It was a three-hour, gruelling dress rehearsal. At the end of it all we stumbled out of the church, exhausted. We were driven, forced to repeat bars over and over again, made to feel like we were all fumbling amateurs, threatened with removing pieces from the program if we couldn’t get it absolutely right. When we were released, our conductor thanked us, and said quietly that we should all be very proud of ourselves, because we sounded fantastic.

I should know this tactic by now; I’ve worked in theatre for seventeen years. It gets me every time, though.

If I had any doubt as to my sight-reading abilities, they were assuaged by the smooth, adept performance of the German aria Andras distributed when we arrived. It seems that in the eleventh hour we have added another piece to the program. For those of you who know Marian Siminski, our lovely and talented Mozart soloist from our last concert (and, incidentally, the musical director of Lakeshore Light Opera who has directed me for years), she’ll be back on Monday night.

The church is lovely, so if anyone gets bored with the music, they can look at the architecture and all the saints (if they tire of Andras gesticulating wildly). I know I spent a lot of time looking at it while various sections worked through rough sections and transitions. (Oh, we had our share, don’t think we didn’t.) We played with all the doors open last night, and people walking by came in and sat at the back for a while when they heard the music. I thought it was lovely. Imagine taking a stroll by the lake as the sun is going down, and the air is cooling off, and you hear this wonderful soaring Mozart which draws you in. The church melds the sound beautifully; I can see why many groups choose to record in such places. I can also see the immense technical headaches they create, namely that the brass and winds sound like they’re a fraction of a second behind the strings at times, because the sanctuary is round and collectes their sound before projecting it outwards.

One. One more day. Seven hours. Then friends, and music, and a summer of freelancing, writing, and catching up on me again.