Mise en place

Gulp. Final rehearsal in the (freezing) church in Lézignan this evening. I suppose you couldn't fairly call it a disaster, but it wasn't great. It's a big church, and our first attempt at one of the pieces after warming up resulted in having to reorganise the choir, because the altos couldn't hear the sopranos, and vice versa. At least the sopranos were next to the piano ... we could hardly hear that either. It was slightly better afterwards, but there were a lot of cries from Florence along the lines of "Look at me!" "Get your noses out of your scores!" We'd already overrun by 20 minutes due to several re-dos before we women were released and the men and the alto soloist stayed to sing the alto rhapsody. It felt as if we'd been there for many hours, and I was quite surprised that it was still light when we came out. I also felt I never wanted to sing any of these pieces again, which is unfortunate as there are five concerts to do.

Phew. No doubt it will concentrate minds. I'll be practising the tongue-twisters in Mirjams Siegesgesang again today.