Some Verdi Things

1. It was awesome. I'm telling you because you don't know. You don't know because you weren't there. You bastards.

2. I did not sleep all last weekend.

3. I will be buying three recordings: one for me, one for Grandma, and one for Grandpa. Anyone else who wants one can mooch it off of one of us. I'm not sure when they come out, so don't pester me.

***edit***

I am, as usual, procrastinating writing a dumb paper.

So we had our last Wednesday rehearsal of the semester for Chapel Choir today, and since we only had two songs to rehearse in two hours, Rodney (our director) let us spend the beginning talking about the Requiem. Patty, one of our star sopranos, said she's had nothing but Verdi stuck in her head for months (this made me feel better, because I thought I was the only one...I've been singing in Latin down the hallways for a full 10 days). Rodney said - get this - it was the BEST VERDI REQUIEM HE'D EVER HEARD (in person).

The only way for you to understand the way this made me feel is to also understand how I feel about Rodney. I am in awe of Rodney. I can't decide whether to love him or be terrified of him. The image that springs immediately to mind is the apes and the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey, though I know that's not right for many many reasons. If Rodney told me I had a good voice, I'd go audition for American Idol. If he told me I had a bad voice, I'd go pretend to be a lemming and drown myself. That's just the way it is. (As it is, he tells me I can't read music, but that's a skill failing. So I've just stopped auditioning for stuff because of it.) I'm afraid to talk to him, because I might annoy him (which in turn makes me annoy him even more, I think, because it means I sleep through a lot of Sundays and never apologize for it, but, uh, that's just part of what makes me...crazy?).

Anyway. BEST VERDI REQUIEM. And that we were so good the orchestra and the soloists drew emotion off us. That you could hear every consonant in every part of the Chapel (you try enunciating in a building with a 7-story-high vaulted ceiling and then MAYBE you'll understand how big a deal that is). That it was the most emotional and best-felt oratorio Chapel Choir'd done.

But now, after that, I don't know how I can buy recordings. There won't - you can't - you don't feel a recording. You'll only hear the bad and superficial parts. The part in the last Libera Me, where I was singing so hard my chest was vibrating and I still wanted to put out more sound because I wanted to make it better, greater, more glorious - you can't hear that. The whole Chapel full of people leaning in and holding their breaths at the first sob of the cello - that'll just register as so much less ambient noise. The part in the Agnus Dei where at least one of us was so moved she burst into tears - can't hear that either. The fact that I, normally the town joke, was so carried along by the flow that not only did I not make a single mistake or wrong entrance (!) but didn't even need to look at my score for a good 75% of the oratorio (!!) - well, nobody knew that but me. And you, now.

But I -- oh god, you guys, you don't know how depressed I was that no one came, because I was so tired and so sick and had sung two services that day and we still managed to do the most beautiful, beautiful thing I've ever been a part of, and no one was there to see it.