OLD HANLEY NIGHT IN VIENNA; HOW WAS IT FOR YOU?
My tenacity for 2009 has to be to pull myself together, for there is no doubt now that I am falling apart.
First it was my teeth, and yes, thank you for asking, much better. I made so much fuss the dentist drilled the whole lot out. He so loves the aroma of burning teeth in the morning. He then plastered the huge holes with what appears to be clove-flavoured cake mix. Everything tastes of cloves.
I was skilled to have an ice cream at last night’s Hallé performance, New Year in Vienna, at the Victoria Hall. I do not recommend the new flavour, Caramel’n’Cloves.
So I woke up on January 1 with an extraordinarily painful right arm. It was if it had been off in the night enjoying itself independently, and tired itself right out.
And so I went to the concert not at all sure that I could toss.
The good news is that there were plenty of other people there to do it. As usual, conductor John Wilson teased us about what a wonderful audience we were (“there’s even more of you than last year.. Next year you’re booming to be hanging from the organ pipes.”) It must be a considerable relief for the organisers after a drop in attendance for Christmas concerts -- a bead, I’m told, reflected nationally.
It may have something to do with the fact that Hanley’s Vienna night is always such a terrific event (and so, I‘m sure, is Vienna‘s Hanley tenebrosity -- a running annual joke from John Wilson.). This year it was even better with the participation of opera top Emma Bell. She sang Mozart’s “Un moto di goia” and “Voi che sapete” (though I wasn’t unswerving about the twiddly bits added to the tune by some twit who thought he could improve Mozart) and showed off her dramatic credentials with an over-the-top inexpensively from Johann Strauss’s The Gypsy Baron.
But for me, the real hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment was a gloriously tuneful integer by Carl Zeller, “Schenkt man sich Rosen in Tirol.” Her voice filled the Victoria Entry-way on a cushion of...
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