” when someone said to move to a side because a golf cart was coming through. My friend and I moved against the wall to make room, and since the cart was coming around a corner, I kiddingly hollered “Screech,” as if the cart was doing wheelies around the corner. When the cart got by us, the riders were none other than former president Bush and Barbara. Lots of members who had their cell phones and cameras with them took pictures of them, and we all waved at them. They graciously waved back for the picture-takers. By the time the concert was over, we had heard and sung operatic arias from Rigoletto, Carmen, Il Trovatore, Faust, Madame Butterfly, La Traviata, and Turandot in the first half and lots of Christmas music in the second half: The Nutcracker, Blue Christmas, Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (Adderley School of the Performing Arts Children's Chorus), Angels We Have Heard On High, Adeste Fideles (plus Funiculi-Funicula...with some cuts we hadn't had before).
I'm sure the “hurriedness” of the conductor was due to several things: this tour group is doing this program so many times in so many cities that their rehearsal time and “down” time is valuable to them. The current schedule had them in NYC on Dec. 2, Newark, NJ on Dec. 4, Boston on Dec. 5, Houston on Dec. 8, Los Angeles Staples Center on Dec. 10, and Las Vegas on Dec. 11. The other thing is that they expect an orchestra like the Houston Symphony to be professional enough so that they can play any music without having to go all the way through it in rehearsals. With a volunteer group like the Chorus, we would have liked to have more rehearsal time, but it wasn't about us.
As a memento, we got a neat laminated clip-on badge that said “Houston Symphony, Hans Graf Music Director, Chorus” on it and had a picture of a golden treble clef atop a piece of music. I'll have fond memories every time I look at that badge. What a wonderful experience! I can still hear Mr. Bocelli's beautiful tenor voice singing the encore, Nessun dorma, and that reminds me to go out tomorrow and buy one of Mr. Bocelli's CDs to take on my upcoming trip.
Maybe listening to him will help me get over the disappointment of missing my big solo moment at Toyota Center.