Mastersingers in Barcelona — 2005

    Thursday, July 21, 2005
Concert at Sant Andreu

This morning’s rehearsal  from 9 to noon was to be our last.  Bruce decided to scale back his plans for introducing more new music from our repertoire, with the result that 9 of the 34 pieces which we prepared for this week in Barcelona (and which many of us memorized) were not sung at all, even during rehearsal.  This change in plans with the canceling of the Friday morning rehearsal, allowed many of our group to plan more extensive sightseeing for Friday.

This last rehearsal corrected some problems encountered last night, and prepared us to sing a couple of new pieces, “Pueri Hebraeorum” and “Marry a Woman Uglier Than You.”  As usual, everyone scattered after the rehearsal, until we had to reassemble for our bus to Sant Andreu at 7.

Sant Andreu is a major district on the eastern edge of Barcelona, but it is not in the tourist books.  Rather, it is a working class area with, however, an apparently active cultural life.  The theater in which we were to sing was a fairly modern facility that seated about 350 in seating that rose at a very sharp angle from the level of the stage.  The stage itself was more suited for dramatic than choral productions with a very high fly tower above the stage that was very effective in swallowing our sound.  The two wide “risers” only rose about 2 inches each, so the whole set-up caused us considerable consternation.  We eventually formed a horseshoe around Bruce as far downstage as we could get.  Bruce asked for a podium of some sort, and we were told that the theater carpenter was making one for him, but it never materialized.

After our brief warm-up we took seats high in the theater, the lights went down, and our host mixed chorus, Societat Coral La Lira de St. Andreu, began to sing.  It was very similar to previous performances:  about 2 dozen singers, 3 songs, all in Catalan, and similar in style — but well done.

The shocking thing was the size of the audience.  No doubt the hour had something to do with it (a 10 p.m. start on a Thursday night), but there were no more than a couple dozen audience members besides our wives.   We tried to ignore the weak turnout, though, and gave the performance our best shot.  “Els Segadors” once again brought people to their feet, but the whole experience was probably the low point of our week’s performances.