Culture

My coworker offered free tickets to Carnegie Hall for several concerts held this weekend. At first I turned it down because I didn't want to go by myself. Josh can only handle so much culture. Since he went to the Met with me a few weeks ago, I wasn't about to push my luck and have him sit through a concert that lasted over two hours. However, Jennie was willing to attend tonight's concert. We were both band geeks too! Our free tickets just came from the unsold tickets for the performance and we didn't do too shabby, being given orchestra seats.

I've never been to Carnegie Hall, and I was amazed at how beautiful the auditorium was, with the gilded ceiling and trimming. Also, people still dress up to attend concerts, unlike Broadway shows where audience members are frequently in jeans and t-shirts. During one of the intermissions, Jennie and I went to the balcony levels to explore. There are individual boxes there and each one has a door. We found that each box had an antechamber where people could hang their coats before going through a second door to actually sit in the box. It was very fancy looking, like something from a movie.

The performance was wonderful and I liked most of the pieces they performed. Each of the three sections of the performance was performed with the New England Symphonic Ensemble, but the choir groups changed. My favorite was the combined children's choirs in the last third of the concert. The two most notable pieces were Rossini's "Duetto Buffo di Due Gatti" (Comic Duet of Two Cats) and Chilcott's "Can You Hear Me." In the Rossini, the halves of the choir acted out the dueling cats and were so cute as they were singing "Me-ow!" At least the kids didn't have to learn much in the way of lyrics. In "Can You Hear Me," the kids signed the chorus parts of the song. It was lovely.

However, there were some rude people. The old lady next to me fell asleep and started snoring. Another woman behind me was unwrapping some candy, but took so long doing it, I thought she was unwrapping a dozen pieces. Then there was some guy who was talking with two people in his group and I was not the only one to turn around and give a dirty look until he shut up.

In the end, Jennie and I got some culture. I feel smarter already! S-M-R-T!