Mr. Sleepy Bunny

Last night I went with my parents and a friend that I grew up with to see “The Fellowship of the Ring” at Wolftrap last night. The NSO played the score and a great choir sang the vocal parts. There was even a boy soprano soloist for those really high, ethereal vocalizations. To be honest, it was a lot less geeky than I was expecting. Out of the whole crowd we only saw one guy dressed up. He was dressed like Gandalf and it made me really happy/embarrassed.

In case people don’t know, the current temperature in the DC metro area is hovering between the upper 40s and the lower 60s. quite cool, but not anything that will harm plants or flowers. However, when you are sitting for close to 3 hours watching a movie at night, it gets pretty chilly. In fact it got downright cold. I was shivering before the end. But, of course, we stayed because it was so much fun. Some people abandoned ship due to the weather and the late hour (we live 5 minutes away from Wolftrap and we didn’t get home until 12:30). In fact my dad stole my blanket at intermission and I had to share the less warm but bigger blanket with my mother.

Even with the cold I had a good time. Our seats were pretty perfect really. We were in the 7^th row slightly to the left of the screen. Which meant that we were in the perfect position to see both the movie and the orchestra. I really do think that had we been anywhere else it would have been a much more different experience. As it was, mostly I watched the movie, but I did look around at the choir and orchestra to my hearts content. Most of the orchestra was watching the film on the back of the screen on their down time anyway. That was entertaining, to see the cello section staring at Frodo backwards.

Another cool thing was the conductor. He had the score in front of him, but he also had a monitor with the movie playing with some sort of built in metronome. His screen had pulses of light overlayed on the picture so that he could tell where the downbeat was supposed to be in this particular scene. It was pretty cool. It made me wonder how many times practicing it took him to stop watching the scene when the downbeat came up. Because I know that I would have been too engrossed to remember to raise my arms. Whatever, I’m a story whore, and everyone knows it.