It drew a lot of people. Too bad. On the way out I overheard someone say “Two or three times I thought they were going to make it work.” That fit perfectly. Several pieces were performed beautifully. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” was enchanting and enriching. “Sleigh Ride” seemed fine but it was hard to follow from back in the audience. “For Unto Us a Child is Born” - well - it was spectacular and caused a lot of toes to tap and heads to bob. But then, that's Handel for you.
The high school chorus was a delight to hear. They did not have to depend on the amplification system, and they brought a freshness and liveleness to the performance. If they could have done the entire show I would go to see it again.
The ballerinas had nice looking hands. You could sometimes see that when they held them straight up. Perhaps the people in the first row or two could actually see their dance but for the rest of us (most of us) it was just a kind of a long song. Same with the Celtic dancers. We glimpsed their outfits occasionally (from the shoulders up) but it was mainly just a lot of loud stomping.
The rest of the show was disappointing. First, the acoustics in the arena are not good. This place was apparently not designed for either music or speaking. Second, the amplification system was awful - sometimes it just sounded like a bad night in the jungle. Third, the photographs? were awesomely terrible. The images were chaotically distracting. They were a poorly organized presentation of bad exposures. There was no attempt to coordinate the change of photos with the tempo of the music so it "threw" the music out of step, there was no progression of images leading from abstract, say, toward specific (or perhaps the other way around), or from black and white evolving into color or vice-versa, but a random assortment of faded sepia images shown out of cadence with the music and they finally reached a crescendo of . . . repeating the same previously shown poor images!
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