It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

The Town Mouse and I went to watch the "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year"  concert on Saturday night at the Esplanade. The singing was alright (didn't come together very well at times), nothing to write home to Mother about but  my god, the really low niveau of professionalism by the three choral troupes (namely the Singapore Lyric Opera Children's Choir, Youth Choir and Opera Chorus)?! Ok, most of them were kiddies, but after having the conductress walk off the stage twice to bring out the missing kids for the numbers is a bit too much. Cute the first time, but after the second time, only the indulgent old French couple behind me could chuckle (I was doing my old "jackpot machine" eyeball rolling). I mean couldn't the Opera Chorus folks who weren't singing in those particular numbers help out with the timing and setup? They couldn't even figure out who is supposed to be standing where.  The pianist and her page turner forgot the music score for one song, which is kind of pathetic because it's not like they were playing throughout the concert. Also the conductress kept flipping throughout her book for the next song. I mean, can't you already arranged the pieces in order?  There is the fucking programme. If I can read it before the concert, you can damn well sort out the music scores beforehand.

No matter what trash talk I can dish about my old choral conductor, I could at least say he was worth every penny the school paid him. Of course he had plenty of help from our tyrannical TOC who made us practise walking up and down the platforms in our high heels FOR HOURS. She refused to let us stomp off like elephants and wanted us to prance up the stage in our "at least 2 inch white" court heels. No mean feat considering that we numbered >80 chatty noisy girls.

I finally comprehend my teacher's efforts in doing so, and making us smile for hours while she glared at us offstage. She would yell the errant party who forgot to or wasn't blinding people with a brilliant smile. She did nail us our first SYF Gold.  The whole point of having a concert is to let the audience enjoy your music. If most of you looked like you were sucking on lemons, which they were last Saturday,  the audience isn't going to appreciate it very much.

Since I used to be from a choir and have experienced combined concerts, I can totally relate to how it might be difficult to synchronize everyone's schedules. But we could still do it then, and we were teenage amateurs, so I don't understand how a troupe aiming to become " one of the best opera choruses in Singapore and the region", could screw up one event so badly. Perhaps because I didn't have my pre-concert dinner that's why I was feeling so catty (irony is, my cousin was there with his girlfriend, and he had even meaner words to say), but damn the event was pretty bad. The only cool thing was admiring the fantastic Lachino (Chinese woman with a very nice Latin American woman-like ass), Lynette Tan, whenever she sashayed out of the stage after presenting the upcoming numbers. 

All in all, pretty bad. They did not make full use of Esplanade's acoustics. I think I can get more from a S$10 ticket to some secondary school or junior college amateur choral production.