DickZ
01-05-2009, 09:52 AM
I took my treasured vintage 1942 Parker Vacumatic Golden Pearl fountain pen from my pen rack, and filled it with my mixture of Waterman Florida Blue, Violet, and South Seas Blue ink. I put it into my shirt pocket, along with a small notepad. I made sure my necktie was straight, and that the collar on my sport coat was folded back properly.
Then I went up to the nice lady’s apartment on the eleventh floor of my building, as we were going to have a glass of wine before going to the concert. This concert was being given just two blocks away from our apartment building, in a small church that held no more than 250 people – and a crowd of that size would be packed in like sardines. We couldn’t believe our luck in having the opportunity to go to this concert, which we would have gladly gone miles to see. It was literally just around the corner.
The soloist was Anthony Kearns, one of the Irish Tenors, with music provided by Patrick Healy on the piano. Mr. Healy often travels with Mr. Kearns, and in addition to being excellent on the piano, he is very entertaining during the breaks that Mr. Kearns takes to be sure he can continue singing the next series of pieces as powerfully as he sang the last series.
The duo started out with a series of traditional Irish songs, including My Snowy Breasted Pearl, Macushla, and Galway Bay. Then they did If You Go In from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. We noticed only a slight rattling of the beautiful stained glass windows with that round, a rattling that paled in comparison to what came later in the evening.
After a few more songs, including Londonderry Air (which some of us call Danny Boy), Mr. Kearns took a break, and you could certainly understand why. He was really belting them out, in a way that you don’t come close to sensing when you’re watching a DVD or listening to a CD – even if it’s on the best sound system that money can buy. While I like several operas, I really know them only through CDs these days. I have been to just one live opera performance, and that was at the outdoor Termi di Caracalla in Rome. The acoustics of an outdoor performance using amplification are quite different from those of an indoor performance in a small room bursting at the seams with 250 people inside, and therefore doesn’t need any artificial amplification.
During the break while Mr. Kearns was relaxing, Mr. Healy told some stories and a few jokes. One was the familiar Winston Churchill story that I’d heard a few times before, but is always good for a hearty laugh. At a dinner party once, Lady Astor told Winston “If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee.” Churchill’s classic answer was “If you were my wife, I'd drink it.”
Another quote was attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a nineteenth century British Prime Minister who had a decades-long running battle with William Gladstone of the other political party. When asked to distinguish between a misfortune and a calamity, Disraeli said “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if someone pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.”
Mr. Kearns returned after about ten minutes of resting up his vocal cords. Then the duo went into a series of Italian pieces, including La Donna é Mobile (from the opera Rigoletto), and the ever-popular Neapolitan pieces Funiculi Funicula and O Sole Mio. With these songs, you could hear an even louder rattling of the stained-glass windows. And you could almost see the windows shaking, as well.
It was an incredible performance, and we thank our lucky stars we were able to be there. I don’t know how frequently someone of that stature performs in such a small place, but it can’t be very often.
And I was quite relieved at the end of the concert to notice that my fountain pen had not sprung a single leak.
November 2007
Then I went up to the nice lady’s apartment on the eleventh floor of my building, as we were going to have a glass of wine before going to the concert. This concert was being given just two blocks away from our apartment building, in a small church that held no more than 250 people – and a crowd of that size would be packed in like sardines. We couldn’t believe our luck in having the opportunity to go to this concert, which we would have gladly gone miles to see. It was literally just around the corner.
The soloist was Anthony Kearns, one of the Irish Tenors, with music provided by Patrick Healy on the piano. Mr. Healy often travels with Mr. Kearns, and in addition to being excellent on the piano, he is very entertaining during the breaks that Mr. Kearns takes to be sure he can continue singing the next series of pieces as powerfully as he sang the last series.
The duo started out with a series of traditional Irish songs, including My Snowy Breasted Pearl, Macushla, and Galway Bay. Then they did If You Go In from Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe. We noticed only a slight rattling of the beautiful stained glass windows with that round, a rattling that paled in comparison to what came later in the evening.
After a few more songs, including Londonderry Air (which some of us call Danny Boy), Mr. Kearns took a break, and you could certainly understand why. He was really belting them out, in a way that you don’t come close to sensing when you’re watching a DVD or listening to a CD – even if it’s on the best sound system that money can buy. While I like several operas, I really know them only through CDs these days. I have been to just one live opera performance, and that was at the outdoor Termi di Caracalla in Rome. The acoustics of an outdoor performance using amplification are quite different from those of an indoor performance in a small room bursting at the seams with 250 people inside, and therefore doesn’t need any artificial amplification.
During the break while Mr. Kearns was relaxing, Mr. Healy told some stories and a few jokes. One was the familiar Winston Churchill story that I’d heard a few times before, but is always good for a hearty laugh. At a dinner party once, Lady Astor told Winston “If I were married to you, I'd put poison in your coffee.” Churchill’s classic answer was “If you were my wife, I'd drink it.”
Another quote was attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a nineteenth century British Prime Minister who had a decades-long running battle with William Gladstone of the other political party. When asked to distinguish between a misfortune and a calamity, Disraeli said “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune, and if someone pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity.”
Mr. Kearns returned after about ten minutes of resting up his vocal cords. Then the duo went into a series of Italian pieces, including La Donna é Mobile (from the opera Rigoletto), and the ever-popular Neapolitan pieces Funiculi Funicula and O Sole Mio. With these songs, you could hear an even louder rattling of the stained-glass windows. And you could almost see the windows shaking, as well.
It was an incredible performance, and we thank our lucky stars we were able to be there. I don’t know how frequently someone of that stature performs in such a small place, but it can’t be very often.
And I was quite relieved at the end of the concert to notice that my fountain pen had not sprung a single leak.
November 2007