Sound of Music

Today

"I've got a crazy idea", said Beatrice to me this morning. Nothing new, then. She went on to expound it which is that the family gets together to put on a performance of Handel's Acis & Galatea. I don't think it had got much beyond the idea stage and I suggested that she flesh out a few details before making a proposition to the rest of the family.

In My Day

I think Beatrice's interest in this work comes from a deep sense of unfinished business. Back in 1985 she and I joined a singing group called The Eastbourne Opera and Oratorio Workshop. We met on Saturday mornings in a dingy church or church hall in Upperton Road in Eastbourne. There a small and motley group of singers gathered to work their way through a range of pieces. When we joined, the work in progress was Acis & Galatea.

The talents of the singers were very varied indeed; there being some who could barely read music and others who had musical but no other skills.

Our tenor had a voice of tremulous beauty; he was a middle-aged bachelor, with all the hall-marks of the type. Badly, not to say raggedly dressed in ancient and smelly clothes, with no communication skills and permanently bad hair and teeth, he was accompanied to rehearsals by a dragon-faced mother who sat at the back of the hall until we'd finished. The thought of his playing Acis to anyone's Galatea was pretty nauseating, but close your eyes and your heart melted with the sound of his voice.

As is common with almost all  singing groups, we had more women than men and they were pretty well all younger, better-looking and better at singing than almost all the men so our sound was rather lumpy at times. The soloists for this work were already chosen and the group slogged through the choruses, occasionally making real music. Our tutor clearly had a passion for the piece and managed to get a spark of drama out of us from time to time.

I never discovered whether there was any intention of actually giving a finished performance of the work; certainly concert dates weren't mentioned and there was no choreography of any kind suggested. I left Eastbourne before the charms of Acis & Galatea had been exhausted so can't tell how it all ended.

Beatrice, having persuaded me to Sing "As When the Dove" at her wedding, obviously wants more, much more! And who knows, she just might pull it off.