Another Travesty
On Friday I had the most displeasurable time I have had in a great while- yes, even worse than what I will call here the Weekend to End All Weekend (see Jeannie and Liz: The Horrible Drunken We for more details.) This time, things were worse, becuase I was seeing glorious, timeless music ruined by not one, but two departments in the SOTA lexicon. Yes, I saw the Mozart Requiem in the SOTA auditorium. It was led by Mr. Jerry Pannone and Dr. Ilan Glassman. The former was diginified and respectable, looking natty and dapper in his suit. He had recently presided over the art gallery in commemoration of his deceased wife, and he lent a gravitas and a dignity that was lacking in the rest of the program.
Dr. Glassman, however, was a vulgar showboat, flirting with the females members of the orchestra, making rude jokes and leading his Vocal Department brusquely and terribly. But no worse were the orchestra members, who took no time at all in getting down to the business of messing things up completely.
The Vocal section of the Requiem began- then ended again just as abruptly, because a snoozing Dr. Glassman, busy having lewd fantasies about the violin section, hastily started over for no reason at all. everyone snickered. Mr. Pannone shook his head, clearly apalled.
Every vocal soloist was met with a gracious pat on the behind- yes, even the male members, since Dr. Glassman seemed so lustful that he was not willing to differentiate. The group's clear distraction made the program shifty and herky-jerky, full of false starts and quaky finishes. When the vocal section ended, no one seemed willing to applaud.
The orchestral portion of the show was marred by certain people's bumbling. A clarinetist, when her solo came up, realized she had forgotten her music. What was most galling was that- and this was revealed to me during subsequent interviews- she had gone home to get the very music she wound up forgetting. She launched into a boisterous rendition of Elton John's "Candle in the Wind," but it was to no avail. Everyone was quite flustered by this collision between the soft rock and the classical.
The next mess-up came from a bassist, who, seemingly unaware of the setting, began doing a solo for a bluegrass concert she was to be appearing in later in the month. The whole concert stopped dead. She looked around. She stopped. She slowly put her bass down. Mr. Pannone was crying. I was crying. We were all crying. The show ended. We kept crying. We wept. We sobbed. we held onto each other's hair and shoulders, gasping for air. Then we left. The night air whipped thorugh our hair as we all shuddered, not from the cold, but from the horrible travesty that was the Mozart Requiem.
Added: Sunday, December 07, 2003
Reviewer: Pirate Joe
Score: 
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