A Tale of Two Concerts

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . OK, now that we've gotten the obligatory Dickens reference out of the way, we can go on with our irregularly scheduled blog post.

Saturday night and Sunday afternoon I went to two very different concerts. Saturday night's concert was performed by the Rochester Community Chorus. The concert itself was pretty good and consisted of show tunes done in a cabaret-type setup. We, the audience, were sitting at round tables with snacks in front of us. So it was a little more informal than a typical concert setting. There was even a sing-along right before intermission.

Unfortunately, the lady next to me decided that the rest of the concert should be a sing-along too.

It can be really annoying when the person next to you is singing along. But this lady took it to higher levels of aggravation. For one thing, she sang just occasional snatches. I never knew when she was going to burst into random song. For one piece, she sang only the title, "All I Ask of You." Another song went something like this:
   Chorus: Five hundred, twenty-five thousand . . .
   Lady: . . .six hundred minutes!!
Even this lady's daughter (maybe ten or twelve years old) turned around at one point and said, "Mom, shut UP!"

At long last, this lady took out her phone. Normally, I'd be irked at this breach of etiquette as well, but in this case, I was grateful for it. I thought it would at least occupy her enough that she'd shut up. Well, this was when she decided it was time to start whistling. . .

Fast forward to Sunday afternoon. That was when I almost became the annoying lady singing along, this time to the Verdi Requiem. It's my favorite choral piece in the world, so it was worth going to anyway, but I went mainly because a former Rochester College student who has done very well for himself since graduating about ten years ago was the tenor soloist for this fabulous work. He had been very good when he was with us, but I could hardly believe he was the tenor soloist for a work of this caliber in a performance of this caliber. As soon as he opened his mouth, my jaw dropped and pretty much stayed that way the whole time. Of course, that's a great facial position from which to sing, so it worked for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the concert.

I just hope I didn't annoy the people around me too much.