The HSO finished a run this afternoon of Prokofieff’s ballet ‘Cinderella’ with Ballet Hawaii ( http://tinyurl.com/2hgpse ), if you can call two rehearsals and two performances a ‘run’. I don’t know why the Ballet management seems to think that two rehearsals is sufficient for a full-length ballet, but if last year’s ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Coppelia’ the year before didn’t convince them of the need for an additional rehearsal, nothing will.

This year we had the Music Director of the Cincinnati Ballet conducting us, a maestro Carmen DeLeone ( http://tinyurl.com/yvj676 ), who bears an uncanny resemblance to Tony Bennett. I must say, it is nice to work with a conductor who smiles as he conducts. It’s so much more relaxing than the typical blank game face so many conductors assume.

I was happily surprised by the quality of the performance, considering the lack of rehearsal time and the fact that due to these services occurring during what a layoff week, at least a third of the orchestra, especially winds, brass and percussion, were subs, as many of our full-time musicians were out of town or otherwise unavailable It speaks well for the quality of our extra pool to be able to come in and pull off a difficult score like ‘Cinderella’ so quickly and so well.

As I emerged from the gloom of the pit for the first intermission, I saw a number of musicians and stagehands looking at a TV monitor and laughing hysterically- it turns out that a remote control ‘mouse’ that was part of the action (dancers were swatting at it with a broom as it ‘scampered’ around) had exited the stage not on stage left as planned, but instead descended into the pit onto the scroll, and then the head, of one of our ‘cellists. Best of all, the whole event was captured on tape, and was being played over and over, causing more laughter. Most amusing was the sight of the tracking spotlight gamely following the ‘mouse’ into the pit. We’re hoping that the clip ends up on ‘YouTube!’

The stagehand who was operating the mouse was at first apprehensive that the ‘cellist was going to be upset, or worse, that her ‘cello would be damaged, but fortunately the ‘mouse’, a disguised remote control car, was light and no harm was done. To maintain the moment of levity, the stagehand related his worst stage/pit accident: years ago, during a production of Puccini’s ‘La Fanciulla Del West’, there was a scene with live horses on stage. Most unfortunately, the stage was raked so that there was a forward slope - and you guessed it, one horse had to relieve himself, and having no inhibitions about doing so on stage, went ahead and wet the floor, whereupon the horse urine promptly ran off the stage down into the pit.

Yuck!

The pit can really be a hazardous place to be. For example, in this run of ‘Cinderella’, dry ice vapor ran off the stage into the pit and made it difficult to read the music (and to inhale, as well!). In the past swords have fallen into the pit during the Rat King Army battle sequence in ‘Nutcracker’. (For accounts of more pit accidents, try this link: http://tinyurl.com/2h84x7). No one likes to be the one nearest the stage: you can’t see what’s happening on stage and the audience can see you so there’s no ‘privacy’, if that is a term that applies when you are performing for a thousand or so people. However, sitting at the other extreme of the pit can have it’s own drawbacks as well: although you can see the stage (which can actually be very distracting), and depending on how the pit is configured, you can be ‘heard but not seen’, which is nice for reading books or magazines - but unless the stage crew has put up some kind of a barrier between the pit and the audience, you can get treated to a close-up view of feet. Some people even stick their feet under the curtain and right in front of us, sometimes even blocking the view of the conductor. Here in Hawaii that can occasionally mean a foot encased in a sandal, so we get to examine the pedicure and comment among ourselves about the quality of the nails, as well as other attributes.

Yuck!

Next week is another layoff week, following that we start the 2007-08 season with our new music director, Andreas Delfs. The program: the ‘Meistersinger’ Overture, the Sibelius Violin Concerto with Sarah Chang, and finally, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony. Oh, and there’s an encore, too, but you’ll have to come to the concert to find out what it is. Best of all, we’ll be back up on the stage! No more pit until December when we perform the ‘Nutcracker’.

yuck! :-)

justin

"I must say, it is nice to work with a conductor who smiles as he conducts. It’s so much more relaxing than the typical blank game face so many conductors assume."

I thought that it is supposed that the expression of the director's face, should accompain the character of the music played at that moment... eg. You can't be smailing at the cannons part on 1812 overture... You are in the middle of the war !!!!!

You are right, a Tony Bennett look alike. remarkable.